The Trauma and the Triumph : Gender and Partition in Eastern India, Vol. II

Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction/Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta. I. Short Stories: 1. Riot/Ishaq Chakhari. 2. Hearth and home/Hasan Azizul Haq. 3. Dialectic/Selina Hossain. 4. The woman who sold wares/Samaresh Basu. 5. Biological/Narendranath Mitra. 6. The restless Sannyasi/Sulekha Sanyal. II. Reminiscences: 7. Women become breadwinners/Hena Chaudhuri. 8. Grandmother/Shanta Sen. 9. Wandering through different spaces/Himani Bannerji. 10. From partition to liberation and thereafter/Meghna Guhathakurta. 11. Kaloibibi: a leader of the Nankars/Hena Das. III. Interviews: 12. Voices form the other side: i. Sultana Farooq Sobhan/Debjani Dutta. ii. Taiyeba Ahmed/Debjani Dutta. iii. Nazara Huq/Debjani Dutta. iv. Sunanda Ghosh/Reba Lala. v. Kishwar Jahan/Gargi Chakravarty. vi. Naseema Dey/Subhoranjan Dasgupta and Subhasri Ghosh. IV. Screenplay: 13. Way back home/Supriyo Sen. V. From the field: 14. Forgotten voices form the P.L. Camps/Subhasri Ghosh and Debjani Dutta. 15. Voices from two villages/Syed Tanveer Nasreen. 16. Unravelling the past: remembering the communal violence of 1950 in Hooghly/Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury. VI. Documentary evidence: 16. Communal tension in Bengal and the riots of 1946/S.P.G. Taylor. 17. Assembly proceedings. 18. Mridula Sarabhai, report on communal situation and riots in Calcutta in 1950. Bibliography. List of editors and contributors. Index.

"The Trauma and the Triumph, Volume 2, continues the discussion on partition in the eastern region, focusing more fully on both East Bengal and West Bengal. The editors have been guided by the intention \'to incorporate as much of the Muslim voices and experiences often taking place on the other side of the divide, that is, erstwhile East Pakistan or present-day Bangladesh\'. They have also called attention to the lives of some Muslim women residing in West Bengal.
 
Countering the critique that the eastern partition has not been adequately reflected in creativity, in contrast to what one finds on the traumatic experiences of the western partition of the Punjab, the editors raise the pertinent question of whether such representation could be measured at all. They refer to Günter Grass\'s comment that instead of asking whether literature could capture the demonic nature of the Holocaust, people should \'preserve and evaluate what has been produced\'. The editors suggest this holds true for our partition literature too.

Part I begins with short stories from both sides of the border, that share common themes of grief and conflict. Part II presents reminiscences that support the narrative of the short stories, offering an account of survival struggles\' of a grandmother\'s desperate flight to safety, of the reflections on space and identity, of the migration of a woman (born in a Hindu family) from Kolkata to East Pakistan to Kolkata, and then to Canada.  Two thought-provoking pieces are situated wholly in East Pakistan: on a Hindu professor and his family\'s decision to remain in Dhaka, witness to the later war of liberation. The second is an account of Kaloibibi, the remarkable woman leader of the Nankar Rebellion, in Sylhet, 1949-50.
 
The interviews capture the intricate nature of migration and of non-migration, covering Hindus who moved from East Bengal, Muslims of West Bengal who moved to East Pakistan and those who chose to remain. Part IV presents a screenplay of an elderly couple who return to their old home in Bangladesh, utilizing aspects of remembrance to construct its own cinematic narrative, underlain by \'the quest for regeneration and redemption\'. Part V takes the reader to interviews in the permanent liability camps that still hold the original refugees of partition, dwelling on the implications of the failures of state policy. Of special interest is the study from two villages where the voices of the women of the minority community can be clearly heard. Finally, Part VI offers extracts from state documents, 1946-57, on the themes of communal violence, of the abduction of women, and their rehabilitation.

Presenting hitherto unavailable writings, this volume makes a valuable contribution towards the understanding of partition in the eastern region." (jacket)