Memoirs of Homeland: Refugees of 1947 Bengal Partition in India By Shailendra Pandey Shail

Book Description

About the Book
Memoirs of Homeland: Refugees of 1947

This collection explores the harrowing narratives of families affected by the partition of Bengal in 1947, focusing on the struggles of Hindu and Muslim Bengali professionals who found themselves on the "wrong" side of the newly drawn border. In their yearning for "desh," or home, these families often sought solace among fellow exiles in distant places like the United States, where they faced the challenges of being minorities in a foreign land—despite having fled from each other just a few years earlier. This volume presents a selection of 22 unedited stories, shared in the voices of those who lived through this tumultuous time.

About the Authors
Dr. Shefali Sengupta Dastidar is a former planner for the New York City Government and has taught in various states including Alabama, New York, and New Jersey. Her professional journey also includes work in Kazakhstan and Uttar Pradesh, India. She holds a doctorate in Urban and Regional Planning from Florida State University, a post-doctoral diploma from Harvard, and multiple master's degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and Calcutta University.

Shefali is the author of Regional Disparities and Regional Development Planning in West Bengal and has received numerous accolades. As the founder of Probini Foundation, she supports education for underprivileged children in Bangladesh, West Bengal, Assam, and Mizoram. She is also a cofounder of the Indian Subcontinent Partition Documentation Project and comes from a Hindu refugee family from East Bengal (now Bangladesh).

Dr. Sachi Ghosh Dastidar is a Distinguished Service Professor at the State University of New York, with teaching and research experience across Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Kazakhstan, India, and Ireland. In the 1990s, he was elected to a school district in New York City. He holds a doctorate and master's in planning, as well as a bachelor's degree in architecture.

Sachi has authored or edited eleven books, including six focused on the Bengal partition, alongside numerous articles, essays, and travelogues. He has received over thirty awards, including two Senior Fulbright awards and the Distinguished Service Professor Award. A cofounder of several educational and cultural initiatives, including Nassau County Bangla Pathshala and the South Asia Forum, he belongs to a Hindu refugee family from Bangladesh.

Introduction
This collection features selected stories of displacement experienced by Bengali Hindus and Muslims due to the partition of the Bengal Province in 1947. Both of our families were impacted, fleeing their ancestral homes for West Bengal, a region designated for "Hindu India," while leaving "Muslim East Pakistan," the eastern wing of the newly formed Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

After the partition, East Bengal became East Pakistan, comprising 55,000 square miles with a majority population of Bengali people. This area eventually became Bangladesh following the 1971 Liberation War, during which the West Pakistani military waged a brutal campaign against the Bengali majority who had voted for the Awami League Party in the 1970 elections. The Awami League was denied the opportunity to govern, resulting in widespread terror targeting Hindus—who made up a significant minority—secular Muslims, and pro-secular activists.

Before our parents fled, colonial powers had drawn arbitrary lines through Bengal and Punjab, rendering them minorities in their own homeland and making them targets of ethnic cleansing. This created a human catastrophe that remains largely unrecognized, as the pain and suffering of partition have been largely omitted from Indian textbooks and remain unknown to many outsiders.