Recollecting a massacre

From May 14 to 16, 1979, about 10,000 Partition refugees who had settled in the island of Marichjhapi in the Sundarbans were evicted by the West Bengal government, then run by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front. These were people who had crossed over from East Pakistan at the time of Partition or Bangladesh during the 1971 war, and had been packed off by the state government to Dandakaranya in central India, to refugee settlement camps. But they returned to West Bengal, drawn by the fertile land which they hoped they be able to cultivate. 

According to some sources — and they are very few — about 7,000 people died in the eviction drive in which excessive force, including poisoning and rape, was used. There are very few documented histories of this “massacre”, often described as one of the worst human rights violations in post-Independence India. The Left Front government not only managed to effectively cut off all flow of information from the besieged island, but also corrupted the investigation and allegedly influenced the judicial process, denying justice to those who were affected. Senior journalist Deep Halder’s book is perhaps the first full-length study of this incident in such detail.

Mr Halder has used the tool of oral narratives, which is becoming more and more popular among journalists and historians, especially for documenting atrocities against the disenfranchised. For this book, he has interviewed nine people, such as activist Jyotirmoy Mondal, who worked with the survivors and provides eyewitness accounts; lawyer Sakya Sen, who challenged the state in court for its overreach; survivor Mana Goldar; and Dalit writer Manoranjan Byapari, who has also written about Marichjhapi in his acclaimed autobiography. The personal narratives are put together to knit a patchwork of the event, documenting the atrocities and the cover-up by the state.

Even before the eviction, the government enforced an economic blockade around the island. Survivor Santosh Sarkar recollects the suffering of the denizens of the island because of food shortage: “Death knocked on our doors… Naked bodies of children were strewn around the bank of Karankhali river as their mothers wailed.” Those trying to get to neighbouring islands to get food would have their boats drowned by the river police; even women were not spared. “Around 9 am, women volunteers from Marichjhapi set out on three boats… Those b******s in police uniforms… rammed their launches into the boats and drowned all three…” While the Marichjhapi residents managed to save some of the women, others drowned. “…[A] few women were picked up by the policemen… They were taken to the nearest police station, gangraped for days…”

Some scholars have argued that the Left Front government used such force against the settlers at Marchjhapi because they were mostly Dalit. “Most of Marichjhapi islanders belonged to lower castes and were given the short shift by the Left Front government, which was predominantly upper caste even though it espoused a classless, casteless,” writes Mr Halder in the Preface to his book, quoting scholar Annu Jalais who has studied the “massacre” from a Dalit perspective.

Mr Byapari, who also survived the “massacre”, later becoming a famous writer, has also made similar claims. “Caste hatred led to Marichjhapi massacre,” he tells Mr Halder. “Even in temporary refugee camps… there was caste discrimination. The upper castes didn’t want to stay at the same camps as the Namasudras… If the settlers (in Marichjhapis) were Brahmins, Kayasthas and Baidyas, there would have been no action.” He minces no words in his criticism of the then chief minister Jyoti Basu. “He was a shuorer bachcha, son of a pig. He was… the chief architect of the massacre.”   

In the Preface to his book, Mr Halder recounts a personal link of the story: “It came to me as a story through Mana… Mana herself came unannounced as a distant cousin to look after me and tell me stories… Stories from Marichjhapi.” Later, while recording Mana’s story, he writes: “Marichjhapi remains the reason I took to journalism — to tell stories the powerful want hidden. Marichjhapi is why I decided, early on in my own career, that being critical of power should be a journalist’s default setting.” This book provides ample evidence that he has remained true to that calling.

Blood Island: An Oral History of the Marichjhapi Massacre

Deep Halder

HarperCollins, 176 pages, Rs 399 (paperback)