The salience of the Partition of Bengal in the biography of the Indian nation needs no underscoring. The protracted and spirited reactions against what was in appearance an administrative, but in reality a political decision resulted in a phenomenal expansion of nationalist space in India. In sharp contrast to the moderate type city-based agitations in the past, the anti-Partition agitation reached out to the countryside almost from the very beginning. Somnolent villages and sub-divisional towns of Bengal came to occupy centre-stages of agitational politics. Perhaps the most telling example is Nirad C. Chaudhuri's depiction of Kishoreganj in his autobiography. It was a sub-divisional town in the district of Mymensing, a relatively placid backwater, somewhat immune from great tides in the affairs of men in nationalist politics. Not that the bhadralok of the locality. consisting of service gentry, pleaders, school-teachers and the like were unaware of events taking place elsewhere in Bengal. Presumably they must have discussed their implications among themselves. But their collective life was not moulded by nationalist politics to any great extent. The Partition brought about a qualitative change in the collective life of the locality. C. J. Stevenson-Moore, Inspector General of Police, Lower Provinces wrote in his confidential report that 'Mymensing undoubtedly appears to have been the first of the mufassal districts to protest with any strength".
This remarkable spatial expansion brought in its wake new groups of people with new methods of agitation and novel techniques of popular mobilization. The intense involvement of students and local youth, formation of physical culture groups, akhras and samitis and the growth of volunteer movement, taken together, marked a quantum leap from constitutional methods of limited politics. These were accompanied by widespread and imaginative use of public platform, print media, patriotic songs, itinerant kirtan groups, folk theatre and other components of popular culture. Seldom in the history of anti-imperialist movement in India do we find any comparable example of a political decision being metamorphosed into a major cultural event of such far-reaching significance.
This selection focuses on jatra or folk theatre in the countryside as an ingenious method of transmitting political message. It comprises of hitherto under-utilized Intelligence Branch records of the Eastern Bengal and Assam Police which have already been transferred to the West Bengal State Archives. It is a common knowledge that crisis situations make the police the best of archivists. Whenever the Raj felt being besieged, it activated its intelligence networks to a far greater extent than in normal times. The purpose was to gather as much raw information as possible so that it could contain popular movements within manageable limits. The outbreak of the anti-Partition agitation was one such moment when the intelligence records became copious. As the Bengali Translator, in his Report on the Anglo-Vernacular Newspapers for 1903 wrote, the publication of the Partition Plan was viewed with considerable alarm. "But when it was officially announced in Mr. Risley's letter that it was proposed to transfer not only Chittagong but also Dacca and Mymensing, the vernacular press, almost with one voice, raised a storm of protest that for violence and strength is inferior only to the indignant remonstrance that was made against the Consent Bill".
Hindu (888)
Agriculture (95)
Ancient (1020)
Archaeology (619)
Architecture (535)
Art & Culture (866)
Biography (598)
Buddhist (545)
Cookery (158)
Emperor & Queen (496)
Islam (235)
Jainism (274)
Literary (877)
Mahatma Gandhi (360)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist