Mapping the Affliction of Refugees of Partition in Bengal- A Study of Salil Sen’s The New Jews

Abstract

The division of the Indian subcontinent resulted with uninhibited bloodshed, loss of human lives, homelessness of people, communal riots, loss of material wealth, and distress of womenfolk and so on. Partition literature vividly portrays the plight of people. A detailed research establishes that people who were uprooted from their own homeland had to accommodate themselves in an entirely new environment or locality. The dislocation of these people is analogous of the Jews of 8th Century BCE. After being uprooted from their own native land, they were bound to spend days in the Sealdah Railway Station and on the streets of Calcutta. They were doubly traumatised- first, being splayed from their own land, and secondly, being duped in a new city by those who were prerogative of their own places. The after-Partition Bengal also witnessed degenerated humanity, the tricking lineament of the citizens of Calcutta. The agony and struggle of those displaced people has been portrayed in a number of novels, short stories and plays.