For my doctoral thesis I have researched on the historical figure of East Bengali migrant working woman in Post-Partition Calcutta focusing on ideas of gender, class, experience and labour. The study focused on the emergence of the working bhadramahila—a paradox in traditional understanding—following the Partition of Bengal. My research interests border on understanding the gendered experience of partition, refugee women and laboring women. My M.Phil work has centered on the folkloric traditions of the Sundarbans (West Bengal) with a detailed study of folklore, myth, performance and popular religion. My research interests are to study the methods of reading folklores as literature and myth as history; popular religions and its interface with pre-modern and modern societies, the changing nature of folk in the current time, et.al.
My key research interests are partition, gender, city, refugee, migration, popular culture, popular religion, Sundarbans, performance studies, translation and folklore.
For my doctoral thesis I have worked on the figure of East Bengali migrant working women in Post-Partition Calcutta. The thesis focused on the emergence of the working bhadramahila—a paradox in traditional understanding—following the Partition of Bengal; her reception in society, and its consequence on Bengali public culture thereafter. Identifying the Partition as a rupture, I aim to examine the ways in which women migrants strained existing discursive constructions such as the ghar and bahir, the grihalakkhi and the bhadrabari’r bou. A section of the work is focused on examining the popular Bengali literary texts concerning the life of these migrant working women, published and circulated between 1947 and 1971. I have tried to investigate the possibility of creating the history of everyday that constitutes the experience of the refugee working women in Post-Partition time and space, via close analysis of their personal interviews and memoirs. The study further engages with work, space, market, politics and domesticity which encompasses the life of the working women in the post-independent Bengal.
My M. Phil work has centered on the folkloric traditions of the Sundarbans (West Bengal). The research focused on the cult forest goddess, Banabibi, an Islamic deity worshipped in a Hinduised manner in the islands of the Sundarbans, as a case study and the art forms associated with the cult. The study included tracing the origin of the Banabibi cult in oral and printed forms, engaging with the performance traditions associated with the cult, as well as investigating the present day practices centering the figure of Banabibi. Praying to Banabibi is a part of the living traditions of the forest workers of the Sundarbans. Considering the demographics of the Sundarbans, with its largely marginal population (a vast majority of the population is Scheduled Caste, who co-exist with Muslims and members of Scheduled Tribes — some of the most disadvantaged communities in present day India), the continuity of the medieval era cult in the present day places it at a caste, religion (both popular as well textual/formal traditions of the same), traditional forms of work and folk art forms.
My key research interests are partition, gender, city, refugee, migration, popular culture, popular religion, Sundarbans, performance studies, translation and folklore. I have worked on projects such as ‘Meiner Eltern Welt/ My Parent’s World: Inherited Memories’ conducted by Goethe Institute Kolkata and Goethe Institute Bangladesh documenting partition memories on East Partition. I have also worked as the ‘curator’ of a module on Bonbiri-r Palagaan in Sunderbans for Sahapedia, an open online resource on the arts, cultures and heritage of India. Apart from these I have presented and published papers on the above mentioned research areas.
Select book chapters:
“Introduction to Theories of Performance”. In Essays on Text and Performance.Delhi: Book Age Publishers, 2017.
"Everyday Tactics: Analysing the East Bengali Migrant Working Women's Everyday Practices in the Post-Partitioned Calcutta". In Understanding Marginality: Cultural and Literary Perspectives. Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2021.
Articles:
“Imbibing the Popular: A Study of Jatra-ic influence on the Contemporary Banabibi-r Palagaan of Sundarbans” in Aabaad Sahitya,Vol. 5, 3 and 4, Joint issue, May-July and August-Oct, 2019. pp. 186-195. [ISSN: 2320-7647].
“Reading of Manikuntala Sen’s Memoir Sediner Kotha” in GDGU ICAP 2016 Power, Peception And Personality: Protagonists of Change, pp. 223-230, March, 2016. [ISBN: 978-93-85936-13-5]
“Tracing the Genealogy of the Categories of ‘Ghar’ and ‘ghar-er bou’ in Post-Partition Refugee Literary Narratives” in Pratibha Umashankar (ed.) Muse India: Focus: Parition in Literature and Cinema. Issue 62, July-August 2015. [ISSN: 0975-1815].
“Shakespeare’s Adaptations in Bengali Theatre: Study of the Adaptations as Colonial and Post-Colonial Devices” in Interpretations pp. 1-8, March, 2016. [ISBN:978-81-931925-3-5].
Papers in Conferences
“Changing relations with the forest: A Study of Life and Rituals of the Forest Workers of Sundarbans in the Last Decade” in the International Conference on 17th March 2022 organised by Chandrakona Vidyasagar Mahavidyalaya, V.U. in collaboration with Anthropos India Foundation, New Delhi, 16th and 17th March 2022.
·“Wall or A Mirror?: An Enquiry into the Binaries of Private and Public via a Study of the East Bengali Refugee-Migrant Working Women in Post-1947 Calcutta” in International Conference on “Re-imagi(ni)ng Identities: Challenges, Transgressions and Articulations” organised by Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (IACLALS) in association with Department of English, Jadavpur University. Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 5th – 7th February 2020.
"Banabibi and rituals of the Forest Workers of Sundarbans – A Study of their ‘Unresolved Antagonism’ with the Normative Religions" in Third Ireland India Institute International Conference on South Asia at Dublin City University, All Hallows Campus, Ireland, 24th - 26th of April, 2019.
·“'Where does the river take you – To the Forest or to the City?': A Study of the Interface of Traditional and Contemporary Professions and Faith of the Forest Workers of Sundarbans" at Fields of View, Bangalore, November 28, 2018.
“Tactics of Everyday: Analyzing the East Bengali Migrant Working Women’s Everyday Practices of Settling Down in the Post-Partitioned Calcutta” in International Conference Moving beyond the Margin: The Politics of Exclusion and Assimilation organized by the Department of English, School of Humanities and Languages, Central University of Rajasthan, 15-16 November, 2018.
“Calls of Hunger: A Study of The Bengal Famine of 1943 and the Growth of Women’s Activism via Reading of Manikuntala Sen’s Sediner Katha” in National Conference Culinary Routes/ Roots, organized by Department of English, University of Delhi, Delhi, 2nd & 3rd November, 2016.
“Entangled Myth and History: A Study of the myth of Banabibi of Sunderbans in Lower Bengal” in National Conference on Re-interpretations of the Past: The Discourse of Cultural Identity in South Asia, organized by the Dept. of English, NEHU, Shillong, held on 17th & 18th March, 2016.
“Banabibir Palagan of Sunderbans: Study of a Contemporary Art Form” in International Conference titled, Contextualizing the ‘Contemporary’ in Culture Organized by Centre for Performance Research and Cultural Studies in South Asia (CPRACSIS) in association with The Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras on February 1 & 2, 2011.
“Away from Hearth and Home: Analysing Fear and Trauma in Migrant Women of Bengal Partition through Fictional Representations” in the International Conference Fables of Fear at Centre for Performance Research and Cultural Studies in South Asia on 7th and 8th August, 2010.
“Resistance through Performance: A Study of Banabibi-r Palagan of Sunderbans” in National Conference titled, Performing Resistance being organized by the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences from 29-30 January, 2010.
Other Projects
Worked as Project Fellow on the project ‘Meiner Eltern Welt/ My Parent’s World: Inherited Memories’ conducted by Goethe Institute Kolkata and Goethe Institute Bangladesh from 31st August 2015 till 30th December 2015. Worked on building web archive of historical memories on East Partition.
Author of the overview article titled “Bonbibi-r Palagaan: Tradition, History and Performance” in Sahapedia, an open online resource on the arts, cultures and heritage of India. https://www.sahapedia.org/bonbibi-r-palagaan-tradition-history-and-performance
Curator of a module on “Bonbibi-r Palagaan in Sunderbans" in Sahapedia, an open online resource on the arts, cultures and heritage of India. https://www.sahapedia.org/bonbibi-r-palagaan
Presidency University Students Corner