1st Edition
Landscape and the Bengali Diaspora Skilled Prabasi Bengali Migration within and beyond India
Bengalis have been great travellers for centuries and are famous for recreating their way of life wherever they go. This book critically analyses skilled Bengali migration within and beyond India and looks at landscapes created by the Bengali diaspora beyond the terrain of their homeland, ranging from those of nostalgia and imagination (Durga Puja/Saraswati Puja) to those of subjugation and loss of identity.
This book demonstrates the relationship between landscape and diaspora in terms of perception, imagination, space and place, ethnicity, race, caste, and class. With case studies from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Dehra Dun, Oxford, Aberdeen, New York, and the Bay Area (USA), it brings together themes like evolution of the Bengali diaspora, transnationalism and identity, stratification and segregation, urban social space, adaptation and assimilation, and questions of discrimination from other communities.
Drawing on ethnographic accounts of over 300 skilled Bengalis, the book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of diaspora studies, urban studies, ethnic studies, migration studies, geography, sociology, history, and political studies.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Landscape and Diaspora
Chapter 3: The Evolution of the Bengali Diaspora
Chapter 4: Landscape and the Bengali Built Environment: The Physical Landscape
Chapter 5: Landscape and The Bengali Social Environment: The Social Landscape
Chapter 6: Conclusions
Biography
Aditi Chatterji has been a Senior Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), Ministry of Human Resource Development, New Delhi and is an honorary associate at the Centre for Urban Economic Studies University of Calcutta, India. She is an urban, social, cultural, and historical geographer, has an MLitt in geography from the University of Oxford, UK and a PhD in geography from the University of Calcutta. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers and a Life Fellow of the Geographical Society of India. She is currently working on her fourth postdoctoral project at the Centre for Urban Economic Studies. Her publications include The Changing Landscapes of the Indian Hill Stations: Power Culture and Tradition (1997), Contested Landscapes: The Story of Darjeeling (2007), Ethnicity Migration and the Urban Landscape of Kolkata (2009), The Making of the Indian Landscape (2014). She has published over 265 articles in English newspapers, including The Statesman, The Telegraph, The Economic Times, And The Hindustan Times.
"Living as I do in the United Kingdom, and working in the University of Oxford, I am inevitably conscious of the size, importance, character and intellectual contribution of the Bengali diaspora. Indeed, Bengali communities have grown up in many parts of the world, including the USA, but also in other parts of India. Based on extensive field work, Dr. Aditi Chatterji has brought together a huge amount of new material on the landscapes of areas with a large Bengali diaspora, concentrating not only on various Indian cities, but also on New York and the Bay Area of California in the USA, and of Aberdeen and Oxford in the United Kingdom."
Professor Andrew Goudie, Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Oxford, UK, 2016.
"I am pleased to introduce Dr. Chatterji’s recent report, ‘Landscape and the Bengali Diaspora’. It is the sixth volume in her excellent series and the product of her second Senior Fellowship of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) from 2013 to 2015. I have known Dr. Aditi Chatterji since she came to the University of Oxford in 1986 following in a family tradition to come to St.Hilda’s College. Interestingly, she came to Oxford rather than MIT in Boston. After Oxford, to which she has returned many times, she returned to Kolkata where her publications have themes ranging from colonial summer resorts to landscape geography. Her books also contain striking photographic illustrations. She has made a substantial contribution to Indian geography.
The volume has involved a survey of qualified Bengalis who have migrated mostly from Kolkata to other Indian cities, the UK and USA, their perceptions of, adaptations to and adaptation of their physical and social landscapes and environments."
The late Professor Ceri Peach, Former Professor of Social Geography, University of Oxford, UK, 2016. Advisor to the research project.
