Migration and Refugee Crisis in Poetry: Birth of Bangladesh

Arunav Das

Vol-8,Issue-2,March - April 2023

Author: Arunav Das

Keywords: Migration, refugee crisis, nationalism, imagined community, liberation war, and traveling.

Abstract: This study will focus on the refugee crisis and migration due to the idea of nationalism in the poetry of Jibanananda Das’s “1946-47” and Allen Ginsberg’s “September on Jessore Road.”. There is an affinity between the experiences of the two poets. Das’s “1946-47” theme focuses on the refugee crisis and communal violence during the subcontinent's partition in 1947. On the other hand, Ginsberg experienced the refugee crisis on his travels to India during the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971. His famous poem “September on Jessore Road” describes the suffering of the refugees due to the genocidal attack by the Pakistani Army. Both poems are instrumental in poetic form and content regarding the contemporary refugee crisis in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). Das and Ginsberg also witnessed and acknowledged the social and political turmoil on both sides of the Bengal delta due to the uprising of extreme nationalism and religious identity in the subcontinent. So, this study will follow Benedict Anderson’s idea of “imagined communities” as the critical evidence. This paper will conceptualize and analyze how the paradoxes of nation and nationalism enable both poets to portray the complexities of migration, calamities of refugees, and humanitarian crises in these two historical poems.

Article Info: Received: 12 Feb 2023; Received in revised form: 08 Mar 2023; Accepted: 15 Mar 2023; Available online: 24 Mar 2023

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.82.6