novel of remarkable insight, beauty, and humanity. The Morichjhanpi massacre incident of 1978 ... an account that has an asymmetrical flow. In The Hungry Tide , he shuttles between the Morichjhanpi ... more details
Unreferenced date December 2009 See Wikipedia WikiProject Indian cities for details Infobox Indian Jurisdiction native name Morichjhanpi Marichjhanpi Marichjhapi type Village latd 22.1889746 longd 88.95 locator position right state name West Bengal district South 24 Pargana website footnotes Marichjhanpi Lang bn , alternatively Marichjhapi is an island set in the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans in West Bengal , India . It is mostly remembered today for the Morichjhanpi massacre incident of 1978 79 when the newly elected Communist Party of India Marxist CPI M government of West Bengal forcibly evicted thousands of Bengali people Bengali refugees who had settled on the island. The government s actions resulted in the deaths of many refugees although the exact number is unknown, researchers believe that at least several hundred people died from police brutality, disease and starvation. Background The Partition of India in 1947 split the large eastern province of Bengal into two halves, along religious lines. One half became West Bengal, a Hindu majority province in the new independent state of India. The other half became East Pakistan , the Muslim majority eastern half of Pakistan , and later the independent country of Bangladesh . Refugee Partition was accompanied by much bloodshed and suffering, and the mass migration of millions of people Hindus from their ancestral lands in East Pakistan across to India, Muslims from India trekking in the opposite direction. This cross transfer of peoples continued through the decades after Partition, although at a much slower rate. While the educated upper classes were able to settle themselves in the urban environs of Calcutta , the poor and the Hindu caste system low caste Hindus were moved to areas outside West Bengal, in inhospitable terrain in Orissa and Chhattisgarh . Dry forest regions usually inhibited by the adivasis , a region broadly called Dandakaranya . There they lived in concentration camp like condition ... more details
Encyclopedia
top
