The Fashioning of a Frontier: The Radcliffe Line and Bengal's Border Landscape, 1947–52

Abstract

The partition of India is customarily described in surgical metaphors, as an operation, an amputation, a vivisection or a dismemberment. By extension, the new borders created in 1947 are often thought of as incision scars.

Muslims in Surinam and the Netherlands, and the divided homeland

“…42 This looked like the logical outcome of a British tradition of 'divide and rule' during their long rule over the Indian subcontinent. By that time religion had become a primary criterion for the categorization of time periods and of society.…”

The Great Betrayal: Potential Statelessness After Living Decades In Mother India

“…The reason of such an oblivious situation had arisen due to an ongoingeffort from some political quarters for a separate autonomous "Subba" (province) within India which gave a glimmer of hope to the people of Bengal that the province will be spared from partition. Eventually the effort was foiled mostly by the communal elements in the major political parties as well as by religious fundamentalists (Chatterji 1995). But unlike the rest of the country, people of Bengal were unsure about the Partition till the date of its actual enactment i.e.…”

Political history of Farakka Barrage and its effects on environment in Bangladesh

“…The political control attained by Bengal's elite class through partition was complicated by the anxiety over losing the ecological heart of the erstwhile Bengal (Iqbal 2010, p. 188). This anxiety resurfaced around the issue of the two nation theory in the attempt to strike a political boundary that would leave Muslim majority Murshidabad in India and Hindu majority Khulna in East Pakistan, in order to secure a hydrologically suitable spot for diverting Ganges water (Chatterji 1999). Murshidabad is important to India as the take off point of Bhagirathi-Hooghly and a considerable stretch of it falls in Murshidabad to coordinate the flow of the Ganges with Bhagirathi.…”