Do you speak Bangaal bhasha ? Interweaving caste, class, and lived narratives of East Bengali Hindu migrants

Bibliographic Data

ID24226126
AuthorsNilanjana Saha (0009-0009-9867-8330, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur), Dripta Piplai (0000-0003-4339-9915, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur)
Year2026
Pages1-17
Publication date2026-05-08
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Community (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369183x.2026.2667936
OpenAlexW7160612965
LanguageEN
References cited31

This paper talks about the intergenerational perspectives of Bengali Hindu migrants from East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh) towards their home language varieties, which are collectively termed Bangaal bhasha in colloquial spheres. Bringing out lived experiences from different urban and suburban settlements in West Bengal, the paper highlights the narratives of maintaining or shifting from the language varieties, a highly contested area of understanding, but noticeably underworked in partition studies. The study intends to show how the traumatic exodus, triggered by the genesis of East Pakistan in 1947 and culminating in 1971 with the creation of Bangladesh, simultaneously displaced people from their ancestral homeland and linguistic heartland, leading to the continuous reconstruction of their identities. Given that Bengali Hindu migrants were a heterogeneous community that slowly migrated over the years for various reasons, contributing to myriad experiential realities, the in-depth oral interviews for this study attempted to capture the caste- and class-oriented pluralities. Based on these socio-culturally mediated narrative experiences, the paper showcases the positioning of home language varieties in the intergenerational narratives, emphasising the socio-cultural capital and the spatio-temporal nature of displacement and resettlement that shape attitudes, belonging, and negotiation of identities.

1971 Liberation War · Caste · displacement and resettlement · East Bengal · East Pakistan · identity reconstruction · language maintenance · Partition of India · sense of belonging · Social class · socio-cultural capital · West bengal · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies · South Asian Studies and Diaspora