Relocating Bengal Partition Milieu: Survival, Resilience and Belongings

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The book investigates and broadens the scope of the Bengal Partition from both historical and contemporary perspectives. The essays selected here transcend disciplinary boundaries by ignoring the distinction between literary and non-literary texts. The impact of the Bengal Partition is looked at in the present context of CAA/ NRC, which is a highly contentious topic in contemporary India. The everlasting impact of the Bengal Partition is still prevalent in the South Asian context. Many concerns, such as migration and the trauma of displacement, physical and non-physical violence, and a sense of belonging, have been examined in-depth in this book with comparable thinking on this terrain. This edited volume contributes to understanding refugees, borders, citizenship, and memories in literature, films, and oral history by examining the various topics associated with the Bengal Partition and its evident impact aftermath.

Md Intaj Ali is currently working as an Assistant Professor of English at Netaji Subhas Open University. He is also Assistant Coordinator of Centre for Language, Translation and Cultural Studies, SoH, NSOU. Before joining NOSU, he received RUSA fellowship at the Department of English Jadavpur University for his Post-Doctoral Research. He has done his doctoral research at the Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad (UoH). Apart from a handful of fellowships and grants, he has received fellowship from the prestigious Institute for World Literature, Harvard University, to participate in their sixth summer school programme at Harvard University.

The present volume is an outcome of the International Seminar titled Bengal Partition 'Katha Refugee, Border, Citizenship, and Memories in Literature held on February 29th and March 1st, 2020. At it's outset Bengal Partition Repository of NSOU was inaugurated by the honourable Vice Chancellor of NSOU while eminent Bengali writer Debes Ray was the chief guest of the session The publication of the volume got delayed due to the pandemic. This was the third consecutive international seminar in connection with the people's research project on Bengal Partition funded by UGC-DEB & NSOU under the aegis of School of Humanities of Netaji Subhas Open University since 2016. Prior to this volume, we have published two other titles namely Partition Literature: Open Praxis (2015) & Revisiting Partition & the Liberation war of Bangladesh. Contemporary Perspectives (2018). However, the main objective of this people's project is to develop a modest digital repository based on people's memory, memento's, personal writings etc. Lectures, colloquiums and workshops have been organized on regular basis since 2016 to expand the gamut of repository.

Unlike other conferences and seminars, it has something to be recollected. Along with usual paper presentation as per CFP, the round table talks, meeting the authors and editors deserve special mention. Activists, social workers, and researchers have joined, like Sri Manoj Ray Bhoumick, (Noakhali Sammelani. Kolkata), Sri Amulya Ratan Biswas (Hili, West Bengal), Sri Jiban Bhattacharya (UCRC. Kolkata), Sanjukta Sinha (Anil Sinha Memorial Centenary Committee) Anil Krishna Haldar, (Bagerhat Samity. Hridaypur, 24Png(N)), Dr Saktinath Jha, (Baul Fakir Sangsa, Murshidabad). The session was moderated by the BPR Project Coordinator, NSOU. It discussed region-specific issues on the aftermath of Bengal Partition and critically addressed many trivial issues related to Bengal borderland. There were sessions like 'Roundtable 1 & 2', 'Meet the Author', 'Partition Lecture Series 10th & 11th' etc. Amar Mitra & Sadhan Chattopadhyay (Bengali fiction writer), Sasim Kumar Barai (Bengali writer), Jatin Bala (Bengali Dalit writer), Jharna Basu (Feminist writer) participated and discussed several issues on 'porus' borderland and personal anecdotes, the role of Dalit and minority groups, and so on.