Social Work, Refugees and National Belonging: Evaluating the ‘Lady Social Workers’ of West Bengal

Abstract

In the aftermath of Partition, the Government of India suddenly found itself to be responsible for a large number of refugee women who were not ‘attached’ to male guardians. The national government readily acknowledged the fate of these widowed, abandoned or abducted women as a sphere of feminine expertise and sought the active participation of prominent social workers such as Rameshwari Nehru, Mridula Sarabhai, Ashoka Gupta and Romola Sinha. Referred to as ‘lady social workers’, these women worked as volunteers and advisors to rehabilitate unattached women. Focusing on the voluntary service of social workers in West Bengal, and drawing upon the memoirs and personal papers of Ashoka Gupta, this article seeks to understand the limits and possibilities of this role. Was their role entirely circumscribed by the larger patriarchal vision of rehabilitation that treated ‘unattached’ refugee women as permanent liabilities of the state, or could they author policy that benefitted refugee women? Through a close reading of the solutions, schemes and reforms proposed by lady social workers, this paper suggests a complex relationship that resists such binaries.

Keywords:

• AIWC
• Ashoka Gupta
• MARS
• refugees
• rehabilitation
• social work
• ‘unattached women’

Acknowledgments

The first iteration of this paper was presented at the conference entitled ‘Women, Nation-Building and Feminism’ at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in September 2018. I would like to thank all the panellists and participants for their critical responses and feedback on my paper. Many thanks to the anonymous South Asia reviewers for their useful comments, and, above all, to my co-editors, Anjali Bhardwaj Datta and Mytheli Sreenivas, for their careful reading and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See, for example, Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and A.I. Singh, The Origins of the Partition of India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987).

2. Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, ‘Recovery, Rupture, Resistance: Indian State and Abduction of Women during Partition’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 28, no. 17 (24 April 1993), pp. WS2–WS11; and Urvashi Butalia, ‘Community State and Gender: On Women’s Agency during Partition’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 28, no. 17 (24 April 1993), pp. WS12–WS24; Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998); and Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (New Delhi/London: Penguin, 1998).

3. Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta (eds), The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India (Calcutta: Stree, 2003); Uditi Sen, ‘Spinster, Prostitute or Pioneer? Images of Refugee Women in Post-Partition Calcutta’, in EUI Max Weber Papers, no. 34 (2011); Anjali Bhardwaj Datta, ‘“Useful” and “Earning” Citizens? Gender, State, and the Market in Post-Colonial Delhi’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 53, no. 6 (2019), pp. 1924–55; and Gargi Chakravartty, Coming Out of Partition: Refugee Women of Bengal (New Delhi: Bluejay Books, 2005).

4. Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff, ‘Permanent Refugees: Female Camp Inhabitants in Bihar’, in Philomena Essed et al. (eds), Refugees and the Transformation of Societies: Agency, Policies, Ethics and Politics (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2004), pp. 81–93; and Uditi Sen, Citizen Refugee: Forging the Indian Nation after Partition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 231–40.

5. Uditi Sen, Citizen Refugee, pp. 217–31.

6. Ritu Menon, ‘Do Women Have a Country?’, in Rada Ivekovic and Julie Mostov (eds), From Gender to Nation (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2006), pp. 43–62.

7. Uditi Sen, Citizen Refugee.

8. The above description is pieced together from a range of sources including Menon and Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries; Aparna Basu, Mridula Sarabhai: A Rebel with a Cause (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996); and Kamla Patel, Torn from the Roots: A Partition Memoir, Uma Randeria (trans.) (Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2006).

9. Memorandum on Recovery, 20 June 1949, Rameshwari Nehru Papers, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, also cited in Menon and Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, p. 102.

10. Basu, Rebel with a Cause, p. 134.

11. One notable exception is Anis Kidwai’s memoir, In Freedom’s Shade, Ayesha Kidwai (trans.) (New Delhi: Penguin, 2011).

12. Patel, Torn from the Roots.

13. For the specificity of women’s experience of Partition in Bengal, see Bagchi and Dasgupta (eds), The Trauma and the Triumph; and Chakravartty, Coming Out of Partition.

14. For details, see Chakravartty, Coming Out of Partition; and Soma Marik, ‘Breaking through a Double Invisibility: The Communist Women of Bengal, 1939–1948’, in Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 45, no. 1 (2013), pp. 79–118.

15. Md. Mahbubar Rahman and Willem van Schendel, ‘“I Am Not a Refugee”: Rethinking Partition Migration’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 37, no. 3 (2003), pp. 551–84.

16. In post-Partition West Bengal, the word ‘refugee’ was used interchangeably with displaced persons in official records, and widely by the general population. A minority of those who described themselves as refugees actually entered camps, and many were not formally registered as refugees/displaced persons. Yet, this did not deter the formation of identities, solidarities and politics that coalesced around the figure of the ‘refugee’.

17. Ashoka Gupta, In the Path of Service: Memories of a Changing Century, Sipra Bhattacharya and Ranjana Dasgupta (trans.) (Kolkata: Stree, 2005), p. 119.

18. Ibid.

19. For details of the Baron Sinha family, see Mohamed Sheikh, An Indian in the House: The Lives and Times of the Four Trailblazers Who First Brought India to the British Parliament (Cirencester: Mereo Books, 2018). For Romola Sinha’s work with the All Bengal Women’s Union, see Barbara Southard, The Women's Movement and Colonial Politics in Bengal: The Quest for Political Rights, Education and Social Reform Legislation, 1921–1936 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995).

20. Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, ‘Grande (sic) Dames of Service’, The Telegraph (15 Feb. 2003) [https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/grande-dames-of-service-seeta-chaudhuri-s-death-marks-the-passing-of-an-age/cid/1017184, accessed 27 June 2020].

21. Gupta, In the Path of Service, p. 75.

22. Ibid.

23. Gargi Chakravartty, ‘Emergence of Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti in the Forties—Calcutta Chapter’, in Tanika Sarkar and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (eds), Calcutta: The Stormy Decades (London/New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 177–203.

24. Ibid.

25. For details on the communist core of MARS, see Marik, ‘Breaking through a Double Invisibility’.

26. This pattern of thinking is particularly evident in Rameshwari Nehru’s numerous speeches on social work, which spoke exclusively to middle-class and elite women by idealising the ‘spiritual’ and self-sacrificing aspects of voluntary social work: see, for example, Rameshwari Nehru, ‘Reception Address at Indian Conference of Social Work, Third All India Session’, in Rameshwari Nehru Papers, Speeches and Writings, serial no. 35, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Ashoka Gupta’s autobiography reveals a focus on attempts to ‘rescue’ refugee women who had fallen upon hard times by providing vocational training: see Gupta, In the Path of Service, p. 135.

27. Chakravartty, ‘Emergence of Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti’.

28. Gupta, In the Path of Service, p. 85.

29. Chakravartty, ‘Emergence of Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti’.

30. Gupta, In the Path of Service, p. 85.

31. Chakravartty, Coming Out of Partition; and Gene D. Overstreet and Marshall Windmiller, Communism in India (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California, 1960).

32. For details of the activities of communist women in the period immediately before Partition, see Marik, ‘Breaking through a Double Invisibility’.

33. For an analysis of the dual presence of refugees and philanthropists at Sealdah station, see Anwesha Sengupta, ‘The Railway Refugees: Sealdah, 1950s–1960s’, Occasional Paper 57 (Kolkata: Institute of Development Studies Kolkata, 2017).

34. Chakravartty, Coming Out of Partition, pp. 41–2.

35. Gupta, In the Path of Service, p. 122.

36. Interview of Ashoka Gupta conducted by Dr. Subhoranjan Dasgupta, 2000, personal collection of Subhoranjan Dasgupta.

37. Mahila Seva Samity (Organisation for the Welfare of Women), Annual Report of the Year 2005–2006 (Calcutta: Mahila Seva Samity, 2006).

38. See Bolan Gangopadhyay, ‘Reintegrating the Displaced, Refracturing the Domestic: A Report on the Experiences of “Uday Villa”’, in Pradip Kumar Bose (ed.), Refugees in West Bengal: Institutional Practices and Contested Identities (Calcutta: Calcutta Research Group, 2000), pp. 98–105.

39. Web page of Sree Sree Ramakrishna Ananda Ashrama [http://sreeramakrishnaanandaashrama.org/index.html, accessed 25 Jan. 2021].

40. Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay, Udvastu (Refugee) (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1970), p. 120.

41. Chakravartty, Coming Out of Partition, pp. 88–9.

42. Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay, Udvastu (Refugee), p. 135.

43. Webpage of Mahila Seva Samity [https://mss-india.org/, accessed 7 Dec. 2020].

44. Soumitra Das, ‘The House of the Rising Sun’, The Telegraph (10 Aug. 2008) [https://www.telegraphindia.com/states/west-bengal/the-house-of-the-rising-sun/cid/1260479, accessed 28 June 2020].

45. Gangopadhyay, ‘Reintegrating the Displaced’, pp. 100–2.

46. Samita Sen, ‘75 Years in the Shadow of SITA’, The Telegraph (11 Jan. 2007) [https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/75-years-in-the-shadow-of-sita/cid/1656905, accessed 28 June 2020].

47. Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay, Udvastu (Refugee), p. 136.

48. Web page of Children’s Welfare Home, All Bengal Women’s Union [https://web.archive.org/web/20171219144429/http://www.abwu.org.in/projects.aspx?project=children-welfare-home, accessed 28 June 2020].

49. Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay, Udvastu (Refugee), pp. 134–6.

50. For details, see Uditi Sen, Citizen Refugee, pp. 203–40.

51. ‘Report of the Committee Appointed by the West Bengal Government to Enquire into the Technical and Vocational Training of Displaced Persons from East Pakistan Now Residing in West Bengal’ (Calcutta, June 1955), in Ashoka Gupta Papers, File no. 10, Women’s Studies Centre, Jadavpur University, Kolkata (henceforth, AG papers, WSC).

52. Ashoka Gupta et al., ‘East Is East, West Is West’, in Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta (eds), The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India (Calcutta: Stree, 2003), pp. 235–52.

53. Screening Committee, Government of West Bengal, Problems of Refugee Camps and Homes in West Bengal (Calcutta: Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Directorate, Government of West Bengal, 1989).

54. Letter from A.S. Bam, deputy secretary, Ministry of Rehabilitation, to Ashoka Gupta, in AG papers, WSC.

55. ‘Reorganisation of Permanent Liability Camps, Homes and Infirmaries’, AG papers, File no. 11, WSC.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Letter from A.S. Bam to Ashoka Gupta, AG papers, File no. 11, WSC.

59. Minutes of the Conference of the Social Workers held at Calcutta in Rehabilitation Minister’s room on 11, 12 and 15 Jan. 1955, AG papers, File no. 7, WSC.

60. Letter from S. Sarkar, deputy director, Women’s Resettlement, Refugee Rehabilitation Directorate, Government of West Bengal, AG papers, File no. 7, WSC.

61. Recommendations of the Sub-Committee Appointed to Examine the Question of Homes for Young Women Suitable for Full Rehabilitation, for Boys Above Twelve Years and for Grown Up Girls, AG papers, File no. 12, WSC.

62. Agenda of the first meeting of the Central Advisory Committee for Homes and Infirmaries in the Eastern states to be held on 1 July 1955, AG papers, File no. 7, WSC.

63. Minutes of the Meeting of the Central Advisory Committee, 3–4 Aug. 1955, Branch Secretariat of the Ministry of Rehabilitation, AG papers, File no. 7, WSC.

64. Minutes of the Meeting of the Central Advisory Committee, 27 June 1956, Calcutta, AG papers, File no. 11, WSC.

65. Untitled report summarising the work of the Women’s Section of the Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation, West Bengal, AG papers, File no. 11, WSC.

66. Ibid.

67. Ayesha Kidwai, ‘“Are We Women Not Citizens?” Mridula Sarabhai’s Social Workers and the Recovery of Abducted Women’, in Sanjeev Jain and Alok Sarin (eds), The Psychological Impact of the Partition of India (New Delhi: Sage, 2018), pp. 162–87.

68. Radha Kumar, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India 1800–1990 (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1993).

69. Uditi Sen, Citizen Refugee, pp. 231–55; and Swati Sengupta Chatterjee, ‘Agitation in refugee camps 1948-49 to early 1950s: Spontaneity and early unionism’, NSOU-Open Journal, Vol. 3, no 2 (July 2020), http://www.wbnsou.ac.in/openjournals/Issue/2nd-Issue/July2020/9_Swati.pdf.

70. Gupta et al., ‘East Is East, West Is West’.

71. Kidwai, ‘“Are We Women Not Citizens?”’.

72. Geraldine Forbes, ‘Caged Tigers: First-Wave Feminists in India’, in Women’s Studies International Forum, Issue V (1968), pp. 525–36.

73. Datta-Ray, ‘Grande (sic) Dames of Service’.

74. U. Bhaskar Rao, The Story of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Labour, Employment and Rehabilitation, Government of India, 1967), p. 78.

75. Uditi Sen, Citizen Refugee, pp. 205–17.