[Reader-list] posting

[debjani sengupta]

Hello everyone. This is my first posting and I must
introduce myself (although virtually). It feels a
little unreal that I shall be writing and reading a
lot of people whom I shall meet many months later, and
by then I would know a lot about some of you as some
of you would know me.
 I am Debjani and I suspect I am the oldest among the
I-fellows this year. I teach literatures in English at
Indraprastha College in Delhi and read in my spare
time. Sometimes I translate short stories from Bangla
to English as I love to work with words.

My research proposal is called Colony Fiction: Refugee
Colonies and their Representation in Post Partition
Calcutta. I will be looking at the history of
migration and refugee settlement in Calcutta, but
through the lens of literature.
 My training has been about reading texts and I will
look at short stories,essays, plays and films, roughly
between the years1948 to 68 and see how the refugee
colony figures in them.

A city thrives and grows if there is a rhythmic flow
of people from outside. Calcutta is no exception. By
1951, the  city recorded an enormous influx of people
from East Bengal, now Bangladesh, a migration so large
that the 'displaced persons' made up nearly 18 percent
of the city's population.

The refugees establish colonies in and around the
Calcutta Metropolitan area. Named after famous
Benglais like Netaji and Rabindranath, these spaces
play out the silent drama of identity, survival, exile
amd rootlessness.

 From these spaces emerge some familiar stereotypes of
Bengali Popular Fiction. The lumpen political cadre,
the fallen woman, the desperate clerk walking the
dusty pavements have their genesis in the colonies.
The city viewed them with suspicion and wariness.  The
refugee was different from the original inhabitants.
Speaking their peculiar tongue,  their weary eyes, 
their marginality and their lonely optimism made them 
stand out amongst the citizens of Calcutta.

 To look at Colony Fictions is to see the ways in
which the city responded to this enormous humanitarian
and political crisis. The refugee colonies generated
their own discourse of anxiety and accomodation and
created their own spaces of political and economic
thoughts that were in turn reflected in the way
Calcutta thought about itself.

I wish to look at texts, talk to writers and colony
residents, look at corporation and municipal archives
to see the extent colonies shaped and reshaped
themselves as did their inhabitants. By August, I hope
to hand over all this material. I think I would also
have a full length paper on what conclusions I have
drawn.
I would be pleased if some of you asked questions on
what I have written. It is always fruitful to know how
one's hobby-horses appear to others. Bye and goodnight.

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