About the Project

Supervised by a coordinator and with guidance from two academic resource persons, fifteen researchers — eight from India and seven from Bangladesh — conducted long interviews with respondents who talked about the memories that they had inherited from their previous generations. These interviews touch on issues like conditions in which their families had to move, the cultural traces they carried with them and about their emotions of the time and events that they only heard about from their families.

Project Promo
Behind the Scenes
Participants
Our Grandparents' home by Supriyo Sen

Project Promo

Partition Promo from Goethe-Institut

Behind the Scenes

Participants

Amzad Hossain

Amzad Hossain is currently in his final year of BSS majoring in International Relations at Chittagong University. He considers himself fun loving and always eager to learn. He is interested in world organizations like "The United Nations" and the way it works worldwide. He wishes to work on his country’s foreign policy in future.

Disha Chaudhuri

Disha Chaudhuri is freelance journalist, photographer and final year M.A. student studying English Literature at Jadavpur University, Calcutta. She was previously a print journalist, associated with "The Telegraph", Calcutta, but she is looking forward to transitioning to data journalism. She has an unusual love for coffee, cinnamon sticks, babies, and fat, furry animals. When she is not obsessively reading news articles on the internet or poring over books, she can be found baking or binge-watching movies. One can find out more about her and her work on www.disharaychaudhuri.weebly.com

Farhana Razzak

Farhana Razzak is a graduate of International Relations, University of Dhaka. As her discipline is a multidisciplinary one, the horizon of her research interest has always been diverse. So far, she has worked in different sectors and organizations as a part of her learning process. Also, she had the opportunity to represent Bangladesh in delegations abroad. Due to her interest in academic practices, she looks forward to serve the society as a responsible citizen through knowledge building. With sharp focus and dedication to attain the target, she sees herself as an important member of the world community. To make a difference for the betterment of state, society and humanity she finds herself bound to the wisdom of philanthropy.

Iffat Anjum

Iffat Anjum is currently pursuing her MSS degree in the department of International Relations, University of Dhaka. She is originally from Gazipur – a neighboring city within Dhaka division. She currently lives with her parents and an elder sister in Magbazar, Dhaka. She intends to pursue her career as a researcher. Her research interest is international security and significantly non-traditional or human security. Apart from her studies, she likes writing on contemporary political issues. Both contemporary and old school music is what she likes during her leisure. She strongly believes in cultural diversity, openness and secularism.

Iffath Yeasmine

Iffath Yeasmine was born in Bangladesh and is 21 years old, she is currently an undergraduate student at Chittagong University studying International Relations. Media and society has always been her field of interest and she has worked with various welfare organizations. ‘Inherited Memories’ was her first research project as an assistant researcher. It was a huge platform for her as it gave her an opportunity to explore new avenues enabling her to learn more.

Mahde Hasan

Mahde Hasan was born and brought up in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is an experimental filmmaker, writer, cinematographer, brother and bondhu (a good friend). Time and memories are very fundamental elements in his life and work. His films ‘Photographs of a School Teacher’ and ‘I Am Time’ were selected and screened at several festivals in Bangladesh, India and Ireland. His film scripts have been published in the well-known little magazine named ‘Gandib’. He teaches cinematography at ‘Pathshala Cinema’ and he is working on his next film about ‘migration and human movement’.

Md Mufazzal Hossain Rumon

Md Mufazzal Hossain Rumon is a social worker, journalist and a public speaker. He is a student of Communication & Journalism at the University of Chittagong. He is working as a Program Coordinator at Religious Youth Service Project Nepal and an Executive member of JUST Malaysia. From his school days he was involved in many social activities. He became a member of one of Bangladesh’s leading non-governmental organizations in school and started working in the fields of Education, Sanitation, Family Planning and more. He has worked in areas like Sylhet, Sunamganj, Habiganj and many Haor areas of Bangladesh. He has been involved in the International Youth Exchange Center (IYEC) Republic of Korea and had been elected as General Secretary of IYEC Bangladesh in 2010. He has organized a number of International Youth Exchange programmes in 2011 and 2012, and has participated in more than 20 International Conferences, Seminars, workshops, like IYLC Malaysia, RYSP Nepal, I-YES Philippines, YCF Sweden, IYLP Malaysia, IYES Korea, 9th Peace Ambassador training Arizona, USA. Rumon has started working as a Program Coordinator at Religious Youth Service Project Nepal, supported by Universal Peace Federation from 2015. He has also written many articles about the education system in Bangladesh, Youth Development of Bangladesh, Lifestyle of Haor peoples etc.

Md Shahadat Hossain

Md Shahadat Hossain is currently studying at University of Dhaka. His major subjects are mass communication and Journalism. Earlier, he studied in Ideal school and Rajuk Uttara Model College. He is a Fulbright alumnus. He got a full funded scholarship to study Film and Journalism at Arizona State University. He came back from USA in 2014. He dreams to become a documentary film-maker. He wants to do his masters from NYFA. Currently, he has his own production house called “Etcetera Creative House”. He also has a volunteer organization named “One Step Ahead”. Besides film-making, he wants to work on different social projects to rehabilitate homeless people and children in Bangladesh. He also loves football, street food and sleeping.

Mousumi Mandal

Mousumi Mandal is a PhD research scholar in Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is currently working as an Assistant Professor in Daulat Ram College, Delhi University. For her doctoral thesis she is researching on the figure of working refugee woman after the Partition of Bengal. Her M.Phil. research was on popular folk art form of Sunderbans, Banabibi-r Palagaan and popular religion. Her research areas of interest are popular culture, popular religion, translation, oral and folk art forms, performance, Bengal partition, women, and city. Her research interest is a prime reason for her being part of the project “Meiner Eltern Welt / My Parent’s World: Inherited Memories” conducted by Goethe-Institut Kolkata and Goethe-Institut Bangladesh.

Nandini Ganguli

Nandini Ganguli, from a very young age, loves to inhale the past. Ample chances were there of her turning into an antiquarian, but the megalomaniac present, somehow kept her in the present, the romantic present guarded well by music and literature. As time flew, she deliberately chose the less-traversed path of History for her graduation and post-graduation courses. An irresistible urge to be a part of the coveted academia made her enter the M.Phil. course from her alma mater, Calcutta University. The insipid past became intrepid again. The latent yearnings for a lost home (her grandparents were displaced during the simultaneous incidents of Independence of the Indian Subcontinent and the traumatic partition of the continent into two nations-India and Pakistan) and the resultant repercussions led to a humble beginning, a beginning to grasp the nuances of forced migration, memory and multiple identities.The attempt still goes on, just like the divide within as a continual existence, an omnipresent contested terrain.

Nazmul Hussain

Nazmul Hussain is currently a researcher at the 'Centre for Studies in Social Science, Calcutta (CSSSC) in the area of population geography. His research interest lies in the area of Status of Minorities in India. He has done his doctoral, post graduate and graduation in Geography from Department of Geography, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.

Prama Mukhopadhyay

Prama Mukhopadhyay is a research scholar at the Department of Sociology, Presidency University, interested in studying the landscape and life of the deltaic Sundarban. She has just finished working in an ICSSR sponsored project on Muslim casteism in West Bengal for which she had to engage in extensive field work in the Indian parts of the deltaic region. Interested in issues related to partition and homelessness, she was drawn to do this project, especially because her family too has migration stories from the time of partition.

Rituparna Datta

Rituparna Datta is an independent researcher working on partition, forced migration, refugees and violence, heritage and "Alternate Realities - Small Voices making big Histories". As a student of History, she has graduated from Lady Brabourne College and has completed her M.Phil. from University of Calcutta on Reverse Migration and Muslim Identity in post-Partition Bengal. Growing up listening to stories of a lost home, or ‘desh’, in erstwhile East Pakistan and traumas of refugeedom of her grandparents inspired her acquisitiveness in exploring and fathoming the personal and collective narratives in building up the sense of community. Individualistic in approach, her spirit for travelling adds on to her nonconformist ways of understanding and imagining myriad cultures and discovering connected humanities.

Somwrita Nag

Somwrita Nag is a second year undergraduate student of History from Presidency University, Kolkata. It was a great learning experience for her to work on the project 'My Parents' World: Inherited Memories', as partition has always been a subject which has intrigued her a lot.

Soumita Mazumder

Soumita Mazumder has recently completed her M.Phil. in social sciences from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) and is currently pursuing her PhD applications. Meanwhile, she also works as a Research Assistant in the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi (CSDS). Her M.Phil. dissertation focused on the operation of neighborhood clubs in late colonial Calcutta. Initially her training in the discipline of History happened in Presidency College under the University of Calcutta. As a researcher having an inter-disciplinary background, her research interest revolves around various socio-political and urban aspects of colonial and post-colonial cities of Calcutta and of Bengal. In her academic career, she wishes to take up the profession of teaching in future. Apart from doing academics, she wishes to be a traveler and keep her researcher-self ever alive.