Migration of Matua Community from Bangladesh: A Microlevel Case Study from West Bengal, India

By : Nayan Roy , Rolee Kanchan

Page No: 370-385

Abstract
In the history of migration in South and South East Asia, the great exodus of 1947 and 1971 due to the outcome of the nation-building process of the Indian sub-continent were the most gigantic episodes with respect to spatial, temporal, and post-traumatic experience. It created millions of homeless and jobless refugees who are still suffering from identity crises and stress through decolonization. Although some of them were ascendant groups and became decision-making authorities in their own ancestral habitats before decolonization. This paper tries to identify the migration scenario of some sections of Namasudra, a lower caste group that emerged as a dominant group as an outcome of westernization in the colonial period in Eastern areas of undivided Bengal. Hence, the Matua community was selected for this study. It is one of the low-caste groups, formed as a distinct religious practice in the undivided Bengal and consolidated in the colonial period but after partition became a refugee for India. Two villages were selected, i.e. A1 and A2 for the primary survey. The study reveals that in both the villages (A1 & A2) migration of Matua families continued till the previous decade of the twenty-first century whereas, in both villages, more than 80 percent of Matua families arrived after 1971. Thus, from the nationality perspective, those were illegal immigrants in India.

Authors :
Nayan Roy : Research Scholar, Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara.
Rolee Kanchan : Professor, Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/ATNAGI.2023.43.02.9