Problematizing the Hegemonic Conceptualization of Refugeehood in West Bengal: A Study of Manoranjan Byapari’s Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit

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.