My grandmother’s screwdrivers

On World Refugee Day, Somnath Baidya Roy remembers his grandmother, and pays homage to the resilience of refugees everywhere.

‘Oral Histories, Conflict and the Human Dimension’: A report

A short report by Nirajana Chakraborty on a webinar- “Mezzaterra: Conversations Sans Borders” with  Anam Zakaria, Oral Historian and Author, as the speaker,  organized by the Department of English, History and cultural Studies, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bannerghata Road Campus on 10^th June 2020. 

Once a migrant, always a migrant: The multiple passages of tea plantation workers of north-Bengal

Santi Sarkar and Khoka Mali write about the tea gardens in North Bengal, and the migrations that enable them. This articles takes into consideration the disparity in wages, in the payment of provident funds of the tea garden employees and the need for subsistence that send people out of the tea gardens, those who are the children of already migrant workers.

Bringing the border home: India Partition 2020

Samata Biswas writes about the social distance India maintains from its migrant workers,  redrawing the borders that govern our lives. 

A Report: How One State can Learn from Another – Migrant Workers in Kolkata

 

Swati Bhattacharjee and Abhijnan Sarkar take stock of the situation of two groups of migrant workers in Kolkata, and try to assess what could be done for them.

Way Back Home- A review

Annesha Saha reviews Supriyo Sen’s 2019 film, Way Back Home.

A conference on the State of the Global Protection System for Refugees and Migrants, 2018: Impressions and Outcomes

Aditi Mukherjee writes a report on the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group conference dealing with protection system for refugees and migrants, organised in Kolkata, India, in November 2018.

The Speaking Mirror of Bharati Das

The second phase of refugee influx into West Bengal, especially by the once powerful caste group, namashudras, continues to be ill documented in social science literature of the day. Through the narrative of a young caregiver, Bharati Das, Parimal Bhattacharya makes an important intervention in documenting these lives, as well as, through the trope of a video recording, makes marginalised voices heard.  

Uemon and Hariprabha Takeda: Travelling into Lives (Part – II)

Hariprabha visited Japan thrice in her lifetime. Uemon accompanied her each time. Their third visit together had coincided with the Second World War and Hariprabha jotted down her experiences of a war-torn Japan in the form of diary entries. Madhurima Mukhopadhyay, in the second part of her essay, focuses on Hariprabha’s war memories. The first part can be read here.

Uemon and Hariprabha Takeda: Travelling into Lives

Marriage in most cases entails a shift of location for the woman as she moves from her natal home to her husband’s home. For Hariprabha Mallick, who married a Japanese migrant labourer working in a soap factory of Dhaka in 1907, matrimony entailed a trip to Japan to meet her in laws.  Madhurima Mukhopadhyay writes in two parts about Hariprabha’s extraordinary experiences in Japan. Here is the first part.