Aratrika Ganguly

What do the Last Mughal Emperor and the Last Burmese sovereign have in common? They remain in perpetual Exile. As we revisit a troubled past their tales and fates come across as not very dissimilar from each other. This is but a small snippet, a window into their last days spent away from their beloved homeland.

Colonialism changed the way the world economy and trade were happening. The colonial powers were unable to maintain the institution of slavery. Consequently, with the abolition of slavery, a new form of labour system was set up to fill the demand and supply gap. This labour system was created to reap maximum profit while exploiting the labourers in every possible manner. This is how indentureship was born. This system was born in various European colonies during19th century, and the labourers were referred to as coolies- a derogatory and racial term. The colonial plantations of jute, tea, rubber, coffee, sugarcane, etc., had draconian labour conditions that caused the coolies’ lifetime suffering. In the context of British India, this coolie network from India to other countries (external migration) was similar to the coolie network within India (internal migration). Indians were sent to other countries as coolies and within
various tea plantations, coal mines, or other places for working. The internal migration of the Coolies is very much related to the greater migration project of the British Raj that wanted to create settler colonies in various parts of the colonised world. This paper will analyse both the
internal and external migration mentioned in these Bangla texts- Phoolmoti by Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay (novel) and Alokrekha by Samaresh Majumdar (novel). This paper will analyse both these migration forms and how they are represented in these texts that are contemporary
to each other

In colloquial Bangla, coolie/kamin refers to any labourer who carries 'baggage'. However, in the colonial period it was used in a derogatory manner by the British to refer to any indentured labourer. The coolie system emerged in the 19 th century and later the coolies were exploited in every possible way as substitutes of African slaves. Tea, coal, and jute were the three primary industries that employed the maximum number of coolies. Coal mines in the Eastern India employed many indentured labourers. This paper takes into consideration the literary depiction of coal coolie in the colonial and postcolonial period in selected Bangla short stories by Sailajananda Mukhopadhyay, Ghanashyam Choudhury and Anish Deb in order to construct an Indian historical narrative from the perspective of the coolies-the labourers-the main work force of the mines. Coal mines used to employ a large number of labourers from various parts of India; they would migrate from various locations to the colliery areas and when settled there would create a multicultural space there. This labour force consisted of mainly Adivasis and people belonging to the lower castes and they were oppressed not only by the colonizers, but by the upper caste/class Indians as well. This paper analyses the socio-politico-cultural conditions of the coolies and others associated with the coal mines as well as the general social conditions of the towns and cities surrounding the mines as depicted in the stories. It also seeks to understand how the category of coolie literature gets intertwined with the genre of Bangla short stories to create a genre of literature that is essentially a product of the collieries.

Best Team Policy Paper at the SUMMER TRAINING SCHOOL on “Legal and Political Challenges of Migrants’ Integration in Europe” (28 June 2021 – 9 July 2021) organized by Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, University of Tuscia with the support of Eramus + Programme of the European Union.  Position: Team Leader. Paper titled “THE EU BLUE CARD (BASELINE SCENARIO”

Abstract:

This paper undertakes a reading of the ‘post’-colonial novel written in English in South
Africa to bring into focus how women in Anglophone novels of Africa are represented through the writings of Anglophone women. This paper will explore the condition of women as represented in the Anglophone African novel No Time Like the Present (2012) written by the South African Anglophone writer, Nadine Gordimer. This paper will try to explore the relationship between the liberation of African countries from colonial rulers and the liberation of women from traditional patriarchal authority. The writer is using her novel to create this space and speak out to the world using the colonizer's language about the challenges women face in the modern, “post-independent” countries of Africa. In this paper, I am concerned with how the experiences of the writers as a woman and a former colonial subject have been reflected in the novel under study.

Keywords: Apartheid, Feminism, Patriarchy, Anglophone Africa, Nadine Gordimer.