Partition in Bangla Little Magazines: Trajectories of Politics and Culture

Abstract

The partition of India in 1947 that transgressed both the geographical and cultural boundaries left millions of people homeless and victims of communal violence. Like other media that presented the horror of partition, little magazines, too, responded to the post-partition socio-cultural upheaval. Despite being the “Other” to mainstream printing practices, little magazines became socially pungent and attentive critique of the socio-political milieu of the state. Bangla little magazines promoted a body of partition literature which was often side-lined by the mainstream magazines and academia. This article explores the trajectories of politics and culture in which these small presses conceptualized “partition” both as a historical event and literary representation that revived the cultural amnesia to reproduce an alternative storehouse of counter narratives. Moreover, focusing on the paratexts, it decodes the esthetic paradigms of these “advance guard” magazines to understand their representational politics. In short, this article relocates “partition” within the network of Bangla little magazines and its alternative printing cultures.

Keywords:

• Partition
• Bangla little magazines
• printing culture
• paratexts

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to and would like to acknowledge everyone who has given consent to reproduce the images/illustrations used in this article. We express our gratitude to Prasun Barman, the editor of Ninth Column, Mahfuz Ripon, the editor of Batting Zone, Uttam Purkait, the editor of Ujagar, Biswajit Ghosh, the editor of Ebong Anyakatha, Mani Manjusha Basu, proprietor of Nakshatra, and Adhir Ray, Secretary of Ishan for their timely help in giving permission to reproduce the images in the article and for their cooperation.

Notes

1 See Train to Pakistan (1956) by Khushwant Singh, and “Toba Tek Singh” (1955) by Sadat Hassan Manto.

2 See https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,854810,00.html.

3 See Ambedkar’s Pakistan or the Partition of India (2017) for further details.

4 See N. G. Rajurkar’s “The Partition of India in Perspective” (1982, 34–35), and Bidyut Chakrabarty’s The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932-1947 (2004, 79).

5 In Philosophical Arguments (1995), Charles Taylor argues that meta-topical space is a public sphere “in which members of society could exchange ideas and come to a common mind” (271).

6 On 23 March 1947, Amrita Bazar Patrika published its intention to conduct a poll to discern “as far as possible, public opinion on the question of proposed partition of Bengal for the creation of a separate homeland for Bengal Hindus.” The poll closed on 15 April and the result was published on 23 April 1947. It reported that 99.6% Hindus and 0.6% Muslims cast their votes and most of them supported the division.

7 Focusing on Anandabazar Patrika, Dainik Basumati, Jugantar and Swadhinata, Arpita Basu anthologized articles on refugee and resettlement in Udbastu Andolon o Punarbasati (2013).

8 Charles Allen suggests in “The Advance Guard” (1943) that little magazines should be considered advance guard magazines.

9 See The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia edited by Tan and Kudaisya (2002, 141).

10 All the quotations from Bangla texts have been translated by the authors.

11 See Monika Mondal’s Settling the Unsettled: A Study of Partition Refugees in West Bengal (2011).

12 Three Bandopadhyays refer to Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (1894–1950), Tarashankar Bandopadhyay (1998–1971), and Manik Bandopadhyay (1908–1956), who are the household names in Bengal because of their novels such as Pather Panchali (1929), Hansuli Banker Upakatha (1951), and Padma Nadir Majhi (1936).

13 See Joya Chatterji’s Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932-1947 (1994).

14 See Joya Chatterji’s The Spoils of Partition (2007) and Partha Chatterjee’s Present History of West Bengal (1997).

15 “Subaltern” refers to a person who is subordinate to the authority. In Prison Notebooks (1947), Antonio Gramsci employed the term to denote the proletariat as chaotic mass. In the 1980s, the Subaltern Studies Group used it in a discursive way and suggested that the “subaltern” subject maintains an ambiguous relation to power. They are subjugated by the state power but never fully accept the hegemonic ideology and mastery over their community.

16 This poem was published in The New York Times on 14 November 1971.

17 In “A Partition of Contingency? Public Discourse in Bengal, 1946-1947”, Haimanti Roy argues that partition was considered a historical necessity as the political bureaucrats conveyed to the common mass by introducing some biological images for Pakistan, such as the “canker” that ought to be removed from the body (2009, 1364).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ayan Choudhury

Ayan Choudhury is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Rourkela. His areas of interest include Magazine Studies and Book History.

Akshaya K. Rath

Akshaya K. Rath is an Associate Professor of English at the School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Management, IIT Bhubaneswar, India. He teaches courses on gender and theories of alterity. Across the Black Water: The Andaman Archives (OUP, 2022) is his most recent book.