debseng's Journal

my proposal
Colony Fiction:
Refugee Colonies and Their Representation in Post Partition Kolkata

The Partition of India in 1947 resulted in a huge influx of refugees, who crossed over, first in trickles and then in very large numbers, into the city of Kolkata. The causes for this large- scale migration were several. The intermittent communal clashes in East Pakistan, the rising prices of commodities and other factors led to people crossing over. By the first year after Partition 1.25 million people had crossed over to West Bengal, Assam and Tripura. In the half century after Independence the number has reached five million.

The city of Kolkata, already an urban metropolis, attracted a large number of refugees, who either knew people in the city or hoped to get Government dole there. In the beginning, the abandoned British army barracks were used as shelters for the masses crossing the border. Later, in areas like Jadavpur, Tollygunj, Behala and Dumdum, the refugees began to build colonies in abandoned or marshy lands, sometimes forcibly occupying properties to build their shanties.

These colonies, an interesting metaphor for urban slums, named after great Bengalis like Netaji, Vidyasagar and Deshbandhu went on to be an integral part of Kolkata's economic, political and cultural life. It is not surprising that the life and sub-culture of colonies, in turn, went on to be a permanent impression through fictions, theatre and films in Kolkata.

I propose to look into the genesis of these colonies that form an integral part of Kolkata's modernity as represented in literature, films and theatre. This study will also unveil the journey of fringe life to the mainstream cultural expression of urban Bengal. A refugee colony occurs constantly as a trope in many works of fiction and cinema that explore migration, rootlessness and broken aspirations. This large body of cultural expressions are a witness not only to the daily life in the colonies in these first difficult years but also their slow transformations and dynamic relationship with the larger mainstream society of Bengal.

The colonies were an important part of Kolkata's social, economic and political history. They spawned stereotypical protagonists in mainstream films and little magazine stories, of lumpen political cadres, of a fallen woman, a naïve boy in the city, a hopelessly idealistic and romantic hero, as well as the petty criminal; in short, a protagonist who is 'other' and desperately tries to stay alive in a city indifferent to his/her suffering. The marginal and often reviled figure of the refugee who spoke in a strange tongue was an interesting cultural marker of a changing city. In fact, the different tongue of the new migrant went on to be an important stereotypical comic element in city's cultural life

The space of the colony, as opposed to that of the respectable middle class homes, represented a churning cauldron of social and economic upheavals that were often barely understood but constantly commented upon. One aspect of this colony story is the narrative of marginal people organizing themselves to fight for their rights. This is a fascinating history of how people were to create 'alternative notions of legitimacy and citizenship.' The dominant representation of colony people as underdog was actually the history of urban Communist movement in Bengal. The transformation of the refugee into a political conscious and active citizen is an integral part of West Bengal's political and cultural history.

In the films of Ghatak ('Nagarik' and 'Meghe Dhaka Tara') to those of Mrinal Sen's, in the fiction and essays of Samaresh Basu, Ashok Mitra and Samar Sen, the plays of the 50's and 60's, the representation of the refugee and the colony is enormously significant. This research hopes to evaluate and understand some aspects of that representation.

My interest in refugee colonies in Kolkata is coloured by an interest in the growth of a sub-genre in Bengali fiction and cinema that may be called 'colony fiction' for want of a better name. Films, short stories, novels and plays belonging to this genre explore the lives of people living in these colonies. I got the sense of this genre when I worked on my book on fictions on the eastern partition. I wish to translate some of this fiction in a book later for which this research will be a necessary prologue.

This research will, gather a large amount of material that will be of interest like letters, memoirs, short fiction, photographs, film clips and other writings that deal with this essential feature of Kolkata's urbanity, that can be called colony materials.

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