Understanding Women’s Experiences of Displacement: Literature, Culture and Society in South Asia

239 Pages·2021·8.002 MB·English

by  Suranjana Choudhury (editor), Nabanita Sengupta (editor)

UNDERSTANDING WOMEN’S
EXPERIENCES OF DISPLACEMENT
The South Asian region has been especially prone to mass displacement and
relocations owing to its varied geographical settings as well as socio-political
factors. This book examines the women’s perspective on issues related to
displacement, loss, conflict, and rehabilitation.
It maps the diverse engagements with women’s experiences of displacement
in the South Asian region through a nuanced examination of unexplored literary
narratives, life writing and memoirs, cultural discourses, and social practices. The
book explores themes like sexuality and the female body, women and the national
identity, violence against women in Indian Partition narratives, and stories of exile
in real life and fairy tales. It also offers an understanding of the ruptures created
by dislocation and exile in memory, identity, and culture by analyzing the spaces
occupied by displaced women and their lived experiences. The volume looks at the
multiplicity of reasons behind women’s displacement and offers a wider perspective
on the intersections between gender, migration, and marginalization.
This book will be useful for scholars and researchers of cultural studies,
literature, gender studies, conflict studies, development studies, South Asian
studies, refugee studies, diaspora studies, and sociology.
Nabanita Sengupta is presently working as an assistant professor in English
at Sarsuna College, affiliated to the University of Calcutta, India. Her areas of
specialization are 19th-century travel writings, women’s studies, and translation
studies. She has participated as a translator in the workshops of Sahitya Akademi,
Viswa-Bharati, and others. She has also presented papers in various national and
international seminars in India and abroad and organized both national and
international webinars and seminars for her college. Her recent publication is a
translation of a 19th-century Bengali travel writing, Englandey Bangamahila (A
Bengali Lady in England) with a critical introduction.
Suranjana Choudhury teaches literature at North Eastern Hill University,
Shillong, India. She has published research articles in various national and
international journals, as well as book chapters in a number of edited anthologies.
She has presented research papers at different national and international conferences
in India and abroad. Her areas of interest include Partition Studies, South Asian
studies, women’s writing, and cultural studies. She is the author of the book A
Reading of Violence in Partition Stories from Bengal.

UNDERSTANDING
WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES
OF DISPLACEMENT
Literature, Culture and
Society in South Asia
Edited by Nabanita Sengupta
and Suranjana Choudhury
Cover image: © Getty Images
First published 2022
by Routledge
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© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Nabanita Sengupta and Suranjana
Choudhury; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Nabanita Sengupta and Suranjana Choudhury to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-47810-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-49319-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-04571-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003045717
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
CONTENTS
Image viii
List of contributors ix
Foreword xiv
Acknowledgements xvii
Introduction: Displacement: Debates and engagements 1
PART I
CRITICAL ESSAYS 15
1 Interconnected lives, disrupted realities: Revisiting gendered
narratives from India’s northeastern Partition, 1947 17
Binayak Dutta
2 “A language without words”: Remapping women’s
displacements through transnationalism in Chandani
Lokugé’s fiction 27
Sibendu Chakraborty
3 Displacement, family sagas, and a feminist gaze: Retelling
women’s sexual history in Love Marriage and Bodies in Motion 38
Kaustav Bakshi
vi Contents
4 Prison as a paradigm of displacement: Narratives of female
prisoners in 1970s West Bengal 53
Samrat Sengupta
5 Negotiating the trauma of displacement in Bharati
Mukherjee’s Wife and Jasmine 65
Rima Bhattacharya
6 Post-riot narratives: Locating the voices of “displaced” women? 80
B. Rajeshwari
7 Nation, female body, and sexuality: Contextualizing Hansda
Shekhar’s “November Is the Month of Migration” 90
Aparna Singh
8 When home is a glass coffin: Women and displacement in
some Indian fairy tales 100
Sudeshna Chakravorty
9 Women, violence, displacement: Delineating the abduction
motif in South Asian partition stories 112
Debasri Basu
10 Singing in exile: Relocating the notion of displacement in
Usha Kishore’s Immigrant 123
Goutam Karmakar
11 The post-Independence rehabilitation displacement:
The birangona case in Bangladesh 137
Kusumita Datta
12 “Please, dear Zari, tell my story!”: Reading women’s
displacement in Zarghuna Kargar’s Dear Zari 154
Dolikajyoti Sharma
PART II
Life writings and memoirs 169
13 Among her own 171
Amarinder Gill
Contents vii
14 Maps, shapes, and women breaking (out of) homes:
A memoir 177
Nabina Das
15 “Reaching out to grasp roots … I stand uprooted” 184
Lapdiang Artimai Syiem
16 Dreams, displacement, and a garden 192
Paromita Sengupta
17 The women in Chambal: Translated from Bengali by
Sanghita Sanyal 197
Suvendu Debnath
18 Women in conflict 205
Subhajit Sengupta
Index 211
IMAGE
11.1 Meherpur memorial 148
CONTRIBUTORS
Kaustav Bakshi is an Associate Professor, Department of English, Jadavpur
University, Kolkata, and a Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow. He has been pub-
lished in South Asian Review (2012), Postcolonial Text (2015), New Cinemas: Journal of
Contemporary Film (2013), South Asian History and Culture (2015/2017) and South
Asian Popular Culture (2018). He has published an anthology entitled, Rituparno
Ghosh: Cinema, Gender and Art, published by Routledge in 2015 and is working on
two projects: the first Queer Studies with Orient BlackSwan; the second, commis-
sioned by Taylor and Francis, is titled Popular Cinema in Bengal: Stardom, Genre, Public
Cultures. He has presented papers at several national and international conferences.
His other published books include two co-edited anthologies, Anxieties, Influences
and After: Critical Responses to Postcolonialism and Neocolonialism (2009) and Studies in
Indian English Poetry (2008).
Rima Bhattacharya is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities
and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, India. She
received her doctorate degree in 2020 from the Indian Institute of Technology
Kanpur and her M.A. and M.Phil. degrees from the University of Calcutta. She was
awarded the Outstanding Thesis Award for her doctoral dissertation. She has pub-
lished papers in journals like Journal of Men’s Studies, Neohelicon, Journal of Language,
Literature and Culture, American Notes and Queries (ANQ), South Asian Review, Journal
of Commonwealth Literature, International Journal of Comic Art, Economic and Political
Review, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, and British and American Studies. Her areas of
research interest include Asian American literature, Indian English Poetry, Diasporic
Studies, and Postcolonial Literature. She has also attended the prestigious Institute
for World Literature program at Harvard University with a scholarship.