The Interlinkage of Class, Caste, and Refugee Crisis in Post-Partition West Bengal: A Study of Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide

Bengalis were among the worst victims of the catastrophe called Partition as the refugee crisis became a mass epidemic in 1947 and remained so till the 1970s. The texts that narrate Partition's gory effects, however, are written mostly by upper and middle-class men who came as refugees from East Pakistan or Bangladesh and got assimilated into the bhadralok (sophisticated) class of West Bengal and have stayed complicit to the power structure which, in spite of its Communist allegiance since the 1960s, has marginalised the lower class/caste (chhotolok)people. One historically significant incident that defines the covert casteism of the communist ’‘Bengalis took place when the low class/caste refugees (Namashudras), after failing to find a place within the bhadralok spectrum, were forcibly sent to Dandakaranya. Failing to acclimatise to the conditions there, they came back and tried to settle at Morichjhapi in the Sundarbans and a violent event--known in history as the Morichjhapi massacre--ensued when they retaliated after the government repudiated their civil right to live there on the pretext of saving nature. With reference to Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide--since it chronicles these events--archival records, and the lenses of Dalit Studies, the paper would seek to underscore the fallacious social and political consciousness of the ‘elite Bengalis who, sophisticated ’, in spite of pretending to be progressive liberals, have tried to eradicate such marginalised voices and narratives--that also bear witness to the saga of Partition--from the parlance of state-sanctioned/sponsored versions of history.