“Interrogating My Chandal Life”: Manoranjan Byapari and the Silenced History of Bengali Dalit Refugees

Manoranjan Byapari’s autobiography "Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit" gives an intense first-hand experience of the violence and fragmentation brought by the catastrophic chains of reactions set off first by the Partition and later by the urbanisation in Calcutta. He gives an intense and in-depth description of the failure of the rehabilitation schemes by the government, the unfulfilled promises made by various leaders during the fervent 1960s Calcutta followed by the stormy decades of the 1970s, the violent repercussion of the militant Naxalite movement, the forgotten episodes of the Marichjhapi massacre in 1979 where thousands of innocent Dalit refugees were killed mercilessly by the government and finally the darker sides of the corrupt politics and the criminal world. It has been narrated from the perspective of a lower caste Namasudra refugee, something that has never been done before in Bengal’s mainstream literary world. Manoranjan Byapari uses literature as a weapon, almost like a sentinel for his conscience, gives voice to the voiceless and he is willing to fight bigotry. He is willing to wage a fight against the hierarchical society. Byapari's autobiography is a critique of the constant dehumanising social forces of a caste-ridden society that get buried in urban post-colonial settings. Through his autobiography, he vents the anguish and frustration of the Namasudras. Although his autobiography narrates his own predicament and the difficult journey of his life, it is universal in nature as it transcends the Namasudra community as a whole.