Nostalgia of Desh, Memories of Partition

The riots that broke out in erstwhile East Bengal soon after Partition saw a
steady inflow of refugees into West Bengal. In the more impersonal government accounts,
refugees formed part of a vast logistical exercise. They had to be housed in camps,
issued voter and ration cards and, in some cases, provided due compensation. But each
individual refugee story is a tale of individual loss, of escape and survival in a
new land; a narrative rendered especially poignant by the sudden whiff of nostalgia for a lost
homeland or desh. In the more jingoistic present, desh has taken on a connotation
similar to the patriotic fervour, nation evokes. However, for refugees, as the
personal narratives in this article reveal, desh will forever remain in place
as ones homeland, now only sustained by memories.
ANASUA BASU RAYCHAUDHURY

T
he partition of India in 1947 was a cathartic event. The
British India gave birth to two separate states India and
Pakistan on the basis of the so-called two-nation theory.
On the eve of and immediately after the creation of these two
new states, communal tension and riots gripped the subcontinent.
The communal frenzy not only killed thousands of people, it also
uprooted and displaced millions from their traditional homeland,
their desh. This displacement forced many to search for a new
home away from home. Partition had made their homeland hostile
and they started imagining that peace and security were on the
other side of the border.
The partition was traumatic to those people who, having faced
physical violence, humiliation and sexual assault, were com-
pelled to leave their homeland. These uprooted people had to
first sustain themselves in survival mode in a somewhat alien
land. If the relatively well-off people could sometimes reconstruct
their lives on the other side of the border in newer pastures with
comparatively less struggle, for those belonging to the middle
and lower middle classes, it was almost impossible. Many of them
even had to spend several years in the refugee camps before they
could imagine a better life. Many of them could not even return
to their original occupations and, therefore, felt a sense of alienation
and irreparable occupational loss even after partial rehabilitation.
Although the past of these people remains in many ways,
their present, their desh is nowhere in sight. The refugees, who
have been surviving in camps for five decades and have not yet
been rehabilitated, still remain the prisoners of the past. It seems
that their lives and times have frozen within the boundaries of
the camp. To some of them, it is even better to live the rest of
their lives with memories of the past rather than de-freezing it.
They live with their memories the memories of happier days
in their desh and unbearable agony of losing their friends and
relatives during communal tensions and riots. Sometimes, these
memories of happier times, memories of abundance can be
somewhat imaginary. It is possible that some of these people
actually never saw abundance. Similarly, sometimes without
even witnessing violence with the their own eyes, they tend to live
with the fear of communal holocaust. As the present has very little
to offer them, the past seems to envelop their entire existence.
It is against this backdrop that this article intends to capture
the dynamics of the tussle between the sentiment of nostalgia
and the sense of trauma of some of these displaced Bengali
Hindus from East Pakistan. In this tussle, shared memory could
be a powerful mechanism through which the shelter-seekers
acquired a specific identity. In fact, the reality of displacement
from their desh due to the violence accompanying partition did
not stop these people to work for the progress and prosperity
of their adopted land. Although the refugees felt some kind of
detachment in their new place of residence, that detachment did
not come in their attempts to make the adopted land more livable
for themselves.
A few narratives of these refugees may indicate that they have
either gained or lost many things in material terms through their
displacement. Sometimes they have been able to create a new
para or a locality of their own in this new land. Still the adopted
land remains a distant caricature of their desh. Their desh may
not be reinvented and remains only in their memory.
Memory indeed is the engine and chassis of all narrations.1
In fact, memories are objects that tumble out unexpectedly from
the mind, linking the present with the past. From the narratives
of past it becomes possible to understand how these displaced
persons perceived their own victimisation and to what extent it
came into conflict with the identity imposed on them or the
one they accepted. It has been argued that, a traumatised memory
has a narrative structure which works on a principle opposite
to that of any historical narrative.2 A historical narrative, after
all, concentrates on an event explaining its causes and the timing,
but what it perhaps cannot explain is whether the subjects belong
to the marginalia of history like accidents, concurrences or
not. This is why one sociologist has rightly pointed out that,
memory begins where history ends.3
It is worth mentioning here that, the narratives are always
related to some sense of the self and are told from someones
own perspective to take control of the frightening diversity and
formlessness of the world.4 Through the narrative, the self finds
a home, or would perhaps, to use Sudipta Kavirajs words,
describe the process better if we say that around a particular
home they try to paint a picture of some kind of an ordered,
intelligible, humane and habitable world.5 Here the self tells
the story to an audience in this case the author and thereby
creates a kind of relationship with the listener.6
It may be that, the historical self configures memories dif-
ferently from the way the ahistorical self does.7 Therefore,
although the memories of these refugees may be subjective in

Economic and Political Weekly December 25, 2004 5653

nature, these could act as a rich archive of the experience of
displacement. Keeping this in mind, the present article would
intend to capture the tone and nature of reminiscences of a few
uprooted people their childhood memories, their upbringing,
as well as their sense of trauma. It also tries to discuss the contrary
relationship between the sweet memories and the bitter memories
against the backdrop of their shared past.
For the sake of our analysis of the nostalgia of desh, the present
article would be divided into two parts. The first part would
concentrate on the narratives of these displaced persons on the
basis of interviews taken by the author during her visits to the
districts of Hooghly, Nadia and South 24 Parganas in West
Bengal. The second part of the article would intend to argue that
desh and nation are two different categories. While the nation
is largely an imagined category, desh is frequently revisited in
memories. The nation, therefore, may be a product of imagina-
tion, but desh is a concrete but distant reality for the uprooted
people as it remains encapsulated in their past. The nation may
be placed against a time and space, but desh, for these refugees,
existed at a certain moment and in a distinct space associated
with their childhood and younger days, their friends and playing
fields, their village and para, their riverside walk and natmandirs
(where the worship of Hindu idols used to take place).
To illustrate these points, the present article would concentrate
on three different narratives of the persons who had a common
past. All three narrators had to flee from the newly created East
Pakistan (earlier known as East Bengal) in 1947 due to communal
riots and were compelled to take shelter on the other side of the
border. All three protagonists happen to be from the same district;
Barishal, situated in the south-western part of East Bengal, and
which was soon to earn notoriety for the inhuman atrocities
against Hindus during the partition riots. It is known that, after
partition, following the riots of February 1950, large numbers
of Bengali Hindus migrated from East Pakistan to West Bengal,
Tripura and Assam. These three narrators belonged to that group.
Initially riots broke out in the Khulna district of East Pakistan
where Muslims attacked the Namashudra community. The stories
of their brutality against Hindus spread like wildfire and had a
spillover effect. Therefore, from Khulna, the riot soon spread
over a wide region that included Rajshahi, Dhaka and Faridpur.
But in those places, the riots were very sporadic in nature. The
most organised and planned violence took place in the village
called Muladi of Barishal district.8
Keeping this background in mind, this article intends to analyse
the recalling and forgetting of a few displaced persons who
escaped the ordeal of communal violence in their partitioned,
and therefore, lost homeland. We also try to indicate how the
nostalgia of desh left its imprint on major Bengali literary works
and films of the immediate post-partition period.
I her eyes and said: because of the riots. In Jolisha, the riot took
Nostalgia (nostos+algos):9 yearning/pinning for the past, remi-
niscing, remembering
Hironprova Das and her golden days at Jalisa: I met Hironprova
Das in front of the office of the refugee camp at Coopers Notified
Area. She had come to collect her rations that she has been
receiving from the government of India since she became a
refugee. When I met her, she would have been about 70 or 75
years of age. She is tall, thin and fair wearing a white than.
When I disclosed the purpose of my visit, she thought for a while
5654
before she agreed to talk to me. We sat on the bench behind
the office gate. Our conversation began thus:
Mashi tomar desh kothae go? (Auntie, where is your desh?)
Amra to purba bonger lok. (We are from East Bengal.)
Purba bonger kothakar? (Which part of East Bengal?)
Barishaler. (From Barishal.)
Gramer nam mone ache? (Can you remember the name of your
village?)
She nodded, Jolisha gram, Bakharganj thana. (Village Jolisha,
police station Bakharganj.)
Tumi kotodin ekhane achho? (How long are you here?)
Ayto ki ar mone achhe. Oi Muladite riot hoilo na, tar poreito
amra desh chharlam. Tao to hoilo gia panchash ekanna batsar.
(Is it easy to remember all these? We left our desh after that riot
in Muladi. It must now be fifty-fifty-one years.)
Tumi ki ekhane vote dao? (Do you vote here?)
Hyan. (Yes.)
Tumi etodin dhore ekhane achho, vote dao, tahole tomar ki ekhon
etai desh hoe gyache? (You are here for so many years; you have
a voting right here; is it your desh now?)
She retorted:
Na na, eta ki koira desh hoibo? Ekhane thaki, sharanarthee ami,
amar desh to Barishale tomare koilamna gramer nam. Koto kishu
chhilo amago oikhane. Jakhan desh barir katha, jomi jomar kotha
mone pore, tokhon mone hoina je ar baicha thaki.10 (No, no,
how can it be my desh? I live here; I am a refugee; my desh is
in Barishal; didnt I tell you the name of my village? We had so
many things there. When I remember my desh, our house, our
landed property, I dont feel like living any more.)
Hironprova Debi is from Barishal district of erstwhile East
Bengal. Her father owned a grocery shop. She grew up in a more
or less well-to-do traditional Bengali joint family. Her family
possessed a small piece of land where the Muslim projas
(subjects) of her own village used to work. Still she can remember
her janmo-bhite (ancestral house), desher bari (the original
home), khelar math (playground) where she used to play her
favourite game, daria-banda (a traditional sport of East Bengal,
particularly popular among young girls) with her elder brother,
sisters and younger cousins. She especially remembers the Durga
Puja days when she used to receive new clothes and had fun
with her cousins. She even remembered distinctly their pujar
ghor (room for worshipping) where her mother used to worship
Radha-Madhav. She spent the happiest moments of her life in
her village, Jolisha, when she was a kid. When she was only
13 years old, she was married to a farmer from Patuakhali in
the same Barishal district. But, unfortunately she became a widow
within two years of her marriage and came back to her natal home
at Jolisha.
Cherishing the sweet memories of her childhood days, she
paused. I asked her why she had to leave Jolisha, if she loved
her desh so much. She stared at me for few moments, closed
place a day after Shib-chaturdashi. In her own words:
Uri baba! Allah-o-Akbar koiya shob dheye ashtesilo. Rashtae
tokhon kotto lok. Ami Bhubanre loiya shib mondIr jamu koiya
raona hoichi. Bhuban hoilo amar bhaignar dyaor. O amago barite
barayite aisilo. Chhoto. Amar sathe amar parar-i aro jona aat-
dosh lok silo. Aymon somoy ora amago upor jhapaiya porlo. Oder
hate khola talowar, lathi, ooff! Ki kopakupi hoilo. Amar chokher
samnei. Amar kol theika Bhubanre taina niya kopailo. Rokte amar
kapor bhijja gelo. Ami je palamu she shakti nai tokhon. Thik ei
bhabe (she showed me the way how the rioters chopped Bhuban)
Economic and Political Weekly December 25, 2004
 Kono rokome amar dadar nam dhoira chitkar korte silam ami.
Tokhon ki hoilo janina oder ekjon koilo ei o to Radhika Ranjan
Duttar bon, e tora ki korli. Oder theikai amare naki bashae
phiraiya dia gyase. Amar ar ki hoisilo mone nai. Oi rokte bheja
kapore chilam kotokhhon tao mone nai. Er por to praye tin mash
ami rate ghumaite pari nai, bhat khaite pari nai, bomi ashto
(Oh god! They were chanting Allah-ho-Akbar and were rushing
towards us. Streams of people on the road! Bhuban and I left for
Shib temple. Bhuban is my distant relative. He came to visit us
for an outing. He was small. I had eight or ten other people from
our locality with me. In such a situation they suddenly pounced
upon us. They had open swords, sticks, my god! Oh! What a riot
took place! In front of my eyes! They snatched Bhuban from me
and stabbed him. My dress got drenched in blood. I didnt have
the strength to flee then. I was only screaming and calling for my
elder brother. I dont know what happened one of them suddenly
said, my god! She is the sister of Radhika Ranjan Dutta. What
have you done? Ultimately, those people must have returned me
home. I dont really remember what happened. I cant remember
how long I was in that bloodstained dress. I could not sleep for
next three months, could not eat also, I had a nauseating feeling)
She told me that the riots continued for seven to ten days which
made it clear to them that their desh, their homeland was no longer
a safe place for them to live in. She blamed the musalmaans from
outside their village for the riot. She said:
Amago dyasher mollahra to bhaloi silo. Amago proja silo. Oi
bairer thika jara aisilo, taraito gondogol pakaise ora to Bihari
na hoile pore Hindustan-Pakistan bhag hoibar poreo to amra
amago dyash chhaira kothao jai nai. (The Muslims of our locality
were nice enough. They were our subjects. The people, who came
from outside, were behind the troubles they were Biharis; after
all, even after the partition, we did not have to leave our desh.)
Ultimately, the fear and insecurity forced Hironprova and her
family to leave their home in 1951. With her younger brother,
and niece she left for Barishal town. Her mother had already left
with her second brother. Their traditional joint family was thus
broken. After staying a few more days at Barishal town, Hironprova
crossed the international border and reached Bongaon of India
and took shelter at one of the transit camps there. She also got
her refugee identity card from the Indian government. Since then,
Hironprova Das has been a refugee and began her new journey
for searching a new home.
For the last 51 years, the Coopers Permanent Liability Camp
in Ranaghat has been Hironprovas new home. Having heard
the traumatic experiences of her life, I asked her whether she
wants to visit her homeland again or not. She answered with a
smiling face, yes. Sometimes she is in favour of visiting her
home, her birthplace and her desh again, but when the bitter
memories of the riots pop up in her mind she loses her urge to
go there. Despite her horrid experiences in her village, she still
remembers Jolisha as her desh the land of abundance, but a
land of no return.
Marriage in the time of riot: Seventy-three-year-old Nonigopal
Babu lives now in Birati in the northern suburbs of Kolkata. This
place is essentially a refugee colony area, where the majority of
the population are Bangals (people from East Bengal). Nonigopal
Babu is a fair, short, fat and bald man. He was born in a place
called Brahmandiya of Barishal district. He was in his village
till Class VI. As his village did not have any high school at that
time, his family decided to move him to another village named
Deher Goti for further education. In the memories of his childhood
in his nature village, he remembered everything his home,
Economic and Political Weekly December 25, 2004
family, the names of his schoolteachers, friends, neighbours, in
fact, the memories of his upbringing.
He grew up in a traditional joint family. Nonigopal Babus
father was a nayeb. Their house was big but kuccha, made
of mud and a roof of tin. He could even remember the large
baranda (balcony) surrounding his whole house. It was so large
that they often used it as their bedroom. They had large grain
cultivable lands which usually made available a huge amount
of grain throughout the year. Probably because of this land, most
of his elder brothers and cousins preferred to do some land-related
job rather than pursuing higher studies. Their immediate neighbours
were Hindus, while the Muslim habitations were quite far off.
But the Muslims used to come to their house and work as
labourers. They also maintained cordial relations with them. He
recalls the days of the Durga Puja, Kali Puja, Dol Utsav and
Nabanna. These were the special occasions when Musalmaan
labourers used to come to their house and his mother used to give
them food. Once in a while, he also went to their houses, but
of course, his visits were on some specific purpose or the other.
He still cannot forget his friends Biswanath, Paresh, Chandan
and Rahman who remain deeply associated with his childhood
memories. When he was shifted from Brahmandiya to Deher Goti
he used to live in a Hindu family as a paying guest. Life became quite
monotonous then. He did not even know his neighbours enough,
he was only busy with his studies. Every year, he impatiently
looked forward to the days of the Durga Puja and Garamer Chhuti
(summer vacation). A few days before the Durga Puja, he used
to leave for his village and had real fun there during the vacation.
After passing his intermediate examination, Nonigopal Babu
came to Kolkata in November 1948 for his graduation. He secured
admission in Bangabashi College, and later became a commerce
graduate from the same institution. He used to stay at his aunts
place in Chetla during those two years. Just after the completion
of his studies in college, his father arranged his marriage. He
went back to Brahmandiya for his marriage in March 1950. In
his own voice:
Amar kache biyer byaparta aykdike anander ar ayk dike dukhher.
Biye korte giyei to ami rioter modhye porlam. Hindu-Musalmaaner
modhye je ki bibhotsho maramari nijer chokher samnei dekhlam.
(To me, my marriage was a happy, and at the same time, a tragic
experience. I was caught in the riots when I went for my marriage.
I witnessed the worst kind of riots between the Hindus and
Muslims.)
Gradually he was to give me vivid descriptions of the riot
how it started in his village, what happened to his family and
ultimately how they survived. He told me that, though initially
the riots had broken out due to the rumour that the son-in-law
of Fazlul Haq, the former prime minister of undivided Bengal
had been stabbed in Kolkata, it picked up momentum when local
Muslims joined hands with outsiders the Bihari Muslims.
When a large group of Muslims attacked their village, the fightened
villagers approached the local Muslim leader, Altafuddin
Mohammad for their safety and security. At last, for fear of death,
they took shelter in a big house, which was guarded by Altaf
with his gun. But Altaf was the only person who had a weapon
there. Naturally he did not fight for long. The Muslim fanatics
soon killed Altaf. According to Nonigopal Babu:
Ora Altafke jokhon kate, amar baba, bhagnipati ora lukiye chhilo
oi ayki ghore. Dadao chhilo to oi ghore. Ora Altafke marar pore
amar bhagnipatir kachhe or hat gharita chailo. O dyae ni, tai
5655
 oi rage ghari shuddhu hat ta kete nilo. Er por ar ekta ki jeno
chhilo, otao dyae ni bole mathata nabie dilo. Ami chhilam pasher
ghore. Tai beche gelam. Amar boner samne marlo tar shami ke.
Baba badha dite galo. Babar ghareo kop marlo ora. Oto rokto
charidike se drisya ami ajo bhulte parina. Chokh bujlei sei
drishya11 (When they were chopping Altaf, my father and
brother-in-law were hiding in the same room. My brother was also
in that room. They asked for my brother-in-laws wristwatch after
killing Altaf. As he refused, they cut his hand with that watch.
He had something else. He refused to hand it over also; so they
beheaded him. I was saved as I was in the next room. They killed
my sisters husband in front of her. My father was trying to stop
them; so they stabbed him on his neck also. So much blood
everywhere! I cant forget that scene still now. Whenever I close
my eyes, I can see that scene)
Within a few days, however, they were rescued by his relatives.
They were shifted to another place called Shajira. Gradually, they
proceeded towards Barishal town where Nonigopal Babu talked
to the superintendent of police (SP) to help them return to Kolkata.
With the SPs help, they first went to Khulna by boat, and then
to Sealdah station of Calcutta by the Khulna Express train. He
could not bring all his family members with him at that time.
But, by 1954, all the members of his family had shifted from
Barishal to Calcutta. Their new life of searching peace and
security began.
Narrating his traumatic experiences of the Hindu-Musalmaan
riot exhausted, Nonigopal Babu while I, having heard of his
experiences, became speechless for a while. When we resumed
our conversation I asked him about his desh. In his response,
he portrayed a picture of his desh and home in a manner, that
combined the idea of sacredness and beauty. But, when I asked
him whether he still considers Brahmandiya as his desh or not,
he said with emotion:
Aykhon ami ar amar desh Barisal kokkhono boli na. Keu jadi
jiggasha kore je desh kothae chhilo, tahole ami bolbo Barisal;
na hole boli amar desh 24 Pargana. Amader kachhe desh badle
gyache, karon je desh amader rakhlo na, pochhondo korlona,
tariye dilo, meredhore tariye dilo, take ami desh bolbo? Ei to
Bangadesh hobar pore amari relative koto gyalo oi dike. Ami jai
ni. Rasta-ghat okhankar ekhono chokhe bhashe. Kintu ami jabo
keno? (I never say that my desh is Barishal now. If someone asks
me that where was your desh, then I would answer Barishal;
otherwise I say that my desh is in 24 Parganas. Our desh has
changed. After all, that country did not allow us to stay, drove
us away, beat us away. How can I call that my desh? After the
creation of Bangladesh, so many of my relatives went there. I never
went. I can still visualise the streets and riversides. But why should
I go?)
Nonigopal was emotional. According to him, communal vio-
lence had defiled the sanctity and beauty of his native village
and home. Perhaps, and for the bitter memories of violence, he
does not any longer want to recognise Barishal as his desh, but
the nostalgia of desh in his mind still remains.
Renubala and her gold chain: Renubala Debi was also forced
to leave her village due to the Hindu-Muslim riots. Like Nonigopal
babu, she also thinks that Barisal was her earlier desh. This is
because of two reasons first, for the last 50 years she has been
staying in Jirat of Hooghly district, and second, her own desh
has been transformed to a Musalmaans desh. She is even re-
luctant to visit her own village again, where she was born.
Renubala Debnath was born in the year of 1936 at the village
of Muladi of Barishal. She grew up in a joint family. Her father
5656
used to look after their land. When she was only four years old,
her mother died. While narrating her desher barir kotha (stories
of her ancestral house) she told me their family had once owned
many things a huge piece of land, large orchards of mango,
jackfruit, coconut and areca nut. Four families from her
grandfathers side lived there besides their own. Within a huge
campus they had four houses, many times bigger than their present
house. The Hindus including, kayasthas and brahmins used to
live near their house. Her portrayal of her village and her house
repeatedly indicated sense of abundance and vanity.
Renubala Debi had studied up to class III. She can still re-
member her school, which was built with the help of Kundu
family in their village. She remembers her schoolteachers
Niranjon Seal and Jonardon Kundu, who were killed by the
Musalmaans during the riot. She misses her childhood friends
Lila, Baby, Dipali and Anjali who were lost during that
turmoil. When she was 13 years old, she was married to a person
from Nashipur village. Her husband did not have any dependents;
his parents had died few years ago before their marriage. So,
Renubala Debi used to live in her parental house at Muladi with
her husband. She told me that she often shares her childhood
memories with her sons and daughters.
Then quite suddenly she brought in the subject of riot. In her
own words:
Panch din, panch rattir riot hoilo bagane, bagane ghurlam
tarpor hater sankha bhainga, sindur muichya Musalmaan bari
giya roilam. (I did not interrupt her. She kept on saying) Babare
jedin katlo, ekta sonar har diya dilam bhablam harta dile
jodi ora babare phirayia daye. Hoilo na babare katlo ar
amar hartao galo(she started crying) Janen amar jyatha
moshayreo katse pukurpare gaser shonge baindha other katlo
ami, amar swami, amar dada, boudi ar other maiyata shokkole
mila Musalmaan barite giya lukailam. Oi Majid Khan, Osman
Khan, jago barite amra lookaiya silam, ora bhalo lok asilo koiyai
amra baiccha galam.12 (We were hiding in different orchards for
five days and five nights. Then I broke my sankha (sacred white
bangle that a Hindu wife wears as a symbol of her marriage) and
removed vermilion from my forehead and went to stay with a
Muslim family. I gave them a gold chain the day they killed my
father; I thought that they would spare my father after getting the
chain. It didnt work they killed my father and I lost my chain
also. Do you know, they killed my elder uncle also? He was tied
to a tree on one side of the pond and then killed. My husband,
elder brother, sister-in-law and their daughter all of us went to
a Muslim family for shelter. We took shelter in Mojid Khan
and Osman Khans family. They were nice people. So we were
saved.)
Renubalas tragedy of losing her father as well as her gold chain
provoked me to think more deeply about her trauma. Probably
her trauma of violence and her sense of loss are so deep that
she can hardly de-link her loss of sonar har (gold chain) from
her fathers death. She offered her precious gold chain to the
perpetrators with the expectation that this could save her father.
But that was not to be. In the process, she eventually lost both
her father and her gold chain. She could neither get her father
back, nor could she get back her chain. The tragic loss of her
father in front of her eyes, in a way, made her loss of chain even
more unbearable.
After some time, I asked her when the riot broke out in her
village. She said that on a Friday morning, everybody had begun
indicating that the riots might break out at any moment in their
village, but ultimately it took place on the next day. During that
Economic and Political Weekly December 25, 2004
communal tension, she heard that many villagers of Muladi took
shelter in the police station on the riverbank. But unfortunately,
most of these villagers were killed by the Musalmaans inside
the police station itself and their bodies thrown into the river.
Moreover, the rioters abducted many young girls and women
during that time. She, however, confessed that she did not see
them being abducted, they were busy saving their own lives.
However, she saw Romoni Kundu and his wife, smeared with
blood. Both had been stabbed by the Musalmaans, but were still
alive and gasping. She knew Romoni Kundu very well because
Romoni Babu belonged to the same Kundu family, which had
helped set up her village school.
The riot continued for five days. When the tension lessened,
they tried to return home. But there was nothing left. Their house
had been partially burnt and completely looted by the Musalmaans.
They did not have any other alternative but to somehow stay there
at least for a few days. Meanwhile, they took the decision to
leave their home, their desh.
Sudhu ekta dhuti-kapore oi desh chaira ei deshe ashchi, tokhon
amader bastuhara abosthaki abostha chilo amago deshe, ar
ekhon ami kopal doshe bhikhari. (We left that country and came
to this one with hardly any belongingsthen we were uprooted.
We were so well off there, and here we are beggars due to our
ill fate.)
Renubala and her family left Muladi and reached Chandpur
of Barishal by boat. From Chandpur, they took a steamer to reach
Khulna, from where they could catch a train to Kolkata.
As the influx of refugees continued interminably, the helpless
and uprooted people reached the reception and interception
centres at the Sealdah station. From these centres, the refugees
were subsequently sent to transit camps and permanent relief
camps. During that phase, the government of India decided not
to send the refugees straight to the rehabilitation camps mainly
due to the magnitude of influx. Moreover, many of these refugees
were supposed to be sent to other parts of the country. But
immediate arrangements could not be made possible for their
travel. Therefore, the relief and transit camps were established
in different parts of West Bengal to provide immediate help to
these people.
Anyway, after reaching Sealdah station, Renubala and her
family secured some relief from the Indian government. Renubalas
brother-in-law helped them secure shelter in one of those transit
camps. From Sealdah station they were later shifted to the
Chandmari camp located at Kalyani in Nadia district in West
Bengal. They stayed there for one year. During their camp life,
they tent, a dry dole obtained a as well as some cash dole for
their survival. Later on, a large number (rations) of refugees from
the Chandmari camp was rehabilitated in several batches, and
Renubala Debis family was one of them. Eventually, they secured
10 cottahs (10 cottah 16 acre) of land, a fixed amount of ones childhood, ones growing up all these are culturally as-
tin and some money for constructing their house in Jirat. Since
then this has been their new home.
After listening to her traumatic experiences, I asked her whether
she wanted to visit her native village again or not. She simply
roared:
Na na ar kokkhono jabo na. Oi ottachareito choila ailam. Ar jabo
na. Amar mamato bhai to ekhono okhane thake. Amar swami
koisilo jabar jonya. Ami koisi jabo na. Konodino na. (No, I shall
not ever go there. We left because of torture. Shall not go again.
My cousin still stays there. My husband also told me to go. I said
that I would not go. Never.)
Economic and Political Weekly December 25, 2004
Like Nonigopal Babu and Renubala Debi, thousands of other
Bengalis were rendered refugees due to the riots that followed
partition of 1947. They were displaced from their desh, from their
foundational home (that best conveys the feeling for ones
desh), where they could never return to. They lost everything
they had home, friends, relatives and all their material pos-
sessions and had to start their lives afresh. In the way, their
bitter memories of partition, riot and loss of near and dear ones
have mostly overshadowed the sweet memories of childhood
days. In the tussle between the sweet memories and bitter memories,
their memories of desh have not evaporated. Thus, desh remains
trapped in their past, in their nostalgia and in their memory.
Milan Kundera has said: Nostalgia is the suffering caused by
an unappeased yearning to returnNostalgia seems something
like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing.13 Perhaps. One,
who has lost his or her home and desh due to partition and riot,
is perhaps be in an appropriate position to suffer from such
nostalgia.
II
Desh (n): a country; a land; motherland; native land; a state; a
province.
Nation (n): people or race organised as a state.
The Bengali word desh means ones native land, ones home-
land. The idea of home is somehow tied with that of foundation
signifying ones habitual abode Vastu bhite. Vastu bhite is
another Bengali word, which means exactly the same as the
foundational home. In Sanskrit vastu means home and bhite, the
Bengali word originating from the Sanskrit word bhitti, means
foundation. The notion of foundation has a special connotation
in Bengali language. It signifies ones permanent place of resi-
dence, ones ancestral place. This place is different from ones
temporary place of living. In common usage, the Bengali lan-
guage has made a distinction between the permanent place of
residence and the temporary one, using two different words
desh and basha. Basha is always a temporary place of residence
and ones sense of belonging to this place is momentary. On the
other hand, desh has a concept of permanent dwellings associated
with the idea of land. Probably that is why in English the
corresponding word of desh would mean homeland, motherland.
Desh is the place where ones ancestors have lived for generations.
Sometime it is argued that, the idea of foundation is closely related
to the idea of male ancestry and the word vastu bhite reinforces
the association between patriliny and the home.14 There may be
other Bengali synonyms of desh and basha, but these two words
are most popularly used among Bangals in common parlance.
The notion of desh is more culture-specific. Ones ancestral
land desh has a strong cultural bond with ones self. Ones birth,
sociated with the place where one belongs. To Hironprova Debi,
it is Jolisha, her native village, with which she has been associated
gradually since her birth. She still cherishes her childhood days
at Jolisha. She remembers her janma bhitte, Radha Madhavs
pujor ghor, and the name of her favourite game dariabanda.
To Nonigopal babu, his home belongs to Brahmandiya, the
place with which he has a close cultural affinity. He speaks of
Durga Puja, Kali Puja, Dol Utsav and nabanna, when the Muslim
projas used to come to their house and occasionally the female
members of his family distributed food among those projas.
His way of portraying his desh not only specifies the idea of
5657
sacredness, but also other secular cultural values. He perhaps
deliberately says that their family used to maintain a close
relationship with the Muslim projas in their gramer bari (village
home). Nanigopal Babus eager wait for goromer chhutti and
pujor chhuti to return to his gram clearly indicates how close
he was to his home and village. It was like a return to his roots
from the world outside.
In case of Renubala Debi, her desh belongs to Muladi, where
she lost her mother at an early age and where during childhood,
she was mostly occupied with household activities. She remem-
bers the childhood friends she lost during the Hindu-Muslim riot.
As a whole, she portrays a picture of her desh with a abundance
and vanity. The narratives of Hironprova, Nonigopal and Renubala
perhaps make another thing clear that the concept of desh is also
somehow linked with the idea of a geographical space. The notion
of desh, in that way, helps establish a close relationship between
the self and a particular geographical space. Due to the cultural
and spatial specificities the concept of desh is associated
with, persons from the same place tend to maintain close
cultural links among themselves even after may years in exile.
Moreover, to these uprooted people the word desh carries a
special significance. Having been exiled from their foundation,
these people willy-nilly try to maintain a close psychological
connection with their home. Their idea of lost home generates
a feeling of nostalgia. While searching for a new home away
from home, the cultural bond of these hapless people with their
foundations gets strengthened through their nostalgia and their
memories.
In that sense, the narratives of these three displaced persons
are basically collective memories, and are in the form of flash-
backs, as envisioned by these people. This flashback relates to
the idea of past, a nostalgic past, which is remembered as reality.
Moreover, their visualisation of this flashback is in the form of
a reconstruction. As they reconstruct their past, they idealise it.
Their reconstructed past is based on both bitter and sweet memories.
They remember their childhood days, their belongingness and
their violent past a past marked also by riots, homelessness
and uprootedness. And while recollecting the sweet memories
of childhood, they introduce their desh to others with an idea
of beauty, sacredness and of enduring cultural values. In fact,
it also indicates that the Bengali Hindus traditional cultural
values has incurred a major blow due to the violence that ac-
companied partition.
On the other hand, their past, also marked by violence, and
violence is seen here as an act of sacrilege against everything
that stands for sanctity and beauty in the Hindu Bengali
understanding of what home is.15 In their narratives, desh
is everywhere. In one way, the desh is related to their happier
times and in another, it is also associated with their sense of
homelessness.
Hiranprava Debi and Renubala Debi left their home after the
riots of 1950. Before these riots, female members in their families
lived in a private space, the andormahals of their respective
houses, remained behind the veil, and were mostly ignorant of
outside realities. Suddenly, they found themselves on the streets,
in the public sphere. They, like many other women, who were
accustomed to living in the private sphere, almost overnight they
had to fend for themselves in the public spaces, due to the
communal violence. Growing up in traditional Hindu families,
as young girls, they had never socialised with any man other than
the members of their own families. But Partition and the riots
5658
that followed suddenly brought them into contact with a whole
host of men as part of their journey in search of a new home.
Hironprova Debi, was an widow when she left her home.
Subsequently, she found shelter is the Coopers Camp and became
a permanent liability to the government of India. For the last
five decades she has been staying in this camp. She is alone.
Therefore, she did not get any chance of being rehabilitated
permanently. Perhaps that is why in her loneliness, she looks
back to her desh where she had everything. For her, the present
only means a fixed amount of irregular cash dole and rations
from the camp authorities. She not only lives with her past, she
also lives in her past. Her nostalgia of desh is always with her.
But, for Renubala Debi, her desh Muladi has been occupied
by the Musalmaans and she refuses to call it her desh. After her
rehabilitation, she got 10 cottahs of land and some amount of money
to set up her new home on the other side of the border. Slowly,
it has generated a sense of belongingness for Renubala Debi.
As time passed, a new relationship between her land and self
developed. Nevertheless, she misses her desh. Therefore, to her,
this present existence is like that of a beggar compared to what
they had in their desh. Moreover, the burden of the trauma, which
she carries from the days of riots, adds to her memories of desh.
Bramondiya frequently appears in the memories of Nanigopal
Babu. It is the desh of his childhood days and at the same time
the desh where he has lost his near and dear ones. This loss has
left a permanent scar on his mind. So he does no longer want
to acknowledge Brahmondiya as his desh. But close cultural ties
still exist with that little-known village of East Bengal where
he was born, where his ancestors lived for generations.
III
Over the years, numerous memoirs, literary pieces, books and
scholarly articles depicting the refugees feelings of uprootedness
from East Bengal have multiplied. The nostalgia for desh has
been reflected in the poems of Jibonanda Das (especially in his
Ruposhi Bangla)16 and Bishnu De (in his book Swandwiper
Char).17 They have all portrayed their villages as idyllic haunts
where happiness and peace went hand and hand. These writings
and memoirs of the pre-partition days give us the impression that
there was no major animosity between Hindus and Muslims in
the rural areas of Bengal till the second half of the 1940s. Things,
however, changed suddenly and took a violent turn after the Great
Calcutta Killings of August 1946. The impact of the killings
polluted the sacred and secular atmosphere of the villages and
towns of East Bengal, which ultimately forced Hindus to flee
from their beloved homeland, their desh.
Against this backdrop, the reminiscences of the uprooted are
like a perpetually yearning for a Paradise forever lost. Such
feelings are prominent in a book called Chhere Asha Gram (The
Abandoned Village)18 edited by Dakshinaranjan Basu. It is a
collection of essays, serially published in the Bengali vernacular
daily Jugantar around 1950. The authors of these essays recollect
the memories of their native villages of East Bengal. They not
only express their feelings of uprootedness in this book, but also
describe their struggles for existence in an alien land, the over-
crowded city of Kolkata.
Similarly, Birendra Chattopadhyay in his poem Udbastu (The
Homeless),19 Sankar Basu in Shoishob (The Childhood),20
Prafulla Roy in Anupradesh (Infiltration), 21 Narayan
Gangopadhyay in his book Sroter Shonge (With the Tide),22 and
Economic and Political Weekly December 25, 2004
above all, Atin Bandopadhyay in his famous novel Nilkantho
Pakhir Khonje (In Search of A Bird Called Nilkantho)23 wanted
to express the pain of losing ones homeland. In his novel Purbo
Paschim,24 Sunil Gangopadhyay tells the tale of two friends on
either side of the borders. The narrator Pratap echoes his
grandmothers nostalgia for her desh Dhaka. The grandmother
lives with her past memories of Dhaka and not of the son she
has lost, nor of the son who has left for the US forever. The
past, that grandmother reconstructs is a pre-partition past of her
own, the past of her birthplace, her homeland.25 All these writings
are, in a way, interesting compendiums of nostalgia of pre-
partition days and trauma of the partition-induced violence.
Most of these uprooted people did not have any idea at the
time of their departure that they would never be able to return
to their desh. They expected to be back in their ancestral place
in the near future. In fact, it took several years for them to realise
that they could never return to their own land, to their desh. This
failure to reconcile with the permanent loss of homeland becomes
clear in the narratives of the victims, who were either personally
victimised or witness to the catastrophe from a close proximity.
This sense of uprootedness has also been reflected in some
of the Bengali feature films made in the immediate post-partition
period. Filmmakers like Ritwik Ghatak and Nimai Ghosh were
overwhelmed by the trauma of partition victims. Nemai Ghoshs
Chinnomul (1951) was the first Bengali feature film on the
partition. It tried to capture the dynamics of the relationship
between the nostalgia and trauma of the uprooted people. The
way the characters of these films narrate their feelings gives an
impression of their tremendous anguish and raise of
homelessness. To them, partition was an inexplicable event.
Ritwik in his trilogy on partition, Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960),
Komolgandhar (1961) and Subarnarekha (1962) deals with
the same sense of homelessness and agony of being detached
from their traditional lifestyles, from relatives as well as from
the familiar surroundings.
These publications and films indicate that the partition has left
a permanent scar on the psyche of the uprooted. To them, the
loss of home seems to be a loss of self and the acquirement of
a new identity. The uprooted people have lost their established
identities based on certain, shared ideas about personhood,
collectivity and social struggle, and were forced to accept
identities imposed on them by others and by an imposing reality.
In the process of acquiring a new identity, the memories of the
displaced persons compel them to mourn their irreplaceable
loss. And these collective memories prevail through generations.
Let us consider Kalyani Sarkar of Bansberia Womens Home
(Bansberia Mahila Shibir). She is about 45. Kalyanis mother
Renuka Debi is the Permanent Liability member of the Home.
Renuka Debi left her desh Bikrampur in Dhaka with her husband
and one month-old daughter Kalyani. Although Kalyani was born
in Bikrampur, she cannot have any memory of that place. Kalyani
spent her childhood days in Jirat where their family stayed after
displacement from desh.
When she was nine or ten years old, her father died. Her mother
Renuka Debi shifted to this womens home with her two children.
Since then she had grown up within the boundaries of this home.
When I asked about her desh, she was giggling and spontaneously
responded,
Bikrampur, amader original desh. Desh barir golpo amar maer
kach thekei to shob shona. Ar ekhon amra ekhane thaki ei
porjonto. (Bikrampur is our original desh. I came to know about
Economic and Political Weekly December 25, 2004
my desh, our ancestral home from my mother. We now stay here.
Thats all.)
The memories her mother Renuka Debi cherish, have been
slowly passed on to Kalyani. After all, often it is the next
generation which ultimately makes the reverse journey to the
place about which they possess memory of memories, the place
they have never actually seen, yet which constitutes a part of
their being the place about which they have only heard family
reminiscences, tales and anecdotes as they grew up.26 Kalyanis
is a classic example.
Where there are the memories of partition, there are the memories
of desh. The idea of desh, which these hapless, displaced people
have envisioned through their selective memories, is in some way
different from the contemporary usage of the word desh, which
has a nationalistic overtone.
Since the days of nationalist movement, the idea of desh has
been associated with the idea of motherland. In the process of
nation-building, the concept of desh has been used as an im-
portant tool for strengthening the idea of national integration
of India. The usage of the word desh in contemporary popular
culture and politics wants to construct the idea of a nation. When
Manoj Kumar, a matinee idol of India as a protagonist of a
patriotic film, sings: Mere desh ki dharti sona ughle, ughle hire
moti (The soil of my nation generates gold, diamond and
jewels), it carries nationalistic overtones. When the punch line
of an Indian-made motorbike says, Desh ki dhadkan (Heartbeat
of the nation), desh implies nation.
In other words, the idea of desh, which the nation-makers
perceive is quite different from that a displaced Bengali nurtures.
To the displaced persons, the desh is their ancestral place, their
sacred land of memories. To them, worshipping of the land of
the village was equivalent of worshipping ones ancestors. This
desh was not an imaginary concept. It actually existed in the past,
and currently exists in their memory and nostalgia. When nation
is desh, it remains an imagined community.
As Benedict Anderson would argue, the nation had been
imagined into existence. To him, the nation is an imagined
political community imagined both inherently limited and
sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the
smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members,
meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives
the image of their communion.27 The nations are fictions in
a sense; but the process by which this fiction is created is real.28
Sometimes, a nation has been described as a soul, a spiritual
principle.29 Here the essence of nation is a psychological bond,
which joins the people into one community.30 This community
is not racial or tribal in its nature but it is historically constituted
community of the people.
In that sense, the nation has a past, a constructed past with
a vision for the future to be realised. In that discourse, some goal
has to be achieved on the basis of that constructed past. But for
the homeless, for the displaced people in Bengal, their desh does
not seem to have a future. It only has past. Most of the uprooted
Bengali Hindus do not even want to revisit their original desh.
Their desh must have changed now, they apprehend. Their desh
was some place else and now it is a place of no return. It can
only be revisited in memories and nostalgia. It has lost its spatial
existence. EPW
Address for correspondence:
banasua@hotmail.com
5659
 Notes
1 See Indrajit Hazra, A Time To Remember, The Hindustan Times,
Kolkata, November 22, 2002.
2 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Remembered Villages: Representation of Hindu-
Bengali Memories in the Aftermath of the Partition, Economic and
Political Weekly, Vol 31, No 32, August 10, 1996, p 2143.
3 Pradip Kumar Bose, Memory Begins Where History Ends in Ranabir
Sammadar (ed), Reflections on Partition of the East, Vikas, New Delhi,
1997, p 85.
4 Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India, Subaltern Studies VII,
OUP, New Delhi, 1993, p 13.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid, p 33.
7 Ashis Nandy, State, History and Exile in South Asian Politics: Modernity
and the Landscape of Clandestine and Incommunicable Selves in Ashis
Nandy, The Romance of the State: And the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics,
OUP, New Delhi, 2003, pp 117-18.
8 Prafulla K Chakrabarty, The Marginal Men: The Refugees and the
Left Political Syndrome in West Bengal, Lumiere Books, Kalyani,
1990, p 26.
9 See Ranjan Bandhopadhaya, Chaitanyamoyotai Tar Saratsar in Desh,
February 4, 2003, pp 71-78.
10 Interview with the author in the Coopers Camp, Ranaghat in the Nadia
district of West Bengal on December 13, 2001.
11 Interview with the author in Birati of Kolkata at the residence of Nonigopal
Mukherjee on March 12, 2002.
12 Interview with the author in Jirat of Hooghly district at the residence
of Renubala Debnath on November 29, 2001.
13 See Milan Kundera, Ignorance, Faber and Faber, London, 2002.
14 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of
Subaltern Studies, Permanent Black, Delhi, 2002, p 120.
15 ibid, p 121.
16 See Jibonananda Das, Ruposhi Bangla, Signet Press, Kolkata, 1957.
5660
17 See Bishnu Dey, Kabita Samagra,1st part, Ananda Publishers, Kolkata,
1989.
18 See Dakshinaranjan Basu (ed), Chhere Asha Gram, The Abandoned
Village, Jugantar, Kolkata, 1975.
19 See Birendra Chottopadhaya, Nirbachito Kabita, Bharabi, Kolkata,
1970, p 82.
20 See Sankar Basu, Shoishob, Dhrupodi, Kolkata, 1983.
21 Prafulla Roy, Anuprabesh, Deys Publication, Kolkata, 1996.
22 Narayan Gangyopadhaya, Sroter Shonge, Mitra O Ghosh, Kolkata,
1978.
23 Atin Bandopadhaya, Nilkantho Pakhir Khonje, Ruprekha, Kolkata,
1971.
24 Sunil Gangyopadhaya, Purbo Paschim, Ananda Publishers, Kolkata,
1995.
25 In this context please see Nias Zaman, A Divided Legacy: The Partition
in Selected Novels of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, The United Press,
Dhaka, 1999; Subharanjan Dasgupta, Life Our Only Refuge in
Ranabir Sammadar (ed), op cit, pp 162-75; Sandip Bandyopadhayay,
Deshbhag, Deshtyag, Anushtup, Kolkata, 1994.
26 Pradip Kumar Bose, op cit, pp 80-83.
27 Please see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on
the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London, 1983; Ernest
Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1983; Elie
Kedourie, Nationalism, Hutchinson, London, 1960; Homi K Bhabha
(ed), Nation and Narration, Routledge and Kegan Paul, New York, 1990;
and Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and
Postcolonial Histories, OUP, Delhi, 1993 for further details.
28 Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra
Chattopadhaya and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India,
OUP, Delhi, 1998, p 144.
29 Ernest Renan, Quest-ce quune nation? in John Hutchinson and Anthony
D Smith (eds), Nationalism, OUP, Oxford, 1994, pp 17-18.
30 Joseph Stalin, The Nation in John Hutchinson and Anthony D Smith
(eds), op cit, pp 18-21.
Economic and Political Weekly December 25, 2004