Published March 31, 2025 | Version v1
Journal article Open

The Politics of Refugee Settlement and Morichjapi Massacre in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide'

Authors/Creators

Description

History is replete with the incidents of the unnecessary and indiscriminate killing of
a large number of human beings by those wielding power. Even in the modern age of
democracy, state-sponsored massacres do happen, and politics plays a crucial role in such
unfortunate happenings. Morichjhapi ‘massacre,’ which is reported to have been perpetrated by
the Left Front Government of West Bengal between 14 and 16 May 1979, is one of the worst
human rights violations in post-independent India. As the victims were Bengali Dalit Hindus,
who came to India during the second wave of refugees from East Bengal/Bangladesh,
sociologists, historians, and Dalit activists have put out theories on what happened and why?
Amitav Ghosh has fictionalized the incident in his novel The Hungry Tide (2004) to expose the
Marxist Government’s capitalist objective of profit maximization through international
conservationist agencies funding the Tiger Reserve Project. Besides, the novel reveals how
political expediency overrides the party’s ideology.

Files

1. The-Politics-of-Refugee-Settlements-and-Morichjhapi-Massacre-in-Amitav-Ghosh's-Hungry-Tide pdf (1).pdf

Files (384.0 kB)

Additional details

Dates

Issued
2025-03-31
published

References

  • Bhattacharya, Durbadal (May 2021). "Exhuming the Untold Story: A Study of Marichjhapi Incident through Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide". International Journal of Advanced Research in Science, Communication and Technology (IJARSCT). Vol 5, Issue 1, pp. 514-520. Bhattacharya, Tushar (24 May 2018). "Marichjhapi: Tortured Humanity". https://www.youtube.com . Accessed on 17-07-2024. Cognitive Thinking: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies www.cognitivethinking.in Volume 1, Issue 1 (January-March 2025) 9 | Biswas, Camellia and Sharda Channarayapatna (12 August 2022). "Marginalization of Sundarbans' Marichjhapi: Ecocriticism Approaches in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide and Deep Halder's Blood Island". MDPI: Literature. 2 (3). pp. 169-178. https://www.mdpi.com . Accessed on 17-07-2024. Web. Biswas, Samata (January 2018). "The Hungry Tide: Rethinking Refugees and Displacement". The Companion. https://www.thecompanion.in Accessed on 18-07-2024. Web. Butalia, Urvashi (24 February 2015). "Reconstructing Marichjhapi" in Partition: The Long Shadow. New Delhi: Penguin India. Datta, Antara (2015). Refugees and Borders in South Asia: The Great Exodus of 1971. New Delhi: Routledge India. Ghosh, Sankha (27 November 2019). "Bauddhayan Mukherji busy with his 'Marichjhapi' project." The Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com Accessed on 16-07-2024. Web. Ghosh, Amitav (2004). The Hungry Tide. 30th edition, 2016. New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India. .......................(2019). Gun Island. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Ghosh, Sabyasachi Dastidar (28 December 2014). "Rebirth of Bangladeshi Hindu Refugee at Dandakaranya". Empire Last Casualty. https://empireslastcasualty.blogspot.com. Accessed on 16-07-2024. Web Halder, Deep (2019). Blood Island: An Oral History of the Marichjhapi Massacre. New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India. Jha, Mridulika (September 3, 2023). "Marichjhapi massacre: Forgotten story of Hindu refugees slaughtered in Bengal". India Today. https://www.indiatoday.in/sunday-special/story. Accessed on 16-07-2024. Web. Jones, Brandon (2018). "A Postcolonial Utopia for the Anthropocene: Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide and Climate-Induced Migration". MFS Modern Fiction Studies. Vol. 64 no. 4, pp. 639-658. Pramanik, Asim (23 March 2014). "1979 Marichjhapi killings revisited". The Statesman. http://www.thestatesman.com .Accessed on 17-07-2024. Web Ray, Ranit and Samrat Sengupta (December 2023). "Understanding the Disaster Unconscious: The Marichjhapi Massacre Depicting Precarious Lives and Vulnerable Ecologies in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide". "Intersections of Post-Colonial and Eco-Critical Theories" in Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory. 9 (2). https://www.metacriticjournal.com . Accessed on 16-07-2024. Web. Cognitive Thinking: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies www.cognitivethinking.in Volume 1, Issue 1 (January-March 2025) 10 | Roy, Biswajit (10 January 2014). "Controversies that dogged the pragmatic chief minister". The Telegraph. https://www.telegraphindia.com. Accessed on 17-07-2024. Web. Sanyal, Sanjeev (2023). Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom. New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India. Sengupta, Debjani (1 February 2014). "From Dandakaranya To Marichjhapi: rehabilitation, representation, and the partition of Bengal (1947)". Social Semiotics. 21 (1): 101-123. Sen, Jhuma (2015). "Reconstructing Marichjhapi: From Margins and Memories of Migrant Lives". Partition: The Long Shadow. ed. Urvashi Butalia. New Delhi, Penguin India. Sen, Uditi (2018). Citizen Refugees: Forging the Indian Nation after Partition. New Delhi, Cambridge University Press India.