IG linked below is a screen grab of a footnote in a Google book about the partition of Bengal in 1947
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a11/cybersurg/brf/bengalrefugee.jpg Also, I quote below passages from another source (which I an not going to bother to put on here) > The displaced in the East had neither adequate compensation > nor rehabilitation to reconstruct their lives. > If the better-off people from East Pakistan could reconstruct their lives > with relative ease in West Bengal, for those belonging to the middle class > and lower middle class, it was almost impossible. Many of them had to spend > ten, fifteen or twenty years in refugee camps before they could imagine a > better life. Those who did not go to the camps and settled in the jabar > dakhal colonies on the margins of Calcutta also continued with a > hand-to-mouth existence for many years. Many of them could never return to > their traditional family occupations and, therefore, felt a sense of > alienation and irreparable occupational loss even after partial > rehabilitation. In other words, the partition of Bengal had a long-term > impact on the economy and culture of the region. Third, I want to say that I am currently ploughing through Nirad Chaudhuri's second autobiography volume (1921 to 195something). Chaudhuri speaks of a unique East Bengali culture. I have two queries and wonder if you can throw any light 1) Are you aware of any unique east Bengali culture that was destroyed by partition? 2) We only ever hear of stories of partition from the West. But apart from the deaths it appeared that the continued suffering in the East was of a far greater magnitude. I do not sense (from the Bengalis I know) a great tendency to hold grievances related to partition as chips on the shoulder - but there must be a sense of loss hidden somewhere. Can you thow some light? shiv
