Mobilising the Migrants: The Role of the UCRC in the Indian State of West Bengal - A Critical Assessment

Abstract

International migrants are generally seen either as victims and/or as potentially threatening. The present paper humbly contests these traditional perceptions and tries to probe the issue based on the experiences of the 'heroic' role of the East Bengali migrants from the erstwhile East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh) in 1950s and 1960s in the body polity of the Indian state of West Bengal, and especially the role of an indigenous refugee organisation, namely, the left-dominated United Central Refugee Council or UCRC.Then it seeks to interrogate critically the 'social bases' of the UCRC and tries to capture the dialectics of its relationship with the 'other' subaltern refugee organisations and leaders in the light of recent developments. In this connection it revisits the unsuccessful attempts ofJogen Mandal to launch an effective organisation of the scheduled caste refugees; the process of resettlement of (mostly) dalit refugees at the far away Dandakaranya camp; and lastly reconnects this with the Marichjhapi massacre in the late 1970s and the rise of the subaltern Matuas as one of the catalysts of change or 'parivartan' in the long rule of the LF in West Bengal.