The Department of English and Humanities (ENH) of BRAC University organised a lecture titled ‘Partition of 1947: The Trauma and the Triumph’ by Dr Subhoranjan Dasgupta, on Wednesdayat 3:30 pm in the ENH Seminar room.
Professor Dasgupta, former professor of Human Sciences at the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata discussed the achievements and losses experienced by the refugee-women in West Bengal who were displaced from East Bengal by the Partition of 1947.
He emphasised on the triumph experienced by the refugee-women who, in fact, changed the physiognomy of Kolkata’s working world. He discussed demure and withdrawn women of West Bengal who followed their counterparts and stepped out of their homes to become working women as well.
Professor Dasgupta shared his own story of being displaced from Bikrampur of Dhaka to West Bengal with the audiences. He said that even language barrier was a big deal at that time. Language of East Bengal was unwelcomed in West Bengal as that detected a person as refugee. Dr. Dasgupta was obliged to change his native Dhakaiya utterance to not to sound as East Bengali and to avoid inconvenience.
Chairperson of the Department of ENH Professor Firdous Azim added to this discussion that caste system emerged in another way as a consequence of Partition because the shock of displacement was not the same for the upper class and lower class. People of lower class confronted much struggle as refugee to settle down in an unknown land than the upper class. So the middle class and lower class people became much more socio-economically vulnerable than before.
Professor Dasgupta’s two areas of specialization are; The Partitition of 1947 and Neo-Marxian aesthetics. He has reputation as expert on the writings of Gunter Grass and Akhtaruzzaman Elias. His major publications are: Bishnu Dey’s Poetry in the light of Neo-Marxian Aesthetics, The Trauma and the Triumph-Gender and Partition in the East (two volumes) and Elegy and Dream- An Evolution of the Creative Commitment of Akhtaruzzaman Elias. He’s currently teaching at BRACU as visiting faculty member in the Department of ENH.
