[Reader-list] deuxieme posting

[debjani sengupta]

Have been reading some of the postings of Sarai
fellows and enjoying them. I was a little worried
about what to write in my second posting but then I
thought I should write about all that I have been
doing in the past month connected with my project.

On 14th February, Valentine's Day, I attended a
seminar here in Delhi, a national consultation towards
building an archive on the Partition of India.
Organised by the Centre of Refugee Studies, Jadavpur
University and Maulana Abul Klam Azad Institute of
Asian Studies, Kolkata, the consultation brought
together scholars, academics, publishers, researchers
to discuss the modalities of going about this mammoth
project. This archive will be different from the
National and other Sate archives already extant. This
will be a civil society archive focused on the
ordinary people's experience of the Partition.

What was even more interesting was to hear that this
archive will focus on diaries, reminiscences,
photographs and documentary films. They will also look
at fictional literature, 'history's creative
counterpart'  to get an insight into the trauma of
displaced people.

The seminar was a confirmation in a way of what I have
planned on doing in my project and a validation of my
sense of urgency to bring together evidences from
unusual sources about a particular historical event.
It was good to see national level institutions now
coming together to put together an archive about the
Partition.  I have thought about and believed all
along that such an effort was not only possible but
urgently necessary.

It is not a coincidence that Jadavpur University is
taking a lead in this project. The vast hinterland of
Jadavpur is the home of hundreds of colonies in
Bijoygarh, Bagha Jatin, Rani kuthi, Netaji Nagar. Many
of the inhabitants of these colonies are now in their
eighties and nineties. There is very little time left
before their memories and experiences are recorded and
preserved or they may be lost fore ever.

On this issue of the Biblio, a journal that reviews
new books, I have written about Gargi Chakravartty's
'Coming Out Of Partition: Refugee Women Of Bengal.'
Gargi is the daughter of Savitri Roy, one of Bangla's
truly political novelists whose 'Swaralipi' and
'Bwadwip' are novels based on the experiences of
migration and displacement resulting from the
Partition. Roy used to live in Vivek Nagar, a colony
in Kasba where she came in close contact with
refugees. Working among the women there have
influenced her life and work. Gargi's book is another
exploration of the same theme. The disintegration of
the joint families forced the refugee women to come
out of the andarmahal and join forces with other women
in the street, Their activism gave the Women's
movement in Bengal a peculiar sharpness and focus. The
trajectories of the lives of the refugee women is of
course another history, another story.  In another
land. Besides, the wenches are dead! 




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