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Michi Nunya
Professor Priya Kumar
M.A. English Previous
13 November 2014

Morichjhanpi Massacre A subaltern study of the plight of East Bengal Refugees in

India through Amitav Ghoshs novel The Hungry Tide
Amitav Ghosh, as an anthropologist stated that he was fundamentally more interested in
people and their everyday life that often went unnoticed by the academic historians or the
social anthropologists. As a writer, he transcends the line between fiction and non-fiction,
balancing real and imaginary. He rewrites history using various disciplines of knowledge that
brings out the voice of the marginalized and the omissions of the dominant historiography. Thus
providing us with a subtle understanding of the past. One such example is his novel, The Hungry
Tide. It delves in one of the greatest tragedy of history, the Morichjhanpi massacre, from the
view point of common man. It gives an insight into the pain, anger and humiliation of the East
Bengal refugees who had rehabilitated themselves in the island of Morichjhanpi, one of the
hundreds cultivable wasteland islands of the Sunderbans, only to be forcefully evicted in the
pretext of violating the Forest Preservation Act, as the island was to be preserved as the habitat
of the endangered Bengal Tigers. My goal in this paper is to bring to light the tragic saga of the
dalit refugees of Bangladesh in India from 1947 to 1979.
INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVEL
The novel is set in Sunderbans1 which lies in the northern part of the Bay of Bengal stretching
from Hooghly River in West Bengal to the Meghna in Bangladesh. The confluence of water

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makes it hard to point where the fresh water river ends and the salty sea begin. Hence, the half
submerged tide country is borderless and undergoes transformation almost on daily basis: rivers
stray from week to week, and islands are made and unmade in day.(224) Here, life is lived in
transformation. In the turn of 20th century, a Scotsman, Sir Hamilton dreamt of building a
utopian society. He bought about ten thousand acres of land in the tide country from the British
Sarkar and invited people to live in them for free. The only obligation set down was that the
settlers would work and live together without any petty social division of religion and status.
The settlers from Bengal, Orissa, and Santhal province lived together in peace fighting off the
predators i.e. tigers and crocodiles. However, these inhabitants became marginalized by
globalization. This caused an uprising of the locals against the government and global
organization in one of the islands. Unfortunately their voices were easily crushed never to be
heard again and the painful incident etched in the minds of few who witnessed it.
The Hungry Tide interweaves two stories; one, dealing with a cetologist, Piyali Roys
expedition in search of the rare Orcaella brevirostris2 which provides the ecological perspective
of the novel and the other revolving round the Morichjhanpi incident accounted in Nirmals
journal which he bequeathed to his nephew, Kanai Dutt. Piyali or Piya is more of an outsider
than an Indian Diaspora3. Her uneasy delineation of stance amidst the local crowd in the railway
platform gave away the fact that she was a foreigner. Inspite of her sun darkened tint of her
skin, she felt even more like a stranger than ever before. Her parents had moved to Seattle when
she was a year old and in an attempt to fit in, she had stuck to speaking English. Ironically this
language barrier now denied her a chance to fit in and she was forced to take the help of Kanai as
an interpreter on one of her expeditions with Fokir, a local man. Kanai ran a translation and
interpretation agency providing services to the globalised society, the foreigners and expatriates4
in Delhi. He himself knew six languages. With the self satisfied tilt of his head and the

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unabashed way in which he stared at everyone around himsorting them all into their places
(10), he represents the globalised upper class Indian; a little full of himself and looking down on
others.
Later though, Kanai admits that he really was not needed as Fokir and Piya were completely in
commune with each other and nature. Sea was in his blood and it took just a touch or a few
hand gestures for Fokir to know exactly what she wanted of him. Illiterate but an intelligent and
kind person, he dies while shielding Piya with his own body during a cyclone. As the novel
unravels further, it is seen that Fokir is Kusums son who was a childhood friend of Kanai. She is
a strong woman who empathizes with the refugees enough to settle down with them. Both
mother and son represent the subaltern5 though they are of very different temperament. Fokir is
reserved and hardly speaks up for himself. He shows his strength only on sea amidst the element
he is most comfortable with. Whereas Kusum, works side by side with the refugees in building
their settlement. She is one of the reasons Nirmal got involved with them. She even approaches
Nilima for aid on their behalf but it gets turned down. Ultimately she dies defending her cause.
Nilima acts as the voice of subalterns in her own way. She dedicates her life to Lusibari. She is
an empowered woman presiding over the Badabon Development Trust, the very foundation of
Lusibari. One of its first act was to acquire a piece of land in the interior of the island where the
hospitals, workshops, office and guest houses were to be built later in 1970. She refused
Kusums plea because she could not risk antagonizing the government who funded her Trust.
She could not risk the greater good of Lusibari for the sake of few. Where she was a realist, her
husband was a dreamer and a staunch Marxist. While in Calcutta, the police had detained him for
participating in a conference convened by Socialist International which had deteriorating effect
on his health. So, they had moved to Lusibari. His journal on the Morichjhanpi incident becomes
the voice of the dispossessed. His enthusiasm was even more fired up when he saw their

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settlement. He had expected a jumbled mess, untidy heaps of people piled up high but what he
found was a well planned and structured community-paths had been laid, the embankments had
been augmented; little plots of land had been enclosed with fences; fishing nets had been hung
up dry.(171)
The vital difference in what was happening in Morichjhanpi to what Hamilton had done was that
this dream was not one mans vision. This dream had been dreamt by the very people who were
trying to make it real.(171) So, why was it considered a crime for them? He believed that their
brutal eviction from this paradise that they built had to be told. He believes that Kanai, with his
connections can help spread the word to the mass outside and therefore entrusts him with the
journal upon his death.
In the end of the novel, Piya names her project after Fokir earning him respect. She speaks of his
selfless act through chain letters and manages to gather enough funds to secure Moyna and
Tutuls life. Her rootlessness which had granted her false security, finally finds a home because
for her, home is where the Orcaella are.
POLITICAL HISTORY AND EVENTS LEADING TO THE MORICHJHANPI MASSACRE
Refugee is the creation of a 20th century state. The word refugee has become a political term
for temporary sanctuary to a large group of people escaping political violence. The reason for
Morichjhanpi massacre can be traced back to the partition of Bengal in 1947. During the colonial
period, the East Bengal Namasudra had been one of the most politically powerful dalit
movements in India and forming an alliance with the Muslim, they had formed the ruling party.
Partition along religious lines meant that the dalits had become politically marginalized
minorities in both countries. Therefore the first wave of refugees was the elite upper caste
followed by rural middle class and artisans, of whom the richer found shelters among their

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relatives and friends while the poorer formed the squatters in public and private properties trying
to evade eviction. But the government was more concerned about the Punjab partition,
considered as national emergency6. Therefore, they continued to trickle in over the years
especially after the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971, Mujibur Rahmans assassination in
1975, Zia-ur-Rahmans coming to power as the poorest low caste Hindus began to be targeted
for the communal exploits. Contrary to their richer counterparts, these poorer migrates had no
connections in Calcutta and they were sent to various inhospitable and infertile areas- most
infamous among them being Dandakaranya, a semi-arid and rocky place in east-central India,
now in present day Chhattisgarh- thus an area entirely removed, both culturally and physically,
from the refugees known world.(Jalais 2) The opposition condemned this act and promised
them one of the islands of Sunderbans when they came to power.
These resettlements were more like concentration camps for they were surrounded by security
forces and forbidden to leave. They did not speak their language and locals treated them as
intruders, attacking them bows, arrows, and other weapons.(118) Whenever they managed to
escape, they were repeatedly hunted down, starved on their way back and even shot at before
eviction. In 1977 when the leftist party came to power, 1, 50000 refugees returned to West
Bengal thinking that they would keep their promise. Fearing that this would cause a serious
economic recession, they were betrayed and forcefully sent back. However, many escaped and
about 30, 000 refugees, under the leadership of Satish Mandal, president of the Udbatsu
Unnayansil Samity, sailed to Morichjhanpi.(Jalais 2)
THE EVICTION A SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVE OF THE NOVEL
The refugees and some inhabitants from nearby islands like Satleja who empathized and settled

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down with them, worked hard to give shape to their dreams. However, they were aware that they
needed political and social support for their work. They were the subalterns, marginalized with
no voice of their own. Therefore, they invited many writers, intellectuals and journalists from
Calcutta. In the novel, they are betrayed again as they had come knowing that no matter what;
they were going to be evicted eventually. Soon after this, the government announced an
economic blockade under the provision of the Forest Preservation Act7 and section 144 [which]
the law used to quell civil disturbances was imposed on the whole area. The success of Tiger
Project,1973 had led to Sunderbans fame and the government used this excuse to enforce the
law.
Amitav Ghosh puts the whole debate between the humanist and ecologist in a very interesting
conversation between Kanai and Piya. The tide country is in turmoil because [of] people like
you who made the push to protect wildlife here, without regard for the human costs[and]
people like me Indians of my class- who have chosen to hide these costs, basically in order to
curry favors with the Western patrons. Its not hard to ignore the people whore dying- after all
they are the poorest of the poor.(301)
Piya counterattacks this by stating that this was the law of nature, the nature that sustained us. If
we were to cross that imaginary line that prevents us from deciding that no other species matters
except ourselveswhat will be left? [and] once we decide to kill off other species, itll be
people next- exactly the kind of, people whore poor and unnoticed.(301)
Piya makes a valid point but its no excuse for the Morichjhanpi massacre. In the pretext of
saving the tigers, the government had them brutally evicted when the fact was that Morichjhanpi
wasnt even part of the tiger reserve. It was an island of governmental program for coconut and

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tamarisk plantation. The elite Bengalis would rather sacrifice the islanders or Kolkatas
servants8 as tiger-food [i.e.] disposable people to be shot and killed just because the refugees
wanted the homestead they were promised rather than lose foreign countrys patronage.
The settlers displaced thrice and betrayed twice by the government decided to rebel.
They had nothing left to lose except their dream of having a home to comeback to. They were
fighting for their very existence. The echoes of their identity crisis, alienation and the sense of
displacement could be heard in the slogans they shouted, raising the saddest and truest question,
Amra kara? Batsuhara. Who are we? We are the dispossessed. Shouting a refrain, they
answered the question they themselves posed: Morichjhanpi chharbona. Well not leave
Morichjhanpi, do what you may.(254)
The siege went for days. Rumors started that their ration had run out and they were reduced to
eating grass, tubewells had been destroyed by the police and they had resorted to drinking from
puddles and that an epidemic of cholera had broken out. On January 31st 1979, the police open
fired killing 36 people. The media started to draw attention to the problem. They started writing
positive things about how the settlers had worked on to build their settlement in Morichjhanpi.
Fearing more backlashes, the chief minister announced Morichjhanpi as out of bounds for
journalists and reporters. However, citizens groups filed petitions, questions were asked in the
legislature and finally the High Court ruled that barricading the settlers was illegal(260) and the
siege was lifted. It was a temporary win for the settlers.
Kusum embodies the struggle of the subaltern, she resists the Govt. and the siege leaves her in
terrible condition, weak and weathered. As soon as the siege was lifted, Nirmal who was
worried for Kusum and Fokir brought basic provisions- rice, dal and oil for them. But instead of

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retaining the food, Kusum wants to share it with the community. She was a true spirit of
Sunderbans. She always placed the needs of her community first. She refuses to leave the island
even when things get worse and ultimately die defending her rights. Her words echo the
laments in the hearts of all those wretched, dispossessed people the worst part was not the hunger or the thirst. It was to sit there helpless, [listening to] their
announcements, hearing them say that our lives, our existence, were worth less than dirt or dust.
This island has to be saved for its trees, it has to be saved for its animal, it is a part of reserve
forest, it belongs to a project to save tigers, which is paid by people from all over the
world.who are these people, I wondered, who love animals so much that they are willing to
kill us for them?(262)
After the failure of the economic blockade, the government started forceful eviction. Thirty
police launches encircled the island thereby depriving the settlers of food and water; they were
also tear-gassed, their huts razed, their boats sunk, their fisheries and tubewells destroyed, and
those who tried to cross the river were shot at...Several hundred men, women and children were
believed to have died during that time and their bodies thrown in the river.(Jalais 3) The actual
number of deaths was never accounted for. however, there were no criminal charges pressed
against any of the officials and politicians involved. In just a span of two weeks, all signs of
striving life for past 18 months, which the refugees had worked so hard to build from scratches
were brutally erased. The remaining settlers were treated like vermin, packed off in launches and
sent to Hasnabad from where they were picked up in lorries and sent off to either Dandakaranya
or Andaman. Many islanders who had settled down with the refugees, escaped and either
returned to their islands or settled in the embankments. Many others built shacks and settled

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along the railway line in West Bengal. They were given no chance to defend themselves, to
speak up for themselves. One question lingered in their minds, can the subalterns speak?
In the novel, Nirmal escapes being packed off to settlements but the whole incident has a
heavy toll on his health causing his death. However, his journal becomes the voice of this
oppressed minority. he bequeaths it to his nephew Kanai, so he can get even a little justice for
them by getting this story out in the world, hoping the world would become aware of their
darkest moment.
CONCLUSION
With inclusion of Sunderbans in UNESCOs list of heritage, 1985, the importance of tiger is
only growing. As state property backed by ruling elite, they turned into man-eaters. But the
bodies of those killed are abandoned in the forest and un-mourned for fear of getting the forest
official involved because if exposed, the family members were extorted to pay for the dead
trespasser and treated as criminals. (Jalais6) Then and now, the situation hasnt changed; much
like the Bangladesh refugees, the lives of the islanders are taken for granted just because they are
poor and helpless, their stories unheard and their justice denied.

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NOTES
1) Sunderbans: worlds largest mangrove ecosystem
2) Orcaella brevirostris: Irrawaddy Dolphin
3) Indian Diaspora: It is a generic term to describe the people who have migrated from
territories that are currently within the borders of the Republic of India. Unlike exile
it is more to with the experience of community, the longing for the homeland and the
sense of betrayal that makes the community keep their history and culture alive.
(Cohens concept)

4) Expatriate: one who voluntarily departs from his or her nation without the yearning
to be reunited or failing that to stay away as long as possible usually for personal or
social reason
5) Subaltern: It is a term first used in non military sense by Marxist Antonio Gramsci
which refers to a group who are outside the established structure of political
representation. Gramsci also emphasized the term subaltern is an allusion to any
person or group of inferior rank and status, whether because of race, class, gender,
sexual orientation, ethnicity, creed, caste or religion. Subaltern is a broad category
which attempts to emphasize individual whose voice and actions have been muted,
drastically reinterpreted, lost or consciously swept away. (Sarkar 1)
6) National emergency: the Punjab partition was considered a serious issue because
political, strategic and military considerations [had] converted entire Punjab into

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two rigid divisions(Rituparna 1) which saw an exchange of almost equal number of
population. Meanwhile the Eastern border was more porous and the flow seemed
mostly unidirectional i.e. from East Pakistan to West Bengal. The most important
difference in the Punjab and Bengal partition was in the attitude of the centre The
crisis in Punjab was seen as a national emergency, to be tackled almost on war
footing, and the communal violence in West came close to being genocide, the
government felt a moral to put into immediate effect rehabilitation measures for the
refugees. This sense of urgency was totally lacking in Eastern border.(Rituparna 1)
7) Letter from the deputy secretary, Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Department,
government of West Bengal, subject- Problems of Refugees from Dandakaranya to
West Bengal: It stated that the refugees were in unauthorized occupation of
Morichjhanpi which is a part of the Sunderbans government reserve forest violating
thereby the Forest Acts and that the refugees had come with the intention of
settling there permanently thereby disturbing the existing and potential forest wealth
and also creating ecological imbalance. (Jalais 3)
8) Kolkatas servants: the inhabitants of Sunderbans were called so because beside
being fishermen and crab-catchers, many of them worked as servants in the homes of
Kolkata mainlanders.

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WORKS CITED
1) The Hungry Tide Amitav Ghosh, published in UK in 2004 by HarperCollins
Publishers Limited
2) Dwelling On Morichjhanpi- When Tigers Became Citizens, Refugees TigerFood by Annu Jalais web, 1st November 2014
3) Subaltern Perspective in Amitav Ghoshs The Hungry Tide by Sushil Sarkar,
web 1st November 2014
4) The hungry tide- Bengali Refugees in the sub continent by Rituparna Roy web,
1st November 2014
5) Of People, Refugees and Animal: Amitav Ghoshs The Hungry Tide by Multani
web, 1st November 2014