Pratim Das

This paper explores the nationalistic project of Bengali intellectuals and historians to write India’s history in colonial times. The main objective of this paper will be to study the inception of the Greater India Society and assess the contribution of this enterprise in writing India’s history. Hindu nationalistic ideas heavily influenced this grand project of history
writing. Hence, a different imagination of Asia can be evident in the writings of early Indian historians. The Greater India Society offers an Indianised approach to perceiving the history of Inter-Asian relations. This paper will try to conceptualise the Hindu Nationalistic Historiography of India in colonial times and shed light on the different aspects of this history as it was a grand departure from the dominant narratives of European historians.
Keywords: Indianaisation, Historiography, Greater India Society, Pan-Asianism, Southeast Asia, Nationalism

In the post-independence period, Bengali travel writings about Southeast Asia created a new imagination of Southeast Asia for Bengalis. This imagination involves an insightful understanding of the various politics and relations between Bengal and Southeast Asia. Both the regions have a long history of exchanges. Their connection became more visible when people travelled from Bengal to Southeast Asia for regular economic, political, and cultural reasons after independence. During colonial rule, interest in Southeast Asia began to grow among the Bengalis. Nationalist historians and Bengali intellectuals have repeatedly sought to present the region as part of "Greater India". However, this relationship between Bengal and Southeast Asia changed radically after independence. Nehru's enthusiasm for this part of Asia has been palpable since independence and it was followed by an increase in travels to Southeast Asia by Indian politicians and bureaucrats. This re-imagination of Southeast Asia through travel writing in a post-independence context constitutes a major topic of discussion in this paper. in addition, this paper undertakes a comparative study of the approach taken by the Bengalis towards Southeast Asia at two different times. Through a study of Nimai Bhattacharya's Ekchakkar Dakkhin Purba Asia (1993), it tries to initiate a new South-South dialogue between Bengal and Southeast Asia and explores the changed dimensions of their relation.

Bengali Travel writing on Thailand historicizes cultural interaction between Thailand and Bengal
and it creates a counter narrative against the historical approach of the Bengali nationalist
historians. Bengal and Thailand have a long history of cultural exchanges. In ancient times,
relations between India and Southeast Asia reached a new dimension with the spread of HinduBuddhist ideology. India had a strong influence on the various linguistic and literary traditions of
Thailand. Since ancient times, epic such as Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and the Panchatantra
(animal stories) or the Jataka stories migrated to the land of Siam and took new forms
subsequently. Especially, Ramkien can be mentioned here which is the national Epic of Thailand.
Thailand was well connected with Bengal since ancient times and instances of their trade exchanges
is very much prevalent. During the colonial rule, a group of Bengali historians and scholars became
particularly interested in Southeast Asia, including Thailand. The spread of nationalist ideology led
the Bengalis to write a new history and the Bengalis envisioned Southeast Asia as part of Greater
India. Nevertheless, their representation of Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia was coloured
by nationalist thinking. With the establishment of Greater India Society (1926) an attempt has been
made to write a new history of India to reclaim the antiquity of Indian civilization. In addition, this
new national imagination created an interest among Bengali people about neighbouring countries.
As a result, travel to Southeast Asia increased and a number of travel writings emerged in the
sphere of Bengali literature. But these travel writings, based on travel experiences in neighboring
countries, actually challenged this nationalist project of the Greater India Society (1926). This paper
will try to explore an alternative history through Bengali travel writing on Thailand which was
completely different from the propaganda of the Greater India Society. By drawing upon
Nationalist framework of history this paper will present an anti-Indianised history of Thailand.
This paper will also challenge the nationalist appropriation Bengali nationalist scholars and how
Bengali travel writings on Thailand contested against this Indianised approach of Bengali
nationalist historians.

Abstract: This article seeks to intervene in Bengali travel writings about Burma that narrate the
history of the connection between Bengal and Burma during the colonial period. Migration from
Burma to Bengal has increased since the end of the nineteenth century. The British took a large
number of Bengali coolies to Burma to strengthen their position in Southeast Asia and to
develop infrastructure. The present is an attempt of looking at the Bengal’s growing contact and
interactions with Burma that developed during colonial rule. The paper concentrates on the
cross-border migration of Bengali workers and further examines Burmese culture and customs,
etc. This paper will focus on several selected travel narratives of Bengalis visiting Burma in the
early twentieth century and it will attempt to bring to the fore the history of Burmese and
Bengali exchanges during the colonial period

This paper tries to examine the system of labour recruitment and migration from mainland Bengal to Burma. Besides, it seeks to understand the state of indentured labour recruited through Maistry system which may be conceptualised as a modern slavery. The bonded labour in this system was not only to explore the mining resources or not only for the developing industrial economy in colonial Burma but also to enslaving them with debtbondage system. They were bound to work in inhuman conditions and unable to break the contract with employers because of uncertain future and due to fear of being considered untouchable in society. Hence the said system can be understood as slavery in modern British Empire in Southeast Asia. Bengali Travel writings on Burma bear multiple testimonies to labour migration from Bengal. Primarily, this article will argue that the labour recruitment process was a well-crafted mechanism to enslave poor people and it will further look into the issues of displacement and labour migration through an analysis of selected Bengali travel writings on Burma.

This Paper tries to understand the trauma of displacement who migrated during Bengal Partition, and along with it, this paper will also try to conceptualize oral testimonies of Partition survivors in the Haskhali and Gobindapur colonies. Partition was one of the darkest events in the history of India's independence. Caste and community-related conflicts have happened in India's history for thousands of years, and due to them, there have been plenty of bloodsheds. But all of them faded by the horrors of the partition of 1947. In the aftermath of the Bengal the Partition in 1947, the plight of refugees in Bengal was variously recalled in
novels, short stories etc. However, this cultural representation of refugeehood is not always that accurate. The descriptions of Bengali refugees in official documents were also not entirely true and were one-sided. Also, the narratives found in the literature about the Bengal
partition and the refugees are mainly Calcutta-centric. During the Bengal partition a large number of people were settled in different colonies in different districts of West Bengal. But in Bengali majoritarian literary discourse, the trauma of the refugees living in these colonies
cannot be traced. My paper will try to historicize this gap or the silence of the history by drawing upon the oral testimonies of partition survivors from Haskhali and Gobindapur Colony. Further, this paper will explore the history of the foundation of the Haskhali and Gobindapur colonies. Through this case study, an attempt has been made to understand how the narrative about the colonies located in the district evolved through an interaction between memory and history. The main concern of this paper is to explore the interrelationship between refugee memory and history and how these refugee memories lead to an alternative history of partition.