Working Through Partition: Making a Living in the Bengal Borderlands

Abstract

Partition, the break-up of colonial India in 1947, has been the subject of considerable serious historical research, but almost exclusively from two distinctive perspectives: as a macropolitical event; or as a cultural and personal disaster. Remarkably, very little is known about the socioeconomic impact of Partition on different localities and individuals. This exploratory essay considers how Partition affected working people's livelihood and labour relations. The essay focuses on the northeastern part of the subcontinent, where Partition created an international border separating East Bengal – which became East Pakistan, then Bangladesh – from West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, and other regions which joined the new state of India. Based largely on evidence contained in “low-level” state records, the author explores how labour relations for several categories of workers in the new borderland changed during the period of the late 1940s and 1950s.