Abstract:
The paper traces the journey of Dalit refugees who entered into India after partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 on the ethnic lines, experiencing a miserable and painful life- trajectory in the different refugee camps run by the oppressive state apparatus inside the Indian Territory, while waiting for a new homeland and citizenship. The paper uses Manoranjan Byapari’s autobiographical work Interrogating My Chandal Life (2018) to deconstruct the myth of Bengal refugees as a “homogenized” class so as to underline the classification of refugees into two groups—bhadraloks and non-bhadraloks- belonging to diverse social backgrounds. The paper demonstrates how the bhadralok Hindu refugees have been favored during the programs of land rehabilitation, while the refugees of lower caste groups were deliberately subjected to oppression, marginalization and violence when they asked for equality and non-discrimination during resettlement. The paper examines the entire spectrum of partition and the events that led to the large-scale displacement and forced migration of Bengali Hindu refugees into India to escape an existential threat, as they found themselves in a vulnerable condition overnight after the partition in their homeland. The paper traces the post-partition social developments and the hypocrisy of the then Bengal government by highlighting the intense suffering and otherisation that the Bengali Hindu refugees experienced in the new territory, thus showing the need for pluralizing the voices of Bengali Hindu refugees to capture the true and authentic picture of refugee problem in the post-partition era.
Key Words: Caste, Citizenship, Dalit, Refugee, Marginalization, Migration, Partition
Introduction:
Manoranjan Byapari’s Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit (2018) depicts the immense human tragedy which unfolded itself from the political decision of partitioning India and Pakistan into two separate sovereign nation-states in 1947, and the subsequent displacement and a large-scale migration of Hindu Bengali Refugees into India. It uses the lived experiences of a Dalit refugee and his existential struggle for survival to contextualize and specifically disclose the ugly reality of partition and its adverse impact on the hapless refugees, who tried to escape the existential threats of ethnic violence and social excommunication by crossing the borders into India in search of belonging and citizenship. This autobiography uncovers the bitter intricacies of class, caste and communal differences by presenting the lived experiences of the lower caste refugees and how they got displaced and marginalized in the newly-carved nation-state and their forced migration into India to claim a legitimate identity and to ensure a decent standard of living. The partition of erstwhile Indian dominion into two independent states based on the ethnic lines has created a massive displacement of people and forced them to migrate to the nation state of their ethnicities to avoid ethnic cleansing and the second class treatment in an ethnically-fractured country where they could be considered as the minority groups.
Partition and the Suffering of Dalit Refugees
The ill-fated lives of Dalit refugees have never been portrayed in the mainstream literary as well as historical narratives, and the obvious factors behind such deliberate exclusion is the casteist mentality of the writers and historians who are generally seen belonging to the privileges social backgrounds in a caste-segmented society. Though the bitter pain and hardships of partition has been felt by individuals across the communities, yet its worst impact can be traced in the lives of Dalit refugees. There has been a general unanimity that the political decisions leading to the actual occurrence of partition was a badly-crafted policy, which resulted in the colossal loss of lives and properties of the displace people affecting their lives to a great extent. As the identity of the narrator is considered is considered to be “untouchable” in Hindu society, he faced the collective wrath of society and underwent marginalization and discrimination in West Bengal, while seeking rehabilitation and citizenship in the post-partition era.
This memoir has started with the autobiographical account of the narrator and the description of his native land in the Barishal district of then East Pakistan, which is now called Bangladesh. While narrating the village he used to live in, he referred to the pathetic experiences of displacement and marginalization, and an all-pervasive poverty in his native place as his family was impoverished and resource-less, highly dependent on the upper caste land-holding social groups for their sustenance and survival . All the landed properties have been enjoyed by the so-called upper caste groups such as Brahmins, thus reinforcing the marginal status of subaltern groups in Hindu society and their socio-economic deprivation and political disempowerment. The alarming rate of illiteracy among Dalits forced them to beg for their lives in front of the upper caste groups, despite knowing their oppressive status. As chronic material deprivation was the companion of such social groups, they used to spend their quotidian existence, remaining either unfed or half-fed as none came forward to mitigate their economic impoverishment. The family of Byapari faced a tremendous sense of difficulty in ensuring meals twice a day in the caste-inflicted society. His chandal identity turned his life into “a hellish experience”, as Byapari as a Dalit refugee faced discrimination and exclusion from the resettlement programs, thus relegating the hapless refugees into the condition of statelessness.
The historical partition has impacted the subaltern groups most severely as they found themselves in an alien land and uprooted overnight due to a hastily-crafted political decision of partitioning India and Pakistan based on ethnicity. The catastrophic effects of such man-induced large-scale displacement and uprooting of population has rendered the poor people penniless and homeless as they didn’t get a reasonable time to escape such human tragedy of gigantic proportions. In this autobiographical story, Byapari showed the inhumane treatment meted out to the Dalit refugees, and the apathetic approach of the state towards the quotidian suffering of Dalit refugees. The hapless refugees had been loaded into trucks and trains and moved to different refugee camps situated in the most inhospitable areas of the country. As these helpless refugees were kept “hungry”, they couldn’t fight against “the mighty government” and mutley suffered the degrading condition of the refugee camps. This forced the refugees to flee from those camps in search of livelihoods. The author has shown the predicament of his refuges status and the caste-based discrimination and marginalsation that he faced due to his socially ascriptive identity. He is a chandal by caste, a sociological position that is stigmatizing as well as demonizing, thus intensifying his painful existence in society. His peripheral and marginal position in society can be attributed to his impure identity in the caste language, thus deepening his sorrows and pains associated with his survival efforts.
The initial chapters narrate the precarious journey of Byapari as a Dalit refugee in search of resettlement and his encounters with numerous instances of discrimination and marginalization in Bengal society. As the government decided to relocate them to the area most inhospitable for human settlement, he along with other hapless refugees had been taken to the sites of rehabilitation such as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Dandakarnya, the ill-planned projects to make the living of the subaltern groups. His lived realities expose the erroneous refugee policy undertaken by the then Bengal government and its complicity in perpetuating discrimination on the subaltern groups which entered Indian with the hope of a sense of belonging and citizenship. The depth of suffering and unfreedom and otherisation that his community faced in Bengal was really shocking, thus exposing the myth of bhadralok identity of the upper caste groups. The programs of land rehabilitation were ill-thought programs, showcasing the apathetic and impractical approach of the then state apparatus and their inhuman nature in dealing with such traumatized historical events, affecting thousands of hapless, wretched refugees migrating to India for better livelihood and a peaceful stability.
While the fertile lands have been distributed among the upper caste groups, the subaltern groups were denied an equal treatment and dignified state treatment from the Bengal government. He noted how the illegal colonies/settlement cropped up in the suburb areas of Calcutta in order to cede spaces for the dominant caste groups, whereas the step-motherly treatment was meted out to the social groups at the margins. The lower caste social group has been forcefully sent to the most inhospitable terrains for settlement, where the minimum benefits of living seemed to be missing such as the Sundarbans and Dandakaranya. He divided the refugees into two groups-one belonging to the dominant caste groups reallocated to the better regions whereas the subaltern classes such as dom, pundra and namoshudraa have been pushed into the forested areas. Byapari narrated how the upper caste groups using their caste privileges escaped the impoverished experiences of the refugee living at the most despicable refugee camps and managed to find a space within and news Calcutta with the help of the caste Hindu officials or ministers in West Bengal (Byapari 21).
The life of Byapari has been spent in the consistent search for livelihood as he suffered from acute crisis of poverty. As a refugee child, she roamed from one place to another in search of a sense of belonging and citizenship. His life turned into a sage of existential crisis, as he was forced to move from one place to another in search of a better living. He suited himself in any kind of job opportunities such as cook, helper in tea-shop and a helper-boy in the railways. Yet his life never gave him a fixed tenure or duration, as the oppressive nature of his employers forced the innocent boy to discontinue such jobs. He has been cheated by his members many times on different occasions and his childish nature was his vulnerability. He was consistently being haunted by his untouchable identity as she feared the exposition of his namashudra identity would lead him to merciless beatings and physical oppression. Traveling without tickets has been a normalized routine for the child Byapari as his poor economic condition has failed to afford him to buy any ticket. Therefore, he always remained in a state of consistent anxiety and threat from the ticket-checkers.
His life in Calcutta was strife with unbearable misery and an abject sense of impoverishment. Instead of receiving a compassionate outlook from the government of Bengal in form of assistance to secure the basic amenities of a decent living, he along with other Dalits was forced to spend living in consistent pain and suffering. The abject apathy and lack of employment opportunities reinforced the scale of malnutrition, thus pushing the parents of Byapari towards death. He failed to secure the basic amenities for his family as they consistently suffered from poverty, social discrimination, thus reinforcing their marginal status in society. This forced Byapari to “run away” from such deplorable, deprived conditions “to seek out” a better future in this world (Byapari 38).
This autobiography shows the extent of psychological traumatization and socio-economic hardships of the refugees, especially the subaltern groups and the hiccups that they faced while searching for belonging and citizenship. It also directs our attention to the corrupt political system of Bengal during the partition days and how they multiplied the suffering and alienation of the lower caste groups .instead of showing a humane and compassionate face in the wake of the large- scale displacement and migration of Bengali refugees, the then Bengal government has proved to be utterly inefficient in addressing the suffering of the hapless mass of refugees who migrated to India to evade the vicious cycle of ethnic cleansing and social boycott. The rehabilitation efforts of the government were also carried out half-heartedly in which nepotistic behavior was observed in the allotment of lands for rehabilitation or resettlement of the refugees from Pakistan. While the dominant caste Hindus found no difficulty in finding solace for their rehabilitation or settlement in and around Calcutta using their caste networks, the subaltern groups have been shown unwelcoming gestures, thus reinforcing the caste-based division of Bengali Hindu society. To make the point clear, examples of the Jeles, the Malos, the Namas and the Pods have been cited, who have been pushed into the most inhospitable territories for re-settlement, while giving bhadraloks the access to the prime location near or in Calcutta. Here, the caste ascriptive identity of such subaltern groups become their grounds of exclusion and marginalization from such rehabilitation processes which ultimately resulted in the refugees being conferred with the citizenship rights of the country.
Discrimination in the Rehabilitations of Dalit Refugees
This autobiographical narrative has extensively narrated the partition days and the adverse impact that it has on the displaced people who suddenly saw them trapped in the labyrinth of displacement and desperation. The only road to their safety and freedom was migration, which they followed without knowing what awaited them in the near future. Byapari, as a refugee belonging to the most vulnerable segment of society, suddenly found himself uprooted from his homeland by the sudden stroke of partition. As a Dalit refugee, he faced the unbearable suffering and alienation in such human tragedy. But the saddest part of the event was that instead of paying equal attention to each refugee groups, the then Bengal government acted in a discriminatory manner to favor the bhadraloks of the upper strata of Hindu society, whereas the refugees belonging to the subaltern groups have been excluded in the process of land redistribution and resettlement. It proves the relevance of the caste factor in Bengal society, which normalizes the discrimination and exclusion of so-called lower caste groups.
When the communist party was in the opposition, its leader Jyoti Basu had assured of a timely intervention in addressing the issue of the Dalit refugees. But when it came to power in 1978, it reversed its stand and insisted on evicting the hapless refugees from the islands of Marichjhapi located at the remotest part of the Sundarbans in the name of ensuring the project of tiger preservation. The subaltern refugees had been asked to move to Dandaykarnaya where they would be rehabilitated. But the hapless refuges have refused to comply with the order of the then Bengal government. It resulted in the “ruthless sage of massacre and rape, arson and plunder that is comparable to the like of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre” (Byapari 236). The state came upon the innocent refugees with iron-fist, showing its barbaric and inhumane face by employing its repressive and violent police force to curb the fundamental rights of the hapless refugees, majority of which belonged to the marginalized groups of Hindu society. Such state-sponsored violence on the innocent, wretched Dalit refugees exposed the true character of then Bengal government and its policy of socio-political containment of the marginalized in the state. Instead of showing a human and compassionate face in such time of human tragedy, the then state government acted arbitrarily and in a premeditated manner to oppress and otherwise the refugees of subaltern groups to ensure the uncontested rule of power and to preserve the cultural hegemony of the upper caste groups of Bengali society, who are adorably called bhadraloks of Bengal. While the Dalit refugees were reeling under acute shortages of food, hygiene and electricity, the refugees of dominant caste groups found no difficulty in get rehabilitated in Calcutta and its surrounding areas. Such covert exercise of nepotism and favoritism forms a serious violation of the constitutional morality and the ethics of parliamentary system of government, thus reinforcing the hegemony of the upper caste groups over Bengal politics and its intellectual milieu.
Byapari was very critical of such discriminatory behavior shown by the then communist government led by Jyoti Basu towards the lower caste refugees. He noted that the real objective of sending the refugees of subaltern groups to the most inhospitable, forested regions such as Dandakaranya was to perpetuate the upper caste hegemony in Bengal politics and its cultural manifestations as the Namashudra refugees posited a serious challenge to the brahminical socio-cultural set-up in order to create space for the assertion of the voice of marginalized social groups. Byapari argued that instead of assisting the hapless refugees through speedy allotment of lands for rehabilitation, the then communist government wanted to silence the legitimate concerns of the hapless refugees by comparing the refugees’ refusal to move to Dandakaranya with “a deliberate ploy by the Opposition to embarrass the Left government”( Byapari 238).
The lived reality of Bypari as a Dalit refugee is ripe with many unpleasant experiences, as he forced to bear unspeakable suffering and a profound psychological traumatization in the refugee camps. She reminisced how those refugees who refused to go to Dandakarnya were forced to suffer a sense of statelessness. All the facilities such as food and medicines have been denied and a large number of refugees were forced to feel the sense of non-belonging and statelessness. Life in such camps has been mired in difficulties and they have been forced to satisfy with whatever they received from the authorities. The assertion of basic human rights has been prohibited, and now was allowed to question the paucity of basic amenities in such refugee camps. Life has reduced into a non-entity and a bare minimum. Bypari left the refugee camp at Bankura and set off on his journey towards the Ghola Doltala, situated in the southern suburbs of Calcutta. Though the standards of living there were not up to the satisfying marks, he decided to stay near Calcutta as he anticipated a better opportunity of livelihood there.
All kinds of social discrimination, physical abuse and sexual violence are the privileges of Dalits in Hindu society and this is testified by the autobiographical narrative of Byapari. As he belonged to an economically poor family, he had to run helter and skelter in order to survive the harsh reality in the world. As a child labor, he had to do all kinds of menial works in order to earn the wages for living. Here too he experienced the bitter truth about the cruel reality of the world and how it turned into an oppressive figure for the venerable, destitute people who live far away from all kinds of influences in life. In this respect, his caste ascriptive identity as “chandal” turned him into “a dirty detestable animal” (Byapari 42). He experienced torrents of physical exploitation and mental abuse from his employers on a regular basis, which made his living a hellish experience. He has hardly found any emotional pleasure and mental peace while rendering his duties as cook, helper in tea shop and servant in a family. While working as a servant in the house of a doctor, Brahmin by caste, he faced inhumane treatment due to his untouchable status in Hindu society. As his touch was considered to be ritually polluting, he had been pushed to a corner of a courtyard where he lived as a “beggar”, seeking a dignified identity and citizenship.
His Entry into Naxalite Movement
His return to Calcutta marks a paradigmatic shift as he was drawn to the revolutionary calls of the Naxalite movement that rocked the 1970s and 1980s. His initiation into the violent political movement underlines his zeal for rebellion and the sheer scale of his hatred for a political society which has been rotten from within. The reader comes to know a galaxy of political figures who dominated the political scenario of Calcutta during that time. The inter-rivalry among the various gangs affiliated to different political parties has been a regular occurrence in then Calcutta and Bypari has succeeded in evading such life-in-death incidents a couple of times. Bypari considers his decision to join the Naxalite movement a tough call and he was aware of the possible consequences of joining such a radical movement. He noted: “Working for the revolution was not an elitist luxury for us. It was a necessary step towards achieving a healthy, decent life” (Byapari, 17).
The Calcutta of 1970s and 1980s, Bypari argued, was a battleground for different political parties, which led to frequent happening of violence among different political groups in which the mafia played a very important role, who acted as the executive branch of such violence in the directive of political groups. The police raid was a frequent event during Byapari’s times, and he encountered such events during his stay in Calcutta. His love for the revolutionary ideals of the Naxalite movement has inspired him a lot and gave him enough courage to fight social justice and to ensure a dignified identity for him. Once, he went to Bardhaman to manufacture bombs, but it exploded accidently which resulted in his physical body being wounded .His dedication to the Naxalite movement could be interpreted as his yearning for bringing a social reconstruction in which each community is given equal treatment and dignified existence.
His association with Naxalism took him to Chhattisgarh where he came across Shankar Guha Neogi, a celebrated figure in the Naxal movement. He turned into a life-long disciple of Shankar Guha Neogi and started to work for the common, disenfranchised tribals of this state who was reeling under the combined effects of capitalism and social discrimination in their quotidian existence. His association with a visionary leader of the people's movement altered his philosophy of life and inspired him in plunging into a deconstructive movement. He argued that breaking the rotten social system is the beginning point towards our construction of a new society where exploitation and oppression of people is not normalised in the name of development and patriotism. He worked tirelessly along with other members of “Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha'' in building schools, hospitals, workshops, cooperatives for the marginalised tribal people and exposed their collective victimisation under casteism and capitalism. His involvement in the Naxalist movement turned to be the eye-opener for Byapari, as it enabled him to expose the nexus between the police, mafia and politicians in the state-sponsored developmental processes and violence.He is seen critiquing the state-sponsored developmental projects as it openly marginalizes the subaltern groups and subjected them to the vicious cycles of exploitation and oppression in the nation-building. This autobiographical story reflects the fact that instead of ensuring “food, shelter, clothes, education, healthcare and occupation” , the modern states protect the “ real enemies lived in plush luxurious mansions and were out of the workers’ reach, protected as they were by the ministers, police and the government”(Byapari 289).
Demystifying the Bhadralok Genteelness
This autobiographical narrative demolishes the myth of the genteel characteristics of the Bhadraloks of Bengal and exposes their complicity in perpetuation caste and class-based oppression and exploitation of the social groups living at the lowest rung of the caste-infested Hindu society. He is “chandal” by birth and his writing itself registers a strong resistance to the mainstream aesthetics that consistently try to invisible the assertion from the below and normalize the upper caste hegemony in the name of cultural refinement and greater aesthetic value. It resists the available literature on partition and documents the multiple ways of oppression and discrimination being perpetuated on the refugees, especially belonging to the socially deprived segments. The role of the Bengal government has also been examined from a subaltern perspective in order to expose the bigger picture of conspiracies hatched to deny the social groups at the margins a belonging and citizenship. The precarious struggle for identity and nationality has forced these social groups to wage a battle at multiple sites against different tools of exclusion and marginalization, which have been normalized by the then Bengal government led by bhadralok Jyoti Basu. It also critiques the political decisions leading to the actual occurrence of partition and the large-scale displacement and migration of Hindus into India in search of living. This eye-opening autobiography produced at the margins and narrated in a simple and dexterous way really helps the reading community to give a re-look on the saga of human tragedy, emanating from the politically-taken and badly- managed partition.
In this memoir, the narrator has emerged as “an angry young man”, who “learnt to kill” (Byapari 50) for self-defense. As a Dalit refugee, he faced unspeakable suffering and oppression at the hands of bhadraloks in Bengal society and struggled throughout his entire living to carve out a space for belonging and citizenship. He exposed the hypocrisy of Bengal bhadralok refugees who managed to get “a space or near Calcutta” with the help of “the caste Hindu officials or ministers in West Bengal”(Byapari 21). He depicted the clear-cut caste-based segregation of Bengali Hindu society and the division of society into two groups-chhotoloks and bhadraloks. He noted that whoever performs the productive menial works is called “lowly folk” in Bengali society and is associated with the “lowly caste”. In this memoir, Byapari showed how such ‘we’ and ‘they’ division of class has polluted Bengal society and has made an unbridgeable mental gap between the upper caste bhadraloks and the lower caste people (Byapari 121). He put the bhadraloks of Bengal responsible for much of the hardships and suffering that the refugees of lower caste backgrounds were subjected to in the post-partition era. While commenting on the hardships of lower caste refugees and the step-motherly treatment Byapari said: “The other millions who had come over, honest workers of the land, could not find space in any of these forcibly occupied colonies because the primary condition to being given land here was education and the bhadralok identity-an identity that was unaffordable to all but the upper castes” (Byapari 21).
His entry into the world of Letters
Byapari’s lived experiences epitomize the relentless struggle that the Hindu refugees of subaltern groups in general had to undergo in search of a stable and decent living in the post-partition era. The betrayal of the state in granting prompt rehabilitation and conferring citizenship rights on the refugees made the author act in multiple roles in different junctures of his life. He summarized his life in the following words: “But my life was a cursed life, bereft of sweetness, with all possibilities of a straight path being closed to me. The only paths that were open to me were dark, winding, narrow, slippery with blood” (Byapari 192), thus reinforcing the severity of existential crises of the hapless, poor individuals in an unequal society. His bitter memories of oppression, humiliation and sexual exploitation have never allowed him to be assured of a better and stable life.
But his life took a radical turn when he arrived at a jail, where he came across a learned poisoner who taught him about alphabets, letter, thus initiating into the world of knowledge. Instead of cursing himself for whatever happened to him in life and the misfortunes that befell on his life, he decided to use the jail as a “library”, as a site of knowledge inculcation. One day, while earning livelihood as a rickshaw-puller at Jadavpur, he came across the noted writer Mahasweta Devi, who advised him to write for a magazine about his experiences as a rickshaw –puller. This changed his life, thus initiating him into the world of art and literature. Despite numerous hurdles befalling on his road to the future, he continued writing about himself and the society that he saw with his own eyes as a refugee running for survival. This new-found liking for writing gave him a “hope of living” (Byapari 344), as he noted: “I could not rebel and court imprisonment. My body was no longer strong. I could no longer kill. I lost my nerve. I had only my pen. So those whom I detested as the oppressors of the human spirit and humanity, I waged a war against them through my writing” (Byapari 344).
Conclusion
Byapari’s novel offers us authentic and in-depth insights into the partition of the subcontinent from a Dalit perspective by showcasing the traumatic lived experiences of the subaltern social groups that found displaced and homeless due to partition. It uncovers the heterogeneity in the lived experiences of the refugees along caste lines and highlights the frantic search of lower caste refugees for resettlement and citizenship in India. This autobiographical narrative recuperates a marginal voice associated with the historical event of partition along the eastern border, which has been consciously kept untouched in the mainstream literature for years. The tragic incident of Marichjhapi that evicted thousands of Dalit refugees, subjecting them to the multiple forms of oppression, discrimination and otherisation exposed the inhumane face of then Bengal politics and its complicity in perpetuation caste-based oppression and violence on the innocent refuges belonging to the historically oppressed subaltern groups. Byapari’s inner urge to share the traumatized lived memories of his displacement and migration into India as a Dalit refugee and his marginal position in the so-called bhadralok Bengali society underscores the communal division of the then Hindu society along the caste/ethnic lines and highlights the deliberate relegation of Dalits to the spheres of hardships and intense suffering based on the prevailing social stereotyping and caste-based power configurations.
The story of Byapari as a Bengali refugee belonging to lower strata of society can undoubtedly be called “a collective social voice” (Limbale 31) of thousands of the unknown poor refugees, who were rendered homeless and displaced overnight due to partition in 1947 and whose voices have never been documented or presented in the mainstream partition literature or historical narratives, due to the inherent biases of the writers of the privileged socio-cultural backgrounds. This autobiographical narrative not only brings to the fore the suppressed memories and tales of acute deprivation and suffering associated with the victims of partition, but also exposes the ugly politics behind partition for the wider reading community.
Works Cited:
- Byapari, Manoranjan. Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit. Trans. by Sipra Mukherjee. New Delhi: Sage & Saumya, 2018.
- Limbale, Sharankumar. Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature: History, Controversies and Considerations. Trans from the Marathi by Alok Mukherjee. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2004.
- Mukherjee, Sipra. “ Manoranjan Byapari”, in Dalit Text: Aesthetics and Politics Re-imagined, edited by Judith Mishrahi-Barak, K. Satyanarayana and Nicole Thiara, pp. 15-29.Oxon: Routledge, 2020.
- Jalais, Annu. “Dwelling on Morichjhanpi: When Tigers Become ‘Citizens’, Refugees 'Tiger-Food'’ ”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.40, No. 17, April 23-29, 2005, pp. 1757-1762. Retrieved from here