I attended a lecture last week on Trans Generational Trauma by Rajat Mitra at INTACH, New Delhi. This was organised by Srijan Foundation.
One of the questions asked was if Hindus really feel the trauma even after being subjected to atrocities since ever? Hindus seem to be living with an attitude that as long as the danger does not approach their doorstep they won't react nor will they pay attention to the obvious. And when the danger does approach, they will run away.
How much of running away will be done and for how long and will the boundaries of the earth be ever enough?
The story of many of my family and friends have been same. They have been forced out of erstwhile East Pakistan to live in the North Eastern part of India. They had to leave their home, their land and everything that was associated with their life. Though the North East has literally been and will remain the home for us for all times to come, but the truth is that we have never felt much at home. We have been asked this question right from our childhood as to where is our place of origin. Sadly our place of origin has been separated from India much before we were born and many of us haven't had the fortune to go and visit either.
Higher studies and jobs have been much difficult to find in the North East and for reasons of livelihood and to escape the refugee tag, we have moved to mainland India. So, in a way we have been driven out of our place of birth. Though the lucky ones like some of us can go back and visit the place when we want, stay in our own homes for a few weeks before getting back to the hustle and bustle of city life. But the majority of the little economically sound people have sold their big spacious houses with gardens and trees of yore and moved to cities. This I call the second instance of displacement in like say three generations. And all these after building everything from scratch.
Those who have stayed back live in fear; the recent incidents in Tinsukia prove that nothing is right and that no place is safe. It proves that nothing has changed.
Now the city life seems the way it was meant to be and we are peacefully unaware of the dangers that are lurking on our neighborhood. These dangers are in the form of external forces which are bent on changing our very way of life and imposing on us cultures that are alien and in reality a threat to our own existence. We are happy to be playing second fiddle, we find bliss in being tolerant and we totally reject the greatness of our being and we refuse to fight back.
Recently a friend had to unfriend me from Facebook because her boss thought or so she said that I was expressing opinions which were not fulfilling the parameters of tolerance. I never realized the unfriending as it is not feasible to keep all things in life in this generation of information overload. She called me to say this only after she had left the job due to health reasons. For me the unfriending did not matter but what mattered was the sheer spineless nature of our generation where we are just happy to be surviving this moment. We have conveniently forgotten what we have lost and we don't see what we will lose.
Also some of us in this generation have successfully managed to leave the country for better jobs and facilities and totally submerged in the western way of life that we have almost forgotten who we are!
So my thought goes back to the question whether there is any trauma at all! We are blissfully unaware that the dangers will continue and then we will not have a place left to run to. Unless we reclaim, we are a lost race!
One of the questions asked was if Hindus really feel the trauma even after being subjected to atrocities since ever? Hindus seem to be living with an attitude that as long as the danger does not approach their doorstep they won't react nor will they pay attention to the obvious. And when the danger does approach, they will run away.
How much of running away will be done and for how long and will the boundaries of the earth be ever enough?
The story of many of my family and friends have been same. They have been forced out of erstwhile East Pakistan to live in the North Eastern part of India. They had to leave their home, their land and everything that was associated with their life. Though the North East has literally been and will remain the home for us for all times to come, but the truth is that we have never felt much at home. We have been asked this question right from our childhood as to where is our place of origin. Sadly our place of origin has been separated from India much before we were born and many of us haven't had the fortune to go and visit either.
Higher studies and jobs have been much difficult to find in the North East and for reasons of livelihood and to escape the refugee tag, we have moved to mainland India. So, in a way we have been driven out of our place of birth. Though the lucky ones like some of us can go back and visit the place when we want, stay in our own homes for a few weeks before getting back to the hustle and bustle of city life. But the majority of the little economically sound people have sold their big spacious houses with gardens and trees of yore and moved to cities. This I call the second instance of displacement in like say three generations. And all these after building everything from scratch.
Those who have stayed back live in fear; the recent incidents in Tinsukia prove that nothing is right and that no place is safe. It proves that nothing has changed.
Now the city life seems the way it was meant to be and we are peacefully unaware of the dangers that are lurking on our neighborhood. These dangers are in the form of external forces which are bent on changing our very way of life and imposing on us cultures that are alien and in reality a threat to our own existence. We are happy to be playing second fiddle, we find bliss in being tolerant and we totally reject the greatness of our being and we refuse to fight back.
Recently a friend had to unfriend me from Facebook because her boss thought or so she said that I was expressing opinions which were not fulfilling the parameters of tolerance. I never realized the unfriending as it is not feasible to keep all things in life in this generation of information overload. She called me to say this only after she had left the job due to health reasons. For me the unfriending did not matter but what mattered was the sheer spineless nature of our generation where we are just happy to be surviving this moment. We have conveniently forgotten what we have lost and we don't see what we will lose.
Also some of us in this generation have successfully managed to leave the country for better jobs and facilities and totally submerged in the western way of life that we have almost forgotten who we are!
So my thought goes back to the question whether there is any trauma at all! We are blissfully unaware that the dangers will continue and then we will not have a place left to run to. Unless we reclaim, we are a lost race!
Beautiful article. I would like to make a few points here though. The Bengali refugees from east Bengal themselves are to be blamed for the menace they are facing today. The Punjabi new-generation counterpart is much aware of their bloody partition history and consequently, it has been a tradition in India to believe that the Punjabi (Hindus & Sikhs) paid the ultimate price for India's freedom. They command respect wherever they go. The same is absolutely untrue in the case of the east-Bengali counterpart. Many new generation descendants of Bengali partition refugees are not even aware why on earth they are in North east and not in Bengal. Only because facts have been hidden from them in the pretext of 'Forgetting the past, and moving forward', the old generation have crucified their race and have brought much doubt and guilt in the minds of the present generation. It is true that Punjabis or Sindhis faced slaughter and persecution, but that was only during the Partition phase from 1946-47. Afterwards, due to complete population exchange between east and west Punjab, there was no more violence in the western frontier. Exactly opposite and much heart-rendering than Punjab was the case in Bengal. After Noakhali and Calcutta killings, Bengal frontier was relatively peaceful even during the official month of Partition. It all started from the 1950s, that horrendous massacres, rapes, genocide, slaughter, forceful convertions, etc took possession of Bengali Hindu lives in east Bengal right uptil 1971 and continues even today in some form or the other in independent Bangladesh. Never in NCERT or State level school books, or in films or in the public sphere does one find even a single description of what had happened then. Because what happened, happened in East Pakistan, and on the citizens of East Pakistan, why should India be bothered? As if though those who suffered were never Indians. As if though those who suffered, bought Pakistan on themselves willingly. These step motherly attitude of the mainland towards Bengali refugees, these ignorance of their pain and trauma is only the root cause of the disaster which the present generation is facing or is going to face. Had the Centre been more sympathetic to Bengali refugee families living in the ethnic trouble-torn Northeast, the Tinsukia massacre or for that matter, all the massacres which preceded it since 1960s, could have been avoided. I don't find even a single human being who would come out in open sky and condemn the hate mongering propaganda which the Assamese news channels launch every evening against the Bengalis of that state. Not a single person I have seen, who would raise his voice against the injustice met to the third/fourth generation Bengali when he is denied state government job on the pretext of his alien race. Not a single comforting shoulder, when a poor ordinary wage-earning Bengali Hindu is publicly manhandled in Guwahati or anywhere else in that region because of his 'sinful' Bengali identity.... The only way to override these humiliation is to go to the past. Yes, the past can only rescue the partition hit Bengali at this juncture. Let people know what happened then. Let them know what happened in the 50s and 60s in east Bengal and in Assam. Let them know, what happened in 1971. Let them know what happened in 1979-85, let them know that this 'execution style' killing is not something which is new to the east Bengali Hindu. That, he has been through much tougher times than this. The herculean task of informing the world is upto the new generation only. Medium could be anything, documentary movies, books, exhibitions, etc. Or something like the Partition museum of Punjab perhaps.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the informative and detailed insight!
ReplyDeleteApparently FB removed by post when I posted this on FB as this seems to be violating their community standards. So seems like truth be rather not heard!
ReplyDeleteInteresting read it was. I feel similar as stated by above comment. Watched many movies on punjab partition. Watched movies and documentary on formation of Bangladesh, but didn't find any of the refugees from Bengal or Bangladesh. I believe if tribals are educated en masse about the history of the displaced, they would be empathatic enough to understand the plight of Bengali refugees.
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