People, Politics and Protests II
People, Politics and Protests II Bengal and Bihar Sibaji Pratim Basu Mithilesh Kumar 2016 1. The Defining Moments of Left-Popular Politics in West Bengal: The Food Movements of 1959 & 1966 Sibaji Pratim Basu 1 2. From Insurrection to Popular Movement: Bihar Movement, its Possibilities and Limitations Mithilesh Kumar 21 The Defining Moments of Left-Popular Politics in West Bengal: The Food Movements of 1959 & 1966 ∗ Sibaji Pratim Basu Situating the Movements India won freedom and was partitioned in 1947. Pakistan, the new state, emerged on the western and the eastern parts of erstwhile British India, resulting in a mass exodus – the largest in the history, according to United Nation High Commission for Refugees, especially with the division of erstwhile British Indian provinces of Punjab and Bengal. Although the Indian state of Punjab could somehow tackle the ‘burden of refugees’ through a so-called ‘land-man exchange’, the new – territorially truncated after partition – Indian state of West Bengal had to provide shelter to millions of partition- refugees. Thus, the infant state of West Bengal began its journey as a crippled toddler crowned with problems. The pressure of millions of refugees, food shortages (as many of the fertile rice producing districts went to East Pakistan) and industrial decline (owing to lack of supply of raw materials for jute, paper and leather industries) put post-independence West Bengal in a severe crisis, which the Dr. B.C. Roy led Congress government in the state, despite several efforts, could only solve partially, leaving a wide space for the oppositional politics, which the left parties – dominated by the Communist Party of India (CPI) first, then by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or the CPIM, after CPI’s split, occupied fast.
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