Karatoya : North Bengal University journal of History, Vol. 13

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://ir.nbu.ac.in/handle/123456789/4195

FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

On behalf of the Department of History, University of North Bengal, it is our privilege to present to the readers the Volume 13 (2020) of the Karatoya: North Bengal University Journal of History. The present volume has incorporated research papers covering a wide range of issues and from various sub-disciplines of History. The empirical works dealing with diverse spheres of the mother discipline, viz. nationalism, sub-nationalism, post-modernist views, sports history, women’s history, etc. have enriched its contents. The Volume 13 is being published after all the articles having been refereed, peer reviewed, and critically edited with the ISSN 2229-4880. The Karatoya: North Bengal University Journal of History is a UGC Approved Journal of Arts and Humanities with Serial No. 42512.

It is our solemn duty to express our deepest gratitude to our Honourable Vice Chancellor, Registrar, Finance Officer for their generous concern on ‘Academic Endeavour’. We are also grateful to our colleagues of the Department of History for their warm encouragement and necessary cooperation for publishing this journal.

We are also thankful to all the contributors for providing valuable research papers. Finally, the officials and the staffs of the North Bengal University Press deserve heartiest thanks for their cooperation in printing the journal within limited span of time.

 

Sudash Lama, Ph.D. (Chief Editor)

Dipsikha Acharya, Ph.D. (Associate Editor)



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Now showing 1 - 10 of 13
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    Neo-Vaisnavism in Kamata Koch Bihar: Study of the Declining Phase
    (University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Sarkar, Bijoy Kumar
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    Babus and the Social Body in Conceptual Proposition in Early Colonial Bengal
    (University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Roy, Varun Kumar
    Edward Said maintains: “Knowledge of the Orient because generated out of strength, in a sense, creates the Orient, the Oriental and his world” (Said 1978: 40). The emergence of the Babus brought new changes in the social atmosphere of early colonial Bengal. The elite, wealthy, western educated Bengalis began imitating western culture and were very much eager to forge a new social class, which would align them with the Britishers. This research paper tries to revisit existing literature in conjunction with historical texts to understand the formation of the Babu identity and how this was mirrored in the new social body that had come into existence.
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    Experiences of Refugee Women After Partition (1947-1962): A Case Study of the Jalpaiguri District, West Bengal
    (University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Pal, Agnita
    Partition and migration can be considered as a mirroring face of Indian independence. A huge number of refugees entered in India after partition, and among them a considerable number were women. This particular gender unfortunately bore the most lasting scars of partition, both physical and mental, as refugees on one hand and for being women on the other. Adjustment in the new land was very difficult, rather challenging for them. Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal is in fact flooded with the stories of sufferings of those women thereby containing a significant history frozen in the memories of those surviving eyewitnesses. This paper is an attempt to seek attention to those unknown parts of human history.
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    Swadeshi Enterprise and The Bengali Business Community in North Bengal (1905 – 1920)
    (University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Biswas, Supam
    The growth and development of Bengali entrepreneurship during the Swadeshi movement is an integral part of the history of North Bengal. They exhaustively showed their interests in all fields such as tea plantation, timber, rice, jute, silk, textile, tobacco, banking, insurance and other miscellaneous sector. This section of the Indian bourgeoisie, though economically weak, represented national aspirations and sought to attain economic development.
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    Mangars: Origin and Settlement in Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling
    (University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Mangar, Asudha
    The history and culture of the Aryans have been extensively dealt with by different scholars but the description of the non-Aryans or the aboriginal tribes still hold obscurity either it is about their contribution to the primitive history of India or facts of their origin in the Indian sub- continent. The history of origin of Mangar or Magar in India is also shrouded in obscurity. It is due to this fact; a variant of opinions is adjoined with them. However, some scholars emphasized on the fact that the Magars or Mangars, are one of the aborigines of Sikkim and Nepal, belong to the Kirata community of the Eastern Himalayas. They are one of the oldest tribes of Sikkim. Rajesh Verma has reasonably stated that the Kiratis include Rai, Limbu, Gurung, Mangar and Tamang tribe of Sikkim. S.R. Timsina has also mentioned that the Mangars, Limbus and Lepcha are the earliest settlers of ancient Sikkim. J.D. Hooker has also described them as the aborigines of Sikkim, whence they were driven by the Lepchas westward into the country of the Limboos and by this latter further west (Nepal) still. At the end of 20th century, the identity aspirations and sense of identity have offered a new dimension to the assertiveness of the ethnic groups and similarly to this community. It is in this background, the history of origin of Mangars and their traditional values came to prominence and look for an identification of the facts in the district of Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling. Hence, the article attempts to find the history of its origin and their inhabitation in these districts of West Bengal.
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    Locating the Workers ‘Coolies’ in the Tea Plantations of Colonial Darjeeling: A Historical Retrospect
    (University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Subba, Salim
    The labourers are the pillars of every industry. In fact, tea plantation is a labour-intensive industry in which, most of the works is done manually by the labourers. At the same time, it largely depends on cheap labour procured from the migrant population, however, such process entails structural transformations in the economy and society enabling the evolution of waged labour culture guided by the capitalist industrial model. Such arrangements facilitate the creation of a class who works in the plantation in lieu of wage i.e., the coolies. The coolies in general sense, are a well-researched topic in academia. However, tea plantation workers of Darjeeling with different anecdotal experiences cannot be homogenised with those of other plantation industries and the concerned topic requires separate analysis. Thus, this paper intends to trace the historical processes in the making of coolies in tea plantations and their consequences of Darjeeling using different methodological tools.
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    Development of Women Education and its Impact on the Status of Women: A Case Study of Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Darjeeling
    (University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Pradhan, Pranita; Pain, Swapan Kumar
    Education provides a base for the upliftment of the status of women in the society. If women in society does not get access to education, they are unable to make claim for their rights, and in the long run this affect their status. Women though constituted almost half of the population in the world were denied equal opportunities. As a result of their little access to education, they were forced to accept the secondary status to men. Darjeeling, being a colonial master, could not escape from such social injustice. The situation in Darjeeling was little unique with regards to women education. It nurtured a society, which though patriarchal in nature, had allowed women to go out from their domestic domain for livelihood. However, they lagged substantially in getting formal education. The nineteenth century being a transitional phase as a result of the introduction of British colonial rule and various social reform movements, the sector of women education was also substantially touched upon. The unlettered women of colonial Darjeeling encountered the world of education with the help of missionaries and the Bengali bhadramahilas. The education of native women in turn gradually transformed their status in the society. In the present paper, an attempt is made to examine the nature of the progress of female education in Darjeeling hills and how far it impacted upon their status in the society.
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    Nationalist Women Poets in Colonial Bengal
    (University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Chattopadhyay, Tapan
    Bengal from time immemorial has produced courageous and spontaneous female poets. The emergence of nationalistic consciousness in the post-1857 era has created an intellectual literati class in which women played crucial roles. The social consciousness evident from the writings of Birajmohini Dasi, Urmila Devi, Kamini Roy, Begum Rokeya or Sufia Kamal has created a progressive environment during the colonial period. The present paper seeks to revisit the contribution of such writers and explains how the poetic efforts of these colonial-era poets have enriched Bengali poetry in future.
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    Identifying the Geographical Boundaries of Puṇḍravardhana
    (University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Adhikary, Sanat K
    The land of Puṇḍravardhana witnessed the emergence of human settlement much early. This area must have obtained an urban status not later than third century BCE and underwent further development till the Pāla-Sena period. This region is fed by several rivers, their tributaries and ultimately pour out their water to the Ganges. Such rivers were the lifeline for the urban centres engaged in trade and commerce and rendered fertile and vast agricultural fields by their silt deposits. Generally, we believe that the land between the river Karatoya in the east and Mahananda in the west was known as the Puṇḍravardhana bhukti. This is almost identical with the Varendra region of the Pāla- Sena inscriptions. The motive of this paper is to frame out the geographical boundaries of Puṇḍravardhana bhukti more precisely on the lights of new archaeological findings and interpretations.
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    Melting Pot of Cognitive Frameworks: Influences on Philosophy and Action of Mahatma Gandhi
    (University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Maitra, Sayantani
    Both conceptual and practical heralds of Gandhi for facilitating nationwide anti-colonial movements backed up by immense mass support had already been there in late nineteenth and early twentieth century nascent and restricted nationalist sentiments. Also, quite surprisingly in the writings of colonial administrators perpetuated as a part of colonial investigative modalities for knowledge formation, we get archetypal tincture of conceptualizing village society as the socio-cultural core of Indian civilization, later embraced by Gandhi and his fellow nationalists of twentieth century. All these prevalent knowledge and sentiments came into practice with political endeavors of Swadeshi movement of 1905 in Bengal. The present article is an effort to show that all these existing theories and practices catered Gandhi’s political philosophy and pragmatic moves who blended them into the contextual necessities of his times. He simultaneously engaged himself in rediscovering, evolving, and expressing these prevalent components in order to suit his contemporaneous realities.