Paper short abstract:

This paper explores government response to the rising influence of Left political parties amongst East Bengali refugees in post-partition West Bengal. Using colonial systems of surveillance, ‘left’ politics was constructed as anti-national and refugees were constructed as dangerous citizens.

Paper long abstract:

In the aftermath of partition in West Bengal as the question of rehabilitation became increasingly politicised, the left opposition parties stepped in to champion the cause of refugees denied rehabilitation by the Congress government. While historians of the partition of Bengal have largely focused on this radicalisation of refugees and its impact on the politics of West Bengal, this paper will attempt to understand government response to the rising influence of the Socialist and Marxist political parties amongst East Bengali refugees. The Government of West Bengal identified refugee colonies as hot-beds of undesirable political agitation and employed an elaborate system of spying and surveillance inherited from its colonial predecessors against refugees. Officers of the Special Branch and the Information Branch of the police routinely attended public meetings of refugees, marked the 'ring-leaders', followed suspects and wrote copious reports of their activities. Letters from suspects were routinely intercepted at the post office and copied. While none of these strategies were new, employing colonial tactics of surveillance designed to countered revolutionary terrorism against political dissent in a democracy necessitated the evolution of a new language of politics. Through surveillance, certain forms of political activity were marked out as anti-national and refugees were constructed as dangerous citizens. More importantly, state surveillance marked out illegitimate political activity from legitimate ventures, thus radically polarising the sphere of politics in post-colonial West Bengal.