Morichjhanpi
| Marichjhanpi | |
|---|---|
| Village | |
 Marichjhanpi
 Marichjhanpi
|
|
| Coordinates: 22°11′20″N 88°57′00″E / 22.1889746°N 88.95°ECoordinates: 22°11′20″N 88°57′00″E / 22.1889746°N 88.95°E | |
| Country |
 India
|
| State | West Bengal |
| District | South 24 Pargana |
| Government | |
| • Body | Gram panchayat |
| Languages | |
| • Official | Bengali, English |
| Time zone | IST (UTC+5:30) |
| ISO 3166 code | IN-WB |
| Vehicle registration | WB |
| Website | wb |
Marichjhanpi, alternatively Marichjhapi is an island set in the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans in West Bengal, India. It is mostly remembered today for the incident in 1979 when the newly elected Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) government of West Bengal forcibly evicted thousands of Hindu Bengali refugees who had settled on the island. The government's actions resulted in the deaths of many refugees; although the exact number is unknown, researchers believe that at least several hundred people died from police brutality, disease and starvation. The Marichjhanpi massacre forms the backdrop of Amitav Ghosh's novel, The Hungry Tide.
The Partition of India in 1947 split the large eastern province of Bengal into two halves, along religious lines. One half became West Bengal, a Hindu-majority province in the new independent state of India. The other half became East Pakistan, the Muslim-majority eastern half of Pakistan, and later the independent country of Bangladesh.
Partition was accompanied by much bloodshed and suffering, and the mass migration of millions of people - Hindus from their ancestral lands in East Pakistan across to India, Muslims from India trekking in the opposite direction. This cross-transfer of peoples continued through the decades after Partition, although at a much slower rate. While the educated upper classes were able to settle themselves in the urban environs of Calcutta, the poor Hindus were moved to areas outside West Bengal, in inhospitable terrain in Orissa and Chhattisgarh. Dry forest regions usually inhibited by the adivasis, a region broadly called Dandakaranya. There they lived in concentration camp like conditions. Similar looking huts or tarpaulin tents were put up to be crammed with refugees. The boundaries were surrounded by barbed wires and guarded. The places were named Permanent Liability Camps.
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Wikipedia