The Refugee Woman: Partition of Bengal, Gender, and the Political
The Refugee Woman examines the Partition of 1947 by engaging with the cultural imagination of the ‘refugee woman’ in West Bengal, particularly in three significant texts of the Partition of Bengal-Ritwik Ghatak’s film Meghe Dhaka Tara; and two novels, Jyotirmoyee Devi’s Epar Ganga, Opar Ganga and Sabitri Roy’s Swaralipi. It shows that the figure of the refugee woman, animated by the history of the political left and refugee movements, and shaped by powerful cultural narratives, can contest and reconstitute the very political imagination of ‘woman’ that emerged through the long history of dominant cultural nationalisms. The reading it offers elucidates some of the complexities of nationalist, communal, and communist gender-politics of a key period in post-independence Bengal.
Contents: Introduction: The refugee woman from East Bengal. 1. The problematic: ‘woman’ as a metaphor for the nation. 2. Violence of the metaphor: Jyotirmoyee Devi’s Epar Ganga, Opar Ganga (the river churning. 3. A critique of metaphor-making: Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara (cloud-capped star). 4. Beyond the metaphor: woman as political subject, women in collectives in Sabitri Roy’s Swaralipi (the notations). Conclusion: reading beyond the refugee woman from East Bengal. Bibliography. Index.
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