The Marichjhapii incident brings to mind my rather innocent encounter with the refugee rehabilitation travails of our government in the aftermath of independence and the Bangladesh wars. This was when we were in the Andamans last year and at my insistence the parents agreed to stay a couple of nights on Havelock Island. Lately, (2006, not so lately I guess) Havelock has become a fairly well known place after a certain Time magazine issue listed Radhanagar beach on Havelock as one amongst the 10 best beaches in Asia. It takes roughly 2-5 hours from Port Blair on sea to get to Havelock depending on the type of boat/steamer/launch you’re going in.
It’s a tiny island (22 kms in length and less than half that in breadth), which I’d read up about before our trip. So I had the geography of the island in mind, something I like to do before I go to anyplace. I must have a look at a map once at least. Despite all my reading up the biggest shock came when, reaching this tiny island consisting of one village, we realized that the local dialect was Bangal – the east Bengal version of the Bengali I’m used to speaking in Kolkata. In answer to my puzzled looks my father shared what he knew about the rehabilitation programmes set up by the GOI and the state governments to address the refugee migration problems. A large chunk of refugees coming in from Bangladesh were settled into areas around Kolkata and horror of horrors, a certain group was sent off on this island to be rehabilitated! As I read about Marichjhapi and the origin of the settlements in Sunderbans it is difficult to ignore the deep intertwining of caste in our DNAs. The refugee resettlements were guided by this too! High caste/better off people getting lands in around Kolkata to settle in whilst the lower castes sent off to places like Havelock.
Now Havelock, other than two roads and a maybe a handful of shops selling regular fmcg goods is an entirely forested island with at most 30% land cleared up for farming and village life. And this was 2010. Imagine having been uprooted from your homeland, forced to flee to a foreign country and then practically sentenced to a life of complete isolation on a dense forested island 1000 miles from mainland, 3 days by any ship today. Being able to comprehend the local dialect helped in interacting with locals and personal histories were shared. In complete awe I listened to the stories of the current generation relating their grandparents’ adventures in rebuilding their lives again. What I took away from those stories was realising the immeasurable strength of the human resolve. To be left with no choice and overcome a forced undeserved fate, heroically or rather plainly (deprived of my romanticised notions) I cannot say, but overcome it all nevertheless. Today the village on Havelock seems just about as well off as any other village in mainland Bengal. Of course school, hospital is a problem. The lack of easy mobility limits the development of this isolated community in certain ways I’m sure.
3 comments:
Every story of forced mass migration is actually a story bolstering the view that the state despite all its attempts at being omnipotent and efficacious in all its pursuits, fails to respect human dignity and aspirations often.
your description of life in Havlock island is interesting because i had been there way, way back in 1995 when i was too young to feel anything except surprise on discovering people speaking Bengali there. obviously their life on the island must be hard but don't you feel they are better off in the sparsely-populated, forested region-especially given the fact that the other population groups living in A&N islands are the aboriginal groups like Jarwas, Little Andamenese etc who have lived beyond the pale of Indian civilisation for long-than those migrants who were relocated to Dandakarnya or the North East where they had to re-allign themselves to the existing cultural life of the place. I agree that the upper caste, middle class migrants got better rehabilitation but it is the repelling reality that casteism has for long played a major role in the state policy initiatives.(A friend of mine who went to Bihar as an aid worker during the Koshi floods two years ago discovered to her greatest horror, that upper caste people were given priority over Dalits when it came to distribution of food, medicine etc). But the plight of 'illegal' Muslim and poor Hindu refugees from Bangladesh in Assam continues to be disturbing to put it mildly. they continue to live in constantly volatile socio-political milieu as there is hostility between them and the also socio-economically marginalised ethnic, tribal populations of the region.
ac- Yes, I guess people on an isolated island may have been handed a better fate, relatively. Though I never can take an absolute stand on these things; always looking at problems unique to both populations and my inability to compare them.
Your friend's experience sounds particularly disturbing.
Thanks for the comments :)
Hi,
Of course one cannot make sweeping statements and it is also also fallacious on my part to have compared the two because as you have rightly said, the experiences of these groups have been very different and so has been their struggle. But yes, one idea that i stand by is the inability of the nation state to deal with the problems created by itself. following is the link to a thought provoking article that elaborates the perspective.
http://criticalencounters.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/thinking-about-%E2%80%98the-contemporary%E2%80%99-between-interdisciplinarity-and-indisciplinarity/#more-106
maybe if you manage to find the time to read you should begin from the para that goes like this."...or these have to do with another kind of waste: the waste or the excreta of nation-states and Development, in the form of their enless production of non-citizens, refugees, stateless people and development refugees."
will look forward to your posts.
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