Volume 16 2023
Journal of the Department of English
Vidyasagar University Midnapore-721102 WB
Problematizing the Hegemonic Conceptualization of
Refugeehood in West Bengal: A Study of Manoranjan
Byapari’s Interrogating My Chandal Life: An
Autobiography of a Dalit
Damayanti Das
Ph.D. Research Scholar
Department of English, Raiganj University, Uttar Dinajpur, West Bengal
Abstract
In 1947, the partition of India resulted in the division of Bengal province along the
communal line. In Bengal-oriented partition history, literature and films, the trauma and
identity crisis of the East Bengali refugees are explored significantly. But how far the
exploration of partition engages with the refugee experiences in totality is a relevant
query since it is marked by a politics of silence on caste. It appears that the normalization
of disengagement with caste identity in studying refugee experiences and the mainstream
assertion that the caste system is rather alien to Bengal’s progressive intellectual
atmosphere have excluded the dalit refugee perspectives. The cultural hegemony of the
upper-caste Bengali Bhadraloks has controlled knowledge production about partition so
persistently that the conscious attempt at universalizing the selective partition
experiences from the upper-caste perspective has been highly successful. But the
trajectory of partition history is much wider than what is imagined by the celebrated
Bengali Partition narratives and films by upper-caste intellectuals, as is evident in
Manoranjan Byapari’s Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit. I
would like to study how Byapari, an East Bengali refugee without caste privilege,
interrogates and redefines the concepts like refugeehood, belongingness and citizenship
in this Hindu majoritarian state and how his literary agency registers his traumatic past
and the journey of his identity construction from a dalit refugee standpoint.
Keywords: hegemony, majoritarian, universalize, refugeehood, Bhadralok
In 1947, the partition of colonial India which gave birth to two independent states-the
Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan- left an indelible mark on the history of
South Asia. This newly acquired freedom ended up as an unrelatable bureaucratic reality
to huge swaths of the population of the two nations as mass deportation across the border
and concomitant communal riots left them alienated, traumatized and rootless. In West
Bengal, the Bengali Hindu identity took on a new dimension on the basis of geographical
relocation of the East Bengali Hindus who migrated to India from the then East Pakistan.
Their refugee status which they perceived to be demeaning overshadowed the erstwhile
identities they enjoyed in their homeland. Though partition on the Western front has
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received greater critical attention, in Bengal-oriented partition historiography, novels,
short stories, self-narratives and films, the multiple realities of the Hindu Bengali refugee
lives are explored enough to highlight their struggle to retrieve their fragmented
memories, sense of nostalgia, struggle to regain their lost dignity and rebuild their lives
from scratch. Historically the East Bengali refugees have identified themselves as selfrespecting, enterprising makers of their own fate in contrast to the stereotypically
passive, dole-dependent roles assigned to them by the governmental records. Uditi Sen
comments: “The self-settled refugee and his heroic struggle dominate the living memory
of partition's aftermath in West Bengal. This dominant memory is born partly of years of
leftist political slogans and propaganda regarding refugee struggles and partly of refugee
reminiscences which seek to fashion a cohesive refugee identity out of a deeply divided
history” (75). But how far popular and scholarly knowledge and concern for Hindu
Bengali refugee identity are taking into account the heterogeneity of this category is a
matter to ponder as most of the documentation which makes up an archive of partition
reality is marked by a politics of silence on the caste issues.
Though for all East Bengali Hindus, partition resulted in searching for ‘home’ in an
unknown territory, their caste identity played a major role in influencing the nature and
time-frame of their migration and most importantly, their experience in post-partition
West Bengal. Though a large number of lower caste people, the majority of whom were
Namashudras came here from the then East Pakistan, their standpoints are ignored in
mainstream partition studies. Several factors like Bengal's apparently progressive
cultural vibe, lack of dominant caste-based political parties and the rare incidence of
brutalities on dalits consolidate the idea of this ‘casteless’ state. But this erasure of caste
from the societal domain appears to be a result of the success of Brahminical hegemony
disguised under the veneer of Bengali ‘modernity’. Partha Chatterjee thinks that though
in West Bengal the caste system is claimed to be obsolete, the role of caste identity in
determining a caste Hindu's social standing is far from irrelevant. He observes: "That
practices of caste privilege continue is easily demonstrated by the near dominance of the
upper castes in virtually every political institution, including those where the leadership
is elected, and in every modern profession” (Chatterjee 84). The subversive version of
the post-partition reality presented by the dalit refugee Byapari in his autobiography
Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit highlights glaring absence
of lower caste writers from the canon of Bengali Partition literature. Evidently, the
legitimacy accorded to upper-caste refugee experiences and the suppression of those of
lower caste refugees are parts of a hegemonic project of not acknowledging the literary
output outside the arena of the upper-caste bhadraloks' literary establishment. The
celebrated partition narratives by upper-caste writers do not engage with the caste
dynamics governing the social relations in post-partition West Bengal. But a few
dissenting voices like Manoranjan Byapari through their self-expressions incline one to
question this façade of caste-neutrality which is a construct by the upper-caste Bengali
bhadraloks.
Manoranjan Byapari was born in the village of Pirichpur of Barisal district of the then
East Pakistan into the traditionally scorned untouchable Chandal caste now known as
Namashudra. Quite early on in his book, he recounts the history of the struggle of the
Namashudra community for their right to human dignity. They led a long term social
movement (1872-1911) against the upper-caste use of ‘Chandal’ as a term of humiliation
and compelled the British government to change the denomination to Namashudra.
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Byapari, however, feels that the years of protest and subsequent victory actually did little
beyond reforming the mode of addressing a dalit community, given the unchanged
predominance of caste identity in deciding one’s access to respect, wealth and social
acceptance. Perhaps his experiences, both in undivided Bengal and post-partition West
Bengal, have impelled him to develop this opinion. His and his family’s journey from
dalit to dalit refugee identity made their situation worse with their caste identity exposing
them to the host country’s hostility and indifference. He was born sometime around 1950
or 1951 when the socio-political scenario was charged with anxiety and tension about an
uncertain future. He says that the Namashudras of Pirichpur did not leave for India
immediately after partition, unlike the well-off upper-castes. Though they stayed back in
the then East Pakistan as minorities in post-Partition time, the fear of riots kept them on
tenterhooks. At Pirichpur, people did not witness communal violence till that time but
the news of riots in the neighbouring villages such as Muladi made them feel safe no
longer. He remembers the horrific details of Muladi riot. He says:
About four hundred men, women and children of all ages fleeing from the
violence of the riots had taken shelter in a school. Having blocked all exits and
escape routes, they were hacked to death in a night-long orgy of violence. It was
rumoured that the killer wore dancers’ bells on their ankles as they danced and
slashed. Who could say with certainty that such violence would not occur in the
villages of Turak-Khali, Pirichpur, Jalokathi or Nazirpur (14)?
He seems to echo the thought of his own people who finally decided to migrate to
India. He says: “In our village…the fratricidal riots had not taken place. There was,
however, no certainty that they would not take place in the near future” (12). Like the
other families who were gradually evacuating the village, his family crossed the border
in 1953-54 even if his father was in two minds regarding this decision. His father had
cordial relationship with the Muslims of his locality, who assured safety to him. But
given the current situation, his family did not have the courage to stay on. His uncles
already left the land. So his father also decided to join his brothers. His parents along
with the author himself, his brother Chitta and his grandfather arrived in “the Great Land
of India” (15) with a lot of anxiety. For a few days they lived on the Sealdah Station
platform of West Bengal. From there they were taken to Shiromanipur Camp in the
Bankura District. Their stay at the camp was short-lived because from there the journey
of uncertainty began for them. As if the physical and psychological strain of severing ties
with homeland were not enough, their continuous displacement from one camp to
another in India made their life hellish. Though, back in their own village they were not
financially stable, their own houses, communitarian bonds and agrarian economy offered
them a sense of rootedness. But once they arrived at “an unknown geographical entity
called ‘India’” (Byapari 14), they were treated as infiltrators by the ruling government
and were packed off to refugee camps in different parts of the nation without any
initiative for arranging for their permanent settlement. Byapari has devoted a
considerable section of his book to delineating life in the camps probably in greater
detail than could be found in any standard historical account. As a refugee, he registers
his first-hand experience of the unimaginable living conditions which pushed the
refugees to utter hopelessness. He spent his life in several camps like Shiromanipur
refugee camp in Bankura and Gholadoltala camp in South 24 Parganas. He recollects
that when his family arrived in Bankura, the camp life was terrible. He says: “The
refugee camps then were like stagnant ponds, still and lifeless. There was no vitality of
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life. No light lit up the darkened eyes, no smile or banter moved past the inert lips. The
people were like tethered cattle, weary and listless, uncertain of the future and counting
the days as each day passed into night” (Byapari 22). Forbidden to work independently,
the refugees had to subsist on the meagre government dole. Since they came from land of
rivers, they found the extremely dry and hot weather of Bankura very exhausting.
Besides this, climatic change, water crisis, low-quality ration, malnourishment, lack of
sanitation and medical service accelerated the mortality rate. Byapari sarcastically
comments that the generous government kindly installed two tube-wells to serve
thousands of families. Since in the traditional Indian household the responsibility of
maintaining a steady supply of water is gendered, women had to bear the additional
burden of spending hours at the wells to collect barely two buckets of water. As a
consequence of being on a staple diet of government-supplied rotten rice rumoured to be
as old as the stock of rice stored since the time of World War II, people started suffering
from acute diarrhoea. Since toilet facility was not available, the space behind the camp
got littered with human excreta to make the atmosphere more sickening. The government
practically did nothing to fight the outbreak of this epidemic. In the camp, medical help
was just an eyewash. There was only one doctor whose requests for life-saving drugs
went unheeded. The refugees were drained of whatever energy they had and utter
frustration and disappointment stared them in the face. Byapari's father's dream of
educating Byapari was dashed to the ground when the makeshift government school for
refugee children got shut for an indefinite period of time. It must be mentioned that not
all the East Bengali refugees suffered the same fate. One’s caste background was a
decisive factor in determining whether s/he would get adequate opportunities for
reconstructing his/her life. In an interview with Jaydeep Sarangi titled From Refugee
Camps to Polished Book Stalls, Byapari reveals that the camps were populated mainly by
lower caste refugees. As far as he remembers, at the Bankura camp there was just one
Brahmin family. Caste-based discrimination by the West Bengal government was largely
responsible for hindering the upward mobility of the dalit refugees but its reception of
the East Bengali Caste Hindus was preferential enough. According to Byapari, it was the
upper caste Hindus who migrated on the eve of partition or a little later when communal
violence in East Pakistan had not yet erupted on a large scale. This group was supported
by the West Bengal government in terms of relocation, jobs and subsidies. But the lower
caste refugees did not have the resources to move out. But as communal tension
escalated in East Pakistan, in 1950s the lower caste refugees were forced to evacuate.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury offer a dismal picture of the
harsh treatment of the refugees coming in the 1950s by the customs officials and security
forces at the border checkpoints. All their valuable belongings were snatched away and
they were allowed to carry only fifty rupees per head. If anybody, fearing further
humiliation, tried to flee, s/he was fired upon (67-68). Byapari makes a distinction
between the upper and lower-caste refugees by using the terms “Bhadralok” and
“Chotolok” respectively. These two terms as used in the common parlance of the Bengali
language smack of the snobbery and elitist mentality of the refined upper caste Bengalis.
While the former refers to the Bengali upper-caste with their cultural capital, modern
education and higher social position, the latter is a cuss word for describing the
impoverished, ‘uncultured’ and uneducated lower castes. As refugees, their lives took
different turns as the caste Hindus refused to throw in their lot with the lower caste
refugees. The upper-caste refugees, says Byapari, did not share space in the camps with
the lower-castes like the Nama, the Jele and the Muchi. On the strength of their
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educational background, earlier professional or personal connections with the West
Bengalis and caste brotherhood, they enlisted the sympathy and active cooperation of
influential political leaders and bureaucrats who unofficially helped them forcibly
possess unclaimed and vacant land. For instance, in their illegal occupation of land for
establishing the Bijaygarh colony, they had the backing of figures like the then Chief
Minister of West Bengal Dr Bidhan Chandra Ray, Governor Katju, Major General
Satyabrata Singha, Jawaharlal Nehru, Triguna Sen, Samar Mukherjee and Sarojini Naidu
(Byapari 35). In recording the history of the squatter colonies, the author observes that
the areas occupied had the civic amenities indispensable for a reasonably comfortable
life. When some Santosh Dutta set up a colony at Bijaygarh, the land was already
equipped with electricity and the facility for running water and, moreover, the area was
well-connected to banks, bus stands and educational institutions. The author comments:
“At the time of the Second World War, the British Government had purchased this large
tract of land from Indian Zamindars for American soldiers. As a result of this, there was
no landowner of this area after the American soldiers returned home and this land, quite
expensive as real estate, was lying empty” (34). Joya Chatterjee comments that the
Calcutta-centric colonies were densely populated and lacked proper infrastructure but in
some colonies, the leaders set up on their own initiative their own markets and schools
without any help from the administration at the state or central level (143). Colony life in
an alien country, of course, cannot be a desirable alternative to one’s own home but it
was a far better option than the squalid camps. However, membership of these colonies
was granted exclusively to the refugees with upper-caste identity. They were afraid that
the prospect of living with the lower castes and sharing with them the same provisions
and amenities would jeopardize the sanctity of their caste supremacy. Some moneyed
dalit refugees made unsuccessful attempts to find a place in the colonies by disguising as
caste Hindus but they were evicted as soon as their caste identity stood exposed. Byapari
says that in the one hundred and forty-nine colonies which mushroomed in and around
Calcutta there was not a single Nama or Muchi family (21). Even in a new set-up where
the upper-caste refugees were grappling with changed conditions, they ensured that they
kept up the age-old varna hierarchy to marginalize their fellow countrymen. They
continued to utilize the services of the same lower castes such as the Namo, the Bagdi,
the Kaora whom they had subjected to spatial segregation. Byapari reflects:
A group of people from the same land and fleeing for the same reason at the
same time, and yet how cruelly different the treatment of one from the other.
One group is allowed to lay claim to expensive real estate in the heart of the city
and the other group is callously pushed out to one of the remotest islands,
Marichjhapi, in the jungles of Sundarbans, valueless in terms of real estate (35).
True it is that the East Bengali-West Bengali or “Bangal-Ghoti” tussle over cultural
superiority over each other, which lost its edge over time was relevant in a newly
partitioned country. But it was implied that the upper caste refugees on both sides of the
border shared in common their exclusivist contempt for the lower castes.
The caste factor not only drove a wedge between these two groups of refugees but also
was considered a valid ground of discrimination by the government of India which
proudly declared reservation policy for equitable distribution of resources as an
independent nation-state. The pseudo-modern administration and bureaucracy relied on
the archaic and ritualistic custom of differentially treating humans on the basis of their
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birth. The state government treated the dalit refugees as a burden on the country and was
absolutely unconcerned about their issues. According to the author, in 1958, the
government came up with the Dandakaranya Rehabilitation project for the dalit refugees
which implied that West Bengal would be for the caste Hindu refugees. In fact, the
ruling government was unable to successfully cope with the overwhelming influx of
refugees from across the eastern border. Thus no state-sponsored rehabilitation policy
was in place in West Bengal. Nehru government’s negative stance about the Bengali
refugees and its refusal to incorporate them in the Centre's relief and resettlement policy
is one of the major reasons for this failure. Bashabi Fraser comments that the East
Pakistani refugees' rehabilitation “was not a major consideration at the Centre, unlike its
policy for their West Pakistan counterpart. Nehru’s deliberate non-recognition of the
East Bengali refugees’ presence took away from them their identity as displaced
Indians…” (30). As it was beyond the means of the state government to tackle the
refugee problem without proper central help, it carefully chose only the dalit for exile in
the harsh and unirrigated land of Dandakaranya in order to eliminate competition for the
people of their own caste. The author says that there were two motives behind pushing
them off to this uncultivated area rich in natural resources. Though there was no trace of
civilization in Dandakaranya, how hard it would be for the refugees to survive these
primitive circumstances did not bother the authorities in the least. First, it was a
convenient way to get rid of the dalit refugees from Bengal and secondly, their free
labour would be useful in making the area productive and habitable. The state wanted to
pass it off as a lucrative scheme for the camp-dwellers. The anxious refugees put up
resistance against this arbitrary diktat and the Communist Party of India which was yet to
come to power cashed in on their vulnerable condition. The author says:
One leader rushed from Calcutta to this distant camp in Shiromanipur, Bankura.
Holding the microphone to his lips, he goaded the anger of the people: ‘Do not
agree to go to Dandakaranya. Why should you go? You are from Bengal! And it
is in Bengal that you will stay! I will go to Delhi. I will fight for you. I will tell
them that they cannot send Bengalis outside Bengal. We are with you. Do not
lose heart (25).
The leaders organized meetings at the camps of different districts to urge action against
the contemporary ruling government. But in actual practice, they stayed back when the
refugees suffered due to oppressive government measures and police brutalities. More
than fifteen to twenty thousand Namo, Pod or Malo refugees started a movement from
Shiromanipur, Basudevpur, Bishnupur and other camps under Communist leadership
with a claim that the Bengalis should not be evicted from Bengal. The dole was stopped
to drive them to hunger, thereby weakening their movement. Initially, they tried to draw
the attention of the administration through hunger strike but the inhuman government
remained stolidly indifferent. Then their next step was to launch a protest march to the
city but the police stopped them at the point of entry and as a precaution against possible
vandalization of public property, section 144 CrPC was promulgated. One hundred and
fifty marchers, including Byapari’s father, were injured.
He reminisces that his father returned quite late wounded all over and writhed in pain all
night. The sight of his agonized father aggrieved the child author who, unable to
comprehend the full significance of the situation, swore vengeance on the police who
had beaten up his father. As a punishment, for challenging the state, the government
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officials struck off the dissenters’ names from the official refugee register to render them
stateless. They became illegal infiltrators to whom the nation did not owe any
responsibility regarding their citizenship rights. The abandoned refugee families
scattered all around West Bengal settled in every possible place amid dehumanizing
conditions. This was not the last time that the dalit refugees witnessed an
institutionalized violation of their human rights. The Marichjhapi massacre was yet
another case of blatant transgression of human rights. Byapari presents many unknown
facts about this chapter which, apart from its mention in Amitav Ghosh’s novel The
Hungry Tide and few research papers, remained ignored in mainstream partition history
for decades. After the resistance to the Dandakaranya project had been suppressed, many
dalit refugees had to accept their relocation outside West Bengal. But they could not
adjust to life in Dandakaranya for long due to unfavourable climate, barrenness of soil,
cultural unfamiliarity and the amount of hard labour they had to put in to earn their
living. Like the author, many felt sick of this primitive life and were yearning to come
back to Bengal. In Byapari’s words: "This was such a village that even if a World War
raged outside, the people here would have remained unaware of it. If the village had
been wiped out from the face of the earth, the world would not have known of it” (133).
They saw a ray of hope when the Communist Party of India (Marxist) came to power in
West Bengal in 1977. They thought that as the ruling party it would fulfil its pre-election
promise of reinstating the refugees in the Sundarban area of West Bengal. But the
Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Department 1979 issued the statement that “the
refugees were ‘in unauthorized occupation of Marichjhapi which is a part of the
Sundarbans Government Reserve Forest violating thereby the Forest Acts’” (qtd in Ross
Mallick (107). They could not imagine that the party would change its pro-refugee stance
so drastically. In spite of repeated assurance of non-interference made earlier, the police
was set upon the refugees arriving at the Marichjhapi Island. The author says that though
on the way they were harassed by the police, in April 1978, they finally set their foot on
the Island. Within a few months, the refugees most of whom were dalits, singlehandedly
transformed the desolate place into a town without any help from the outside world and
the opposing government. The author comments:
This uninhibited island was soon transformed into a bustling little town. Roads,
schools, markets, bread factories and bidi factories sprang up in no time. And all
this happened with no help from anybody outside the island. The only plea the
people had for the government was that they be allowed to remain on this island.
But this plea could hold meaning only for those who were humane (240).
In 1978-1979, the state government unleashed unspeakable atrocities on them by
cordoning the island off in order to starve them to death. Those who, driven insane by
hunger tried, to break through the police barricade were thrown into crocodile-infested
rivers. From January to May 1979, thousands of refugees were brutally slaughtered,
thrashed and killed of which there is not any definitive official record. Byapari
comments: “The Left Front declared that no refugee was killed in the Marichjhapi
incident. Only two people who were locals died in the police firing. This was a claim that
could not be disputed since no written records existed of how many refugees had entered
the island. From different records, it has been surmised that 14 people were killed on 31
January itself” (241). Annu Jalais highlights the indirect complicity of the central
government in the genocide. She comments: “How many of these deaths actually
occurred in Morichjhanpi we shall never know. However, what we do know is that no
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criminal charges were laid against any of the officials or politicians involved. Even the
then prime minister Morarji Desai, wishing to maintain the support of the Communists
for his government, decided not to pursue the matter” (1759). Bypari’s father fell prey to
police beating in an attempt to save his son Chitta’s life. His father had his ribs broken
by the blow of the rifle butt. In the absence of media coverage and any protest from the
intellectuals and the general public, the Left Front minimized the importance of this
brutal massacre and announced that nobody had been killed. But from his visit to
Marichjhapi, Byapari got to know that more than two thousand people had been killed
and two hundred women raped when “conscience of Awakened Bengal slept”(241).
And those refugees who survived the carnage had the nightmarish experience of being
randomly forced into the train like animals and sent from Marichjhapi. The poor refugees
got separated from their relatives; many ailing and wounded children and aged people
suffered in the train for want of food and medicine; and the dead bodies were mercilessly
thrown off the train. The state government whitewashed the Marichjhapi episode by
framing up the hapless refugees as illegal immigrants. Since no media representatives,
intellectuals, academics, writers had adequate knowledge about the massacre; it was easy
to blame the victimized for the government. Byapari comments: “It was alleged that a
group of people, with the active cooperation of the neighbouring nation of Bangladesh,
had crossed the border into India with the objective of creating a separate nation here.
This improbable declaration had not met with any objection from the many fellow
Bengalis who resided in West Bengal” (241). Byapari’s family, mauled and broken in
spirit, had to come back to Dandakaranya. And again another chapter of struggle started
for them. The author’s account highlights the fact that after the colonial regime was over,
the state machinery and civil society monopolized by the caste Hindus combined to
operate as an oppressive machine of colonization. The concept of good governance is
still a sham for the dalit refugees since they are regarded as the unacknowledged 'other'
of the citizenry. It can be said that in West Bengal, the tradition of enjoying caste
privilege and its public repudiation go hand in hand with caste- blindness in partition
discourse.
In his autobiography, Byapari traces his roller-coaster ride through life in which he
experienced repeated relocation, estrangement from his family, hunger, insecurity,
imprisonment for joining the Naxalite movement, had a chance meeting with Mahasweta
Devi, articulated his literary self and made his entry into the literary world of bhadraloks.
Driven by perpetual hunger and a rebellious spirit, he had to change his vocation as
frequently as his precarious life and times demanded. In unravelling the history of his
journey as a cook, rickshaw-puller, revolutionary and litterateur, he uses post-partition
West Bengal as a backdrop which had an overwhelmingly negative impact on the chain
of events in his life since childhood. As he records his memories, experiences, feelings,
emotions and anger, these seem to be shared by those millions of hapless dalit refugees
who were rendered socio-economically paralyzed over generations. His subjective
account of and reflections on how partition scarred his own life and that of millions like
him vindicate the human dignity of those who are just reduced to numbers in official
statistical records and urge the readers to unlearn the biases ingrained in them by
Brahminical conditioning .His autobiography is a valuable social document which acts as
counter-narrative in dismantling the strategic silence and hypocrisy in partition studies
regarding the caste issues. He unfailingly underlines the importance of ‘speaking up’
which has the potential to reorient the normativity of refugee perspective.
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Works Cited
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New York: Routledge, 2016, 60-82. Print.
Byapari, Manoranjan. Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit.
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Kenneth Bo Nielsen. New York: Routledge, 2016, 83-102.Print.
Fraser, Bashabi. Introduction in Bengal Partition Stories: An Unclosed Chapter.
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Ghosh, Amitav. The Hungry Tide. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2012. Print.
Jalais, Annu. “Dwelling on Morichjhanpi: When Tigers Became 'Citizens', Refugees
'Tiger-Food'.” Economic and Political Weekly 40.17 (2005): 1757–1762. Web.
Mallick, Ross. “Refugee Resettlement in Forest Reserves: West Bengal Policy Reversal
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