The WEST BENGAL BJP’s Scheduled Caste Morcha-led agitation in January to commemorate the Marichjhapi massacre of 1979 has thrown light on a dark incident in the state’s contemporary history which remains conveniently forgotten. It involved violence and forceful action by the Left Front government between January and May 1979 against refugee settlers on the small Sundarbans island of Marichjhapi.
Having come to power after overthrowing the Left, the Trinamool Congress government had also initiated the process of acknowledging the incidents, with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announcing in 2018 that a memorial to honour the Marichjhapi victims would be set up.
However, such political stands from time to time apart, the events of Marichjhapi remain largely forgotten in mainstream Bengali conscience. Not among the victims though. As Annu Jalais wrote in an article in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2005, the memories are evident in the lingering resentment among the present generation of local settlers regarding the unequal distribution of resources between them and the Royal Bengal Tigers of the Sundarbans.
In order to understand the Marichjhapi tragedy, one needs to step back in time, to Bengali Hindu migration into West Bengal from East Pakistan and, subsequently, independent Bangladesh. The backward sections of the Bengali Hindu community (particularly the Namashudras) had forged a formidable alliance with the Muslim League and the Krishak Praja Party during the last decades of British rule to keep out the upper caste-dominated Congress from power in Bengal. The clout of the Namashudras was, however, lost with Partition and Independence. Recurrent riots and atrocities forced many of them to migrate into India along with upper caste Hindu Bengalis.
The second phase of the exodus involving more of these marginalised people occurred after the creation of independent Bangladesh, when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination in 1975 and a vigorous turn towards a more Islamic identity for Bangladesh, witnessed a rise in communal riots.
As large groups of refugees began to arrive, the government of West Bengal negotiated with the Centre along with other states to settle some of the refugee groups outside, like on the Andaman Islands, and more particularly in the arid and forested Dandakaranya, lying partly in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh then and now mostly in Chhattisgarh.
Such actions by the Congress government were opposed by the Left. So the Left coming to power for the first time, in 1977, saw many refugee families trying to come back and settle down in parts of West Bengal. The islands of Sundarbans were a favoured area, as earlier groups of refugees from East Pakistan had settled largely here and it provided opportunities in fishing and agriculture. Marichjhapi was particularly important as the refugees had cleared the island and even set up a school and health centre on their own initiative.
The Left Front government under Jyoti Basu, however, opposed such settlements as illegal encroachment in areas allocated for tiger projects. The local press reported about police atrocities on the settlers. There was hardly any possibility of the refugees getting any support from the other end of the political spectrum as the Congress was a weak force after its defeat in 1977. The coalition government at the Centre under Morarji Desai was dependent on Left support. The All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF) led by Kanshi Ram also not yet powerful.
From January 1979, the state government initiated more punitive action. On 27th, it prohibited all movement from and to Marichjhapi. This was challenged by the refugees in the Calcutta High Court and a stay was obtained. The Left government reportedly did not follow the order and used police along with vigilante groups (mainly local goons) to evict the refugees. Between May 14 and 16, 1979, severe atrocities were reported, including police firing on unarmed people, dumping of bodies in the river, raping of women and burning down of huts and boats.
The incidents, though reported in some local papers, did not evoke any protests. Opposition activities remained limited to raising the issue. Strict press censorship limited the activities of reporters. Even today the exact number of people killed or displaced can only be estimated approximately. There was no large-scale inquiry and no government or police official was chargesheeted.
One analyst, Ross Mallick, had noted that, “the subsequent silence in the Bengali intelligence community about what so many knew happened at Marichjhapi is indicative of the intellectual dominance of certain perspectives and the acquiescence of this intellectual elite in the abuses”. This matches the views expressed by the families of survivors that the mainstream elite culture could ignore the pain and sufferings of the largely subaltern groups, who were perhaps not considered important enough to weave a narrative of pathos capable of touching the heart chords of more cosmopolitan and intellectual urban elite, who still preferred to view the Leftist agenda and philosophy with rose-tinted glasses.
(The writer is Professor, Department of History, University of Calcutta)
