Refugees, Rights and Rehabilitation Sumallya Mukhopadhyay REFUGEES, BORDERS AND IDENTITIES: RIGHTS AND HABITAT IN EAST AND NORTHEAST INDIA By Anindita Ghoshal Routledge, New York, 2021, pp. 310, `1495.00 T here is a common critical consensus that the 1947 Partition of south Asia correspondingly affected two regions in particular—Punjab and Bengal. However, the recent scholarship on the 1947 Partition1 explicates that the waves of refugee migration and the ensuing rehabilitation of individuals and families have had an enduring impact on other regions in India. For instance, in Citizen Refugee, uditi sen probes into the nature of settlements built for the Bengali refugees in Andaman Islands,2 and Anjali gera Roy, in her latest book, records the changing contours of Lucknow following the construction of refugee colonies in the city.3 In Refugees, Borders and Identities, Anindita ghoshal further advances this scholarship to showcase the multifarious consequences of the bifurcation in eastern India, detailing at the same time the causes and effects of the radical politicization of East Pakistani refugees in West Bengal, Assam and Tripura. As ghoshal argues, the refugees mostly preferred coming to West Bengal after migrating from East Pakistan. But the novelty of her work lies in the judicious incorporation of Assam and Tripura— two dominions that witnessed refugee influx—within the discourses surrounding the historical event. she focuses on regions that have so far received scant attention in studies related to the division in 1947, and it acts as an intervention that marks a distinct shift in our general understanding of the repercussions of Partition. In the ‘Introduction’ to her book, ghoshal maps the rise of communal politics in undivided Bengal. The initial segments of the chapter copiously refer to secondary sources to underscore the changing dynamics of politics during the colonial era. The categorization of people on the grounds of caste, community and religion created 1 .Hereafter referred to as the Partition 2 .sen, u. (2018). Exiles or settlers? Caste, governance and Identity in the Andaman Islands. In Citizen Refugee: Forging the Indian Nation After Partition (pp. 115–160). Cambridge university Press. 3 . gera Roy, A. (2020). Resettled Home. In Memories and Postmemories of the Partition of India (pp. 153–178). Routledge. certain fissures in the civil society. It reified the idea that India was inhabited by two religiously defined communities, patently dissimilar to one another in terms of culture, tradition and practices. The foundation of the muslim League in Dhaka in 1906 and the pro-Hindu policies of the Congress bear testimony to the point. some groups also challenged the gradual rise of the politics of representation, like the Muslim Sahitya Samaj (founded in 1926) and Buddhir Mukti Andolon (movement for the emancipation of the intellect). They strove to bridge the widening schism between the two communities. such attempts, however, proved futile for the zeitgeist of the 1930s and 1940s engendered the notion of separate homelands for the Hindus and the muslims, eventually culminating in the horrific riots in Calcutta and Noakhali. Against this backdrop, the decision to carry out the Partition plan initiated the restructuring of the borders of East Pakistan and India. With the support of ample archival documents, ghoshal explains the confusion shrouding the cartographic division and divulges the haphazard management of the entire situation. she notes that there were disputes over areas like Khulna, malda, Rangpur, Dinajpur, Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri. Her meticulous assessment of the referendum held in sylhet highlights the psychological duress of individuals who could not make sense of the arbitrariness of the newly-drawn international boundaries. While the politicians dictated the terms and conditions of the Partition, ordinary people had to leave their hearth and home. In the process, they were classified as refugees overnight. What complicated the matter was that the refugees were also entitled to citizenship in the country they had migrated to. The legal complication of accommodating the refugees within the folds of the nation aggravated the situational crisis insomuch that the residents of the host country abominated the presence of the refugees in their vicinity. some words— bangal (a term used to identify a refugee in West Bengal), bhogonia (a direct reference to the Bengali refugees in Assam), bhindeshi (alien), bhatias (specifically used in North Bengal to refer to East Pakistani refugees), bohiragoto (outsider)—that were uncommon in popular parlance gained currency during this period. Rather than alleviating the plight of the refugees, bureaucratic papers like the border slip and refugee certificate, passport and visa became means of controlling the movement of people across the borders. ghoshal harps on the oft-repeated observation that the Central government of India gave short shrift to the refugee problem in the eastern corridor of India. In the first few years, West Bengal emerged as the epicentre of the refugee crisis. ghoshal cites annual documents published by the ministry of Rehabilitation, newspaper reports and private papers of politicians to put forward the view that new policies were designed to unburden West Bengal of its expanding refugee population. such policies forced the refugees to take shelter in government-sponsored settlements in the Andaman Islands, Bihar, orissa and Dandakaranya. most of these settlements failed to cater to the needs of the refugees, who, in turn, resisted the official policies and came back to West Bengal to claim better rehabilitation measures. The support extended by the Communist Party of India (CPI) strengthened the cause of the refugees. It brought about a change in the political rhetoric where ‘Hindu refugees’ were called ‘Bengali refugees’, circumventing the religious signifier to associate more with the regional identity. By incorporating the ‘Bengali sentiment’, the political movement of the refugees made inroads in West Bengal. The formation of the Nikhil Vanga Bastuhara Karma Parishad (NVBKP or, All Bengal Refugee Council of Action) is a point to reckon with. ghoshal writes, ‘The NVBKP ensured footage of the Leftists with the refugees, which later led to the rise of a united front…The NVBKP was the first group that pressured the state government for providing relief and rehabilitation to both the camp and colony refugees’ (pp. 168-169). The refugees also formed a few other organizations, the most notable of them being the united Central Refugee The Book Review / July 2021 25 Anindita Ghoshal … showcases the multifarious consequences of the bifurcation in eastern India, detailing at the same time the causes and effects of the radical politicization of East Pakistani refugees in West Bengal, Assam and Tripura. Council (uCRC). With the help of these organizations, the Leftists eventually dislodged the Congress government in West Bengal as the Party failed to win a clearcut majority for the first time in the fourth general election in 1967. The united Front government came to power in West Bengal and formally approved the demands of the refugees. In course of time, some sections of the society in West Bengal extended their support to the refugees. In Assam, the situation appeared to be different because the Bengali refugees from East Pakistan started monopolizing government jobs and administrative services. ghoshal rightly observes that the conjunctural shift in the scheme of things after the Partition led to the institutionalization of an exclusivist, ethnolinguistic Assamese identity that vehemently opposed the presence of the refugees. The government of Assam stood by the domiciles of Assam, fanning anti-Bengali sentiments through its policies. Though the Assamese and the Bengali population had their share of cultural differences, language became the main source of conflict between the two communities. on the one hand, the Bengali refugees wanted the government to acknowledge their language, which, on the other hand, buttressed the Assamese desire for cultural hegemony. According to ghoshal, the two most important events that hardened the differences between the communities were the passing of the Assam official Language Bill in 1960 and the medium of Instruction movement in 1972. The Bengali refugees termed it as ‘cultural genocide’. They sought legal remedies and conducted in parallel a civil disobedience movement in Assam. ghoshal opines that in striking contrast to the situation in Assam, the refugees who migrated to Tripura were quite favourably received by both the government and the local population. The Tripura government introduced four separate rehabilitation schemes—‘Colony scheme’, ‘Type scheme’, ‘Proto-type scheme’ and ‘Land Purchase scheme’—to address the needs of the refugees. ghoshal 26 The Book Review / July 2021 traces the empathetic attitude of the Tripura government to the era of manikya maharajas, who were cordial towards Bengalis. However, the refugee population in Tripura altered the demography of the region where the Bengalis soon achieved majority status. Their initiation in politics made it easy for the Bengali refugees to encroach on lands, building their habitats at the expense of the tribal population. To substantiate her arguments, ghoshal refers to Bimal sinha’s short story, Raima Upotyokar Upokatha, which portrays how the Bengali babus became traumatic agents for tribals in Tripura (p. 151). In fact, one of the salient features of ghoshal’s book is that she intersperses historical facts with fictional literature to build her arguments. While most historical studies get overburdened with facts, records and documentations, the references to novels and short stories breathe new life into the overall framework of Refugees, Borders and Identities. It must also be borne in mind that ghoshal occasionally refers to some oral history narratives in her book. Despite her references to the narratives of individuals who were on the receiving end of various policies, she does not dwell on the reflexive aspect of the interview process. In other words, the quotations from the interviews do not inform us about the narrators and their lives. In chapter four, ghoshal outlines that she wants to concentrate on the figure of the East Bengali refugee woman. A close, critical reading, however, reveals that the chapter has barely anything substantial to offer as far as the figure of the refugee woman in West Bengal, Assam and Tripura is concerned. Nevertheless, ghoshal’s historical work on the refugees is extremely topical as she blends the past discourses with the present political developments concerning the National Register of Citizens (NRC). most importantly, her work interrogates the definition of the ‘outsider/foreigner’ to foreground that the refugees played a crucial role in affirmatively reorienting the polity, society and economy of the host country. Sumallya Mukhopadhyay is a Doctoral Fellow and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi. He has been awarded the TATA Trusts–Partition Archive Research Grant. Analysing Sights of Contestations Sumedha Dutta NEIGHBOURHOODS IN URBAN INDIA: IN BETWEEN HOME AND THE CITY Edited by Sadan Jha, Dev Nath Pathak and Amiya Kumar Das Bloomsbury, New Delhi, 2021, pp. 336, `1293.00 I n the existing scenario whereby the literature on urban life in India has almost reduced urban neighbourhoods to abstract monolithic entities embodying human settlements, and the ecology thereof, to the utter neglect of the embeddedness of these settlements in different communitarian identities and categorical values, this book is a refreshing disjuncture from such dominant discursive trajectories, which seem to have emanated from postindustrial town-planning. It seeks to lay bare the ambiguities and paradoxes, the consonances and dissonances of urban lived experiences, which lend their influence upon creation and recreation of the urban neighbourhood over time. It highlights the liminal character of the Indian neighbourhood, which provides access to both the home as well as the city at the same time, while expounding as to how the very concept of home is being negotiated and renegotiated in the neighbourhood in so many terms. It emphasizes on the unique subjectivity and agency that each neighbourhood possesses, while problematizing every attempt to homogenize the idea of a pan-Indian urban neighbourThe beauty of the book lies in the fact that it is a disjuncture from the apparent tendency of contemporary scholars to submit themselves to a set formulaic design for undertaking their studies, for it unsettles the given notions, weaving a rich tapestry of Readers Please Note The August 2021 issue of The Book Review will be a special on Translation urban spatio-socio-cultural existence, in all its fluidity, vividness and informality, thereby defying the tenets of absolutism and rigidity.