Download or read book Identity and Experience at the India Bangladesh Border written by Debdatta Chowdhury and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The effects of the partition of India in 1947 have been more far-reaching and complex than the existing partition narratives of violence and separation reveal. The immediacy of the movement of refugees between India and the newly-formed state of Pakistan overshadowed the actual effect of the drawing of the border between the two states. The book is an empirical study of border narratives across the India-Bangladesh border, specifically the West Bengal part of India’s border with Bangladesh. It tries to move away from the perpetrator state-victim civilian framework usually used in the studies of marginal people, and looks at the kind of agencies that the border people avail themselves of. Instead of looking at the border as the periphery, the book looks at it as the line of convergence and negotiations—the ‘centre of the people’ who survive it every day. It shows that various social, political and economic identities converge at the borderland and is modified in unique ways by the spatial specificity of the border—thus, forming a ‘border identity’ and a ‘border consciousness’. Common sense of the civilians and the state machinery (embodied in the border guards) collide, cooperate and effect each other at the borderlands to form this unique spatial consciousness. It is the everyday survival strategies of the border people which aptly reflects this consciousness rather than any universal border theory or state-centric discourses about the borders. A bottom-up approach is of utmost importance in order to understand how a spatially unique area binds diverse other identities into a larger spatial identity of a ‘border people’. The book’s relevance lies in its attempt to explore such everyday narratives across the Bengal border, while avoiding any major theorising project so as not to choke the potential of such experience-centred insights into the lives of a unique community of people. In that, it contributes towards a study of borders globally, providing potential approaches to understand border people worldwide. Based on detailed field research, this book brings a fresh approach to the study of this border. It will be of interest to researchers in the field of South Asian studies, citizenship, development, governance and border studies.
Download or read book A Story of Ambivalent Modernization in Bangladesh and West Bengal written by Pranab Chatterjee and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book details the evolution of Bengali culture (in both Bangladesh and West Bengal) since antiquity and argues for its modernization. Originally peripheral to Hindu civilization based in North India, Bengali culture was subjected to various forms of Sanskritization. Centuries of invasions (1204-1757) resulted most notably in the Islamization of Bengal. Often there were conflicts between Sanskritization and Islamization. Later colonization of Bengal by Britain (1757) led to a process of Anglicization, which created a new middle class in Bengal that, in turn, created a form of elitism among the Bengali Hindu upper caste. After British rule ended (1947), Bengali culture lost its elitist status in South Asia and has undergone severe marginalization. Political instability and economic insufficiency, as reflected by many quantitative and qualitative indicators, are common and contribute to pervasive unemployment, alienation, vigilantism, and instability in the entire region. A Story of Ambivalent Modernization in Bangladesh and West Bengal is appropriate not only for Bengali intellectuals and scholars but for sociologists, political scientists, cultural anthropologists, historians, and others interested in a case study of how and why a given culture becomes derailed from its path toward modernization.
Download or read book Bangladeshi Migrants in India written by Rizwana Shamshad and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In January 2011, Felani Khatun was shot dead while attempting to cross the border from India to Bangladesh. Her body remained hung on the fence as a warning to those who illegally crossed an international border. Migration to India from the current geographical and political entity called Bangladesh is more than a century old and had begun long before the nation states were created in South Asia. Often termed as ‘foreigners’ and ‘infiltrators’, Bangladeshi migrants such as Felani find their way into India for the promise of a better future. Post 1971, there has been a steady movement of people from Bangladesh into India, both as refugees and for economic need, making this migration a complex area of inquiry. This book focuses on the contemporary issue of undocumented Bangladeshi migration to the three Indian states of Assam, West Bengal, and Delhi, and how the migrants are perceived in light of the ongoing discourses on the various nationalisms in India. Each state has a unique history and has taken different measures to respond to Bangladeshi migrants present in the state. Based on extensive fieldwork and insightful interviews with influential members from key political parties, civil society organizations, and Hindu and ethnic nationalist bodies in these states, the book explores the place and role of Bangladeshi migrants in relation to the inherent tension of Indian nationalism.
Download or read book Contradictory Lives written by Lisa I. Knight and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-10 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this multi-sited ethnographic study, Knight explores the everyday lives of women of the Baul tradition of musical mystics in India and Bangladesh. She demonstrates that Baul women construct a meaningful life as they navigate between conflicting expectations of Bauls to be carefree and of women to be modest.
Download or read book Population Dynamics in Eastern India and Bangladesh written by Aparajita Chattopadhyay and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights historical and current perspectives on population issues in the Bengali-speaking states of India (i.e., West Bengal, Tripura, Assam) and Bangladesh and explores three core population dynamics: fertility, mortality–morbidity and development. Furthermore, it presents a selection of revealing cases from area-specific micro-studies, mainly conducted in West Bengal and Bangladesh. The book covers various demographic and health issues in these two regions, which are similar in terms of several sociocultural aspects, yet dissimilar in terms of their policies and programs. Adopting an integrated approach that combines various disciplines and perspectives, it explores highly topical issues such as social inequality, religious difference and mental health. The book is intended for a broad readership interested in population studies, sociology and development, including academics, researchers, planners and policymakers.
Download or read book Crossing the Bay of Bengal written by Sunil S. Amrith and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-07 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Indian Ocean was global long before the Atlantic, and today the countries bordering the Bay of Bengal—India, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia—are home to one in four people on Earth. Crossing the Bay of Bengal places this region at the heart of world history for the first time. Integrating human and environmental history, and mining a wealth of sources, Sunil Amrith gives a revelatory and stirring new account of the Bay and those who have inhabited it. For centuries the Bay of Bengal served as a maritime highway between India and China, and then as a battleground for European empires, all while being shaped by the monsoons and by human migration. Imperial powers in the nineteenth century, abetted by the force of capital and the power of steam, reconfigured the Bay in their quest for coffee, rice, and rubber. Millions of Indian migrants crossed the sea, bound by debt or spurred by drought, and filled with ambition. Booming port cities like Singapore and Penang became the most culturally diverse societies of their time. By the 1930s, however, economic, political, and environmental pressures began to erode the Bay’s centuries-old patterns of interconnection. Today, rising waters leave the Bay of Bengal’s shores especially vulnerable to climate change, at the same time that its location makes it central to struggles over Asia’s future. Amrith’s evocative and compelling narrative of the region’s pasts offers insights critical to understanding and confronting the many challenges facing Asia in the decades ahead.
Download or read book Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America written by Vivek Bald and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-07 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Award Winner of the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for History A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year A Saveur “Essential Food Books That Define New York City” Selection In the final years of the nineteenth century, small groups of Muslim peddlers arrived at Ellis Island every summer, bags heavy with embroidered silks from their home villages in Bengal. The American demand for “Oriental goods” took these migrants on a curious path, from New Jersey’s beach boardwalks into the heart of the segregated South. Two decades later, hundreds of Indian Muslim seamen began jumping ship in New York and Baltimore, escaping the engine rooms of British steamers to find less brutal work onshore. As factory owners sought their labor and anti-Asian immigration laws closed in around them, these men built clandestine networks that stretched from the northeastern waterfront across the industrial Midwest. The stories of these early working-class migrants vividly contrast with our typical understanding of immigration. Vivek Bald’s meticulous reconstruction reveals a lost history of South Asian sojourning and life-making in the United States. At a time when Asian immigrants were vilified and criminalized, Bengali Muslims quietly became part of some of America’s most iconic neighborhoods of color, from Tremé in New Orleans to Detroit’s Black Bottom, from West Baltimore to Harlem. Many started families with Creole, Puerto Rican, and African American women. As steel and auto workers in the Midwest, as traders in the South, and as halal hot dog vendors on 125th Street, these immigrants created lives as remarkable as they are unknown. Their stories of ingenuity and intermixture challenge assumptions about assimilation and reveal cross-racial affinities beneath the surface of early twentieth-century America.
Download or read book A History of Bangladesh written by Willem van Schendel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bangladesh did not exist as an independent state until 1971. Willem van Schendel's state-of-the-art history navigates the extraordinary twists and turns that created modern Bangladesh through ecological disaster, colonialism, partition, a war of independence and cultural renewal. In this revised and updated edition, Van Schendel offers a fascinating and highly readable account of life in Bangladesh over the last two millennia. Based on the latest academic research and covering the numerous historical developments of the 2010s, he provides an eloquent introduction to a fascinating country and its resilient and inventive people. A perfect survey for travellers, expats, students and scholars alike.
Download or read book The Bengal Borderland written by Willem van Schendel and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Bengal Borderland' constitutes the epicentre of the partition of British India. Yet while the forging of international borders between India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma (the 'Bengal Borderland') has been a core theme in Partition studies, these crucial borderlands have, remarkably, been largely ignored by historians.
Download or read book Partition as Border Making written by Sayeed Ferdous and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically analyzes the Partition experiences from East Bengal in 1947 and its prolonged aftermath leading to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. It looks at how newly emerged borderlands at the time of Partition affected lives and triggered prolonged consequences for the people living in East Bengal/Bangladesh. The author brings to the fore unheard voices and unexplored narratives, especially those relating the experience of different groups of Muslims in the midst of the falling apart of the unified Muslim identity. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research and archival resources, the volume analyzes various themes such as partition literature, local narratives of border-making, smuggling, border violence, refugees, identity conflicts, border crossing, and experiences of the Bihari Muslims and the Hindus of East Pakistan, among others. A unique study in border-making, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of history, South Asian history, Partition studies, oral history, anthropology, political history, refugee studies, minority studies, political science, and borderland studies.
Download or read book Jungle Passports written by Malini Sur and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2021-08-06 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the nineteenth century, a succession of states has classified the inhabitants of what are now the borderlands of Northeast India and Bangladesh as Muslim "frontier peasants," "savage mountaineers," and Christian "ethnic minorities," suspecting them to be disloyal subjects, spies, and traitors. In Jungle Passports Malini Sur follows the struggles of these people to secure shifting land, gain access to rice harvests, and smuggle the cattle and garments upon which their livelihoods depend against a background of violence, scarcity, and India's construction of one of the world's longest and most highly militarized border fences. Jungle Passports recasts established notions of citizenship and mobility along violent borders. Sur shows how the division of sovereignties and distinct regimes of mobility and citizenship push undocumented people to undertake perilous journeys across previously unrecognized borders every day. Paying close attention to the forces that shape the life-worlds of deportees, refugees, farmers, smugglers, migrants, bureaucrats, lawyers, clergy, and border troops, she reveals how reciprocity and kinship and the enforcement of state violence, illegality, and border infrastructures shape the margins of life and death. Combining years of ethnographic and archival fieldwork, her thoughtful and evocative book is a poignant testament to the force of life in our era of closed borders, insularity, and "illegal migration."
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis written by Kunal Chakrabarti and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bengali (Bangla) speaking people are located in the northeastern part of South Asia, particularly in Bangladesh and two states of India – West Bengal and Tripura. There are almost 246 million Bengalis at present, which makes them the fifth largest speech community in the world. Despite political and social divisions, they share a common literary and musical culture and several habits of daily existence which impart to them a distinct identity. The Bengalis are known for their political consciousness and cultural accomplishments The Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis provides an overview of the Bengalis across the world from the earliest Chalcolithic cultures to the present. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 750 cross-referenced dictionary entries on politicians, educators and entrepreneurs, leaders of religious and secular institutions, writers, painters, actors and other cultural figures, and more generally, on the economy, education, political parties, religions, women and minorities, literature, art and architecture, music, cinema and other major sectors. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Bengalis.
Download or read book India Bangladesh Relations on Border Management Politics written by Mari McGovern and published by Alpha Edition. This book was released on 2018-08-18 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bangladesh-India relations are perhaps the most complex bilateral relations in the subcontinent. Despite its role in Bangladesh's independence in 1971, India is often perceived as serving its own self-interests against Pakistan. With the signing of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1972, the two countries attempted to improve their relations to no avail. As a result, decades-old issues concerning land, water, illegal migration, and border security still remain, as does Bangladesh's seeking of favorable access to Indian markets, particularly for its widely exported garment products. On August 1, 2015, despite its peripheral status in bilateral negotiations, India and Bangladesh formally exchanged 162 enclaves strewn along shared borders--low-cost concessions for both, yet a possible template for successful future relations. Bangladesh and India share a common border of 4096 km running through five states, namely, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Managing such a diverse border is a complex task but vital from the point of view of national security. There are 162 enclaves between Bangladesh and India. The enclaves provide an important site for scrutinizing the connections between bordering practices and sovereignty claims. Uncertain borders not only raise bilateral tensions but also facilitate cross-border infiltration, illegal migration, smuggling and crime. Illegal migration has emerged as one of the major national security challenges. The India-Bangladesh border has been described as the 'problem area of tomorrow'. The problems include illegal migration, smuggling, and trans-border movement of insurgents, which are serious threats to the security of the country. This book will be invaluable for students and scholars of history, politics and international relations. The book should be also be of interest to the policy makers and other stakeholders who wish to develop insight into intricate areas of discord between Bangladesh and India and the possible resolutions suggested by the young minds.
Download or read book Constructing Bangladesh written by Sufia M. Uddin and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006-12-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlighting the dynamic, pluralistic nature of Islamic civilization, Sufia M. Uddin examines the complex history of Islamic state formation in Bangladesh, formerly the eastern part of the Indian province of Bengal. Uddin focuses on significant moments in the region's history from medieval to modern times, examining the interplay of language, popular and scholarly religious literature, and the colonial experience as they contributed to the creation of a unique Bengali-Islamic identity. During the precolonial era, Bengali, the dominant regional language, infused the richly diverse traditions of the region, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and, eventually, the Islamic religion and literature brought by Urdu-speaking Muslim conquerors from North India. Islam was not simply imported into the region by the ruling elite, Uddin explains, but was incorporated into local tradition over hundreds of years of interactions between Bengalis and non-Bengali Muslims. Constantly contested and negotiated, the Bengali vision of Islamic orthodoxy and community was reflected in both language and politics, which ultimately produced a specifically Bengali-Muslim culture. Uddin argues that this process in Bangladesh is representative of what happens elsewhere in the Muslim world and is therefore an instructive example of the complex and fluid relations between local heritage and the greater Islamic global community, or umma.
Download or read book The Bedes of Bengal written by Carmen Brandt and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2018 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Bengali speaking regions of Bangladesh and India, the Bengali term bede today often evokes stereotypical imaginations of itinerant people. Of highly contested origin, the term has in the last two hundred years become the pivotal element for categorising and portraying diverse service nomads of the Bengal region. Besides an analysis of their portrayal in ethnographic and Bengali fictional literature, this book traces causes, reasons, and processes that have led to an increasing perception of these so-called `Bedes' as being ethnically different from the sedentary majority population.
Download or read book History of the Bengali speaking People written by Nitish K. Sengupta and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History Of The Bengali Speaking People Is A History Of The People Who Speak Bengali In Bangladesh And The Indian State Of West Bengal And Other Bengali-Speaking Areas Of The Country - From The Earliest Recorded Times To 1947 When The Indian Subcontinent Was Partitioned Into India And Pakistan, And Nearly Two Thirds Of Undivided Bengal Went Out Of India. The Study Starts With The Origin Of The Bengalee Race And Traces The Growth Of Bengali Language, Which Is The One Great Motivating Force That Binds Together Racially Different People Who Converse In This Language. The Study Focuses On The Political History Of The Bengalees From The Earliest Times To The Time When The Two Bengals Stopped Sharing A Common Political History. It Delves Into The Cultural, Linguistic, Literary And Social Aspects Of Bengal'S Development Only In So Far As They Have A Direct Impact On The Political Developments Of The Time.
Download or read book Lajja written by Tasalimā Nāsarina and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 1994 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lajja, The Controversial Novel By Bangladeshi Writer Taslima Nasrin, Is A Savage Indictment Of Religious Extremism And Man S Inhumanity To Man. The Duttas-Sudhamoy, Kironmoyee, And Their Two Children, Suranjan And Maya-Have Lived In Bangladesh All Their Lives. Despite Being Part Of The Country S Small Hindu Community, That Is Terrorized At Every Opportunity By Muslim Fundamentalists, They Refuse To Leave Their Country, As Most Of Their Friends And Relatives Have Done. Sudhamoy, An Atheist, Believes With A Naive Mix Of Optimism And Idealism That His Motherland Will Not Let Him Down.... And Then, On 6 December 1992, The Babri Masjid At Ayodhya In India Is Demolished By A Mob Of Hindu Fundamentalists. The World Condemns The Incident, But Its Fallout Is Felt Most Acutely In Bangladesh, Where Muslim Mobs Begin To Seek Out And Attack The Hindus.... The Nightmare Inevitably Arrives At The Duttas Doorstep-And Their World Begins To Fall Apart.... Unremittingly Dark And Menacing, The Novel Exposes The Mindless Bloodthirstiness Of Fundamentalism And Brilliantly Captures The Insanity Of Violence In Our Time.
