INDIA: Forgotten East Bengal Refugees, Now Aged 80 and More

100-year-old Mera Das surrounded by her family.

COOPERS CAMP, West Bengal (The Observer, London), August 5, 2007:

"We first came here as refugees in 1947; we used cow dung for fuel then, as we do now. Nothing has really changed for us." Kajal Roy's eyes are watering from the smoke that fills his bamboo and mud home.

"When we fled from East Bengal to West Bengal 60 years ago, our land in the camp was marked out by a few pebbles: 20 square feet a head. The pebbles are still there, dug into the ground."

Kajal Roy, 80, fled from Dhaka in 1947 on a freighter ship packed with 3000 refugees, all in fear of their lives. He has lived in Coopers Refugee Camp for the past 58 years. His grandchildren and children still live in the camp. Born in India they have gained citizenship. Kajal remains stateless. All photos: Dan McDougall

The 85-year-old inhales heavily on a hand-rolled beedi cigarette and looks out over the marshland, mostly jute and paddy fields, stretching east towards the 2000-kilometre-long border with Bangladesh.

Kajal is part of a world history forgot. For the past 60 years he has lived in Coopers Camp, a place largely ignored by modern India. With a population of more than 7000, each resident is related to those who escaped from Pakistan amid the horrors of British India's partition, out of which emerged the states of Muslim West and East Pakistan (1600 kilometres apart) and mainly Hindu India.

"India was a dream for us when we left everything behind during partition in 1947," Kajal says. "I was 15. We had lands near present-day Dhaka [in East Pakistan, which after a civil war became Bangladesh in 1971]. But as Hindus, my parents were threatened unless they handed over their home to Muslims. So we escaped. We hoped for a new life, for land, for homes.

"But 60 years on, India has given us nothing, not even a nationality. My parents, like I will, died here in the same temporary camp they fled to. I sit here before you a refugee now as I was when I crossed the Bay of Bengal. I never had the option to leave and I have been unable to give my children and my grandchildren the education they need. It is my biggest regret."

Vilas Chowdry, 5, and Rathin Chowdry, 71. Few of the 'original' residents of the camp have spoken publicly of the horrors of partition and how it tore their lives apart. Stories are still passed on from grandfather to grandson. Unlike his great-grandfather Vilas has Indian citizenship but still lives in the same camp Rathin fled to from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) almost sixty years ago.

In Coopers Camp stories of the flight in 1947 are rarely shared with outsiders.

Sitting with her grandson in one of the most rundown corners of the camp, Visaka Das, 84, who is now blind, says: "We came across to India from Dhaka in 1947. Our house was burnt down and my parents' lands were seized. I was a newlywed. I wore my wedding sari on the freighter we took across the Bay of Bengal. There were thousands of people on the boat; people were falling off into the water and drowning as we crossed to India at night.

Visaka Das, 82, and Bikash Das, 16. Four generations now live in the camp. The extended families live in baked mud huts that have been adapted over the years. Most now have gardens and outhouses. Trapped close to the border with Bangladesh in one of Bengal’s poorest areas there are few employment opportunities for young men like Bikash

"Along the coast we could see houses being burnt. As we fled Dhaka, I remember dead bodies being burnt by the roadside. I remember the screams of a Hindu family, our neighbours, being burnt alive in their home.

"I don't remember much about my wedding. I can recall being crushed on the boat … and seeing the fear in my husband's eyes. To escape from that, we thought God would reward us, but the life we have had since has been no life.

"My husband died in 1984, a refugee. I am a widow, but my family have to survive on daily labour. My grandson had no schooling and his prospects are poor. Unlike me, he has an Indian permit but it is stamped with Coopers Camp. He is still a refugee; he can't get work. His future is my biggest worry."

Coopers Camp is the subcontinent's oldest and least-known refugee camp....Life seems to have passed by the people of "Partition Camp 17", 200 kilometres north of India's famous City of Joy. Few Indians even know of the camp's existence.

For the older generation like Kajal Roy, memories of 1947 are largely a cause for grief..... For those in Coopers Camp, the injustices of partition continue in a more palpable economic sense. They still live on government handouts and have to fight tooth and nail to get Indian nationality. Even those born here struggle to get recognition. Most of the original refugees have remained stateless for the past six decades.

Many of the older residents are still too frightened to leave the camp for fear of being deported. It is the elderly, above all, who feel responsible for the suffering of their children and grandchildren who continue to fight to survive in the camp.....

Although still technically a refugee camp, the boundary fence that once surrounded Coopers Camp is long gone. An established community, the camp has its own market, small clinic and two schools. Most of the camp-dwellers, including the women, rely on daily labour to keep their heads above water. Most earn less than 150 rupees ($4.50) a day.

According to Lakshmi Venkat, who runs an adult education program for the Coopers Camp residents, empowering the third and fourth generation of camp dwellers to leave is the hardest task of all.....

"Sixty years on, trapped by circumstance, a lack of education and prejudice against them, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original refugees still have no faith in India and nowhere else to go. There is no longer any excuse for ignoring them."

Abridged Version of Report by Dan McDougall, The Observer
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007