Papers by Sarbani Banerjee
Postcolonial Text, 2018
In this paper, I read Sunanda Sikdar’s memoir Doyamoyeer Katha ( Doyamoyee’s Tale , 2008, Bengali... more In this paper, I read Sunanda Sikdar’s memoir Doyamoyeer Katha ( Doyamoyee’s Tale , 2008, Bengali) and study how an East Bengali immigrant woman presents her perceptions beyond the nationalistic history as well as the key motifs of Bengali refugee past. I examine the development of Doyamoyee’s heterogeneous identity and emphasize the importance of revisiting stereotypical and canonical artworks produced by the immigrant bhadralok, through juxtaposing these works with non-bhadralok refugee experiences. The mainstream writings have emotionally used the Partition memory and repeatedly tinted everyday realities of rural East Bengal with identical cliches, whereas Sikdar’s writings, as I argue, are based on the absence of typified emotive tropes. By understanding the category to which Doyamoyee belongs and studying her heretical perspectives, this paper demonstrates the difficulties of confining her identity into a fixed category of refugee-ness as belonging to the middle-class.
In this thesis, I problematize the dominance of East Bengali bhadralok immigrant’s memory in the ... more In this thesis, I problematize the dominance of East Bengali bhadralok immigrant’s memory in the context of literary-cultural discourses on the Partition of Bengal (1947). By studying post-Partition Bengali literature and cinema produced by upper-caste upper/middleclass East Bengali immigrant artists, such as Jyotirmoyee Devi’s novel The River Churning (Epar Ganga Opar Ganga 1967, Bengali) and Ritwik Ghatak’s film The Cloud-Capped Star (Meghe Dhaka Tara 1960, Bengali), I show how canonical artworks have propounded elitist truisms to the detriment of the non-bhadra refugees’ representations. To challenge these works, I compare them with perspectives available in Other refugee writers’ texts. These include Dalit first-generation literates’ experiences, as described in Adhir Biswas’ memoirs Deshbhager Smriti (Memory of Partition 2010, Bengali), Allar Jomite Paa (Stepping on the Land of Allah 2012, Bengali), and Manoranjan Byapari’s autobiography Itibritte Chandal Jibon (Memoir of Chand...
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2020
ABSTRACT This article examines how Jyotirmoyee Devi’s Bengali novel The River Churning (Epar Gang... more ABSTRACT This article examines how Jyotirmoyee Devi’s Bengali novel The River Churning (Epar Ganga Opar Ganga), first published in 1967, can be read not only in terms of the female protagonist and riot victim’s gendered trauma and emotional hurdles, but also as her ambitious journey to achieve bhadralok-centric caste- and class-based social goals. It argues that it is inadequate to look at the post-Partition crises of a female riot victim only through the lens of feminism; rather, in order to gain a holistic view of her adverse position, or the lack thereof, her class, caste, and communal identities need to be considered. A narrow feminist understanding of a riot-scathed woman’s mind can lead to a sentimentalized perspective, obscuring the possibilities of her achieving agency. In an Indian setting, in addition to gender, caste, community, and class can help to understand the overall sense of loss of a pariah and supposedly “raped” woman.
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Papers by Sarbani Banerjee