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  • War, Migration and Alienation in Colonial Calcutta:the Remaking of Muzaffar Ahmad
  • Suchetana Chattopadhyay (bio)

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Fig. 1.

The People's Corner Bookshop, College Street, Calcutta.


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Fig. 2.

College Street area, Calcutta. In the background is the Baptist Mission and Meeting Hall.

[End Page 212]


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Fig. 3.

Street scene near College Street, Calcutta.

Introduction

Muzaffar Ahmad (1889–1973) came to Calcutta in 1913. His ambition was to be a writer. When the First World War ended, he was rethinking his decision to be solely a cultural activist. By 1922, his political activism had led him towards a Marxist perspective of society and he had emerged as the central figure of the first socialist nucleus in the city. He was later to become one of the most prominent Communists in the Indian city where the Communist movement has proved most resilient. This article examines the war years and argues they were crucial in socially 'reshuffling' the ingredients that went into the making of a changed political [End Page 213] consciousness. It examines Muzaffar Ahmad's urban social milieu and the political trends evident among the Calcutta intelligentsia during the 1910s, and the ways in which they shaped the process of ideological transition.1

The journeys from the rural to the urban have frequently been viewed through the prism of 'migration'. Autobiographical writings, fiction and historical narratives are replete with experiences of collective and individual changes. This article, however, focuses not on the process of migration from the countryside but on the sources of self-transformation in the city. Taking the early urban experiences of an impoverished lower middle-class Muslim intellectual from Eastern Bengal (now Bangladesh) as a frame, it investigates the continuously shifting registers of alienation and marginalization as experienced by a migrant-outsider, and their interplay with forces of opposition and resistance in a colonial city during the First World War. A wider context shaped the political tendencies visible in wartime Calcutta: the extraordinary drain of resources by the colonizers in the form of money, men and material which directly contributed to a sharp deterioration in the living conditions of ordinary people; the conditional support extended to the colonizers by the mainstream nationalist leaders in the hope of major concessions after the war; the determination of different revolutionary groups to weaken and overthrow the temporarily beleaguered imperial order; and British anxiety to maintain control over the subcontinent through heightened repression. The article demonstrates the impact of these strategies on the urban milieu in which Muzaffar Ahmad found himself and which contributed to his transition.

Streets Unknown

Why did he come to the city? In 1913, Muzaffar Ahmad was just one more in the sea of poor lower middle-class migrants. They crowded the urban space that was Calcutta, in search of a better life which often proved to be elusive. As his existence became intertwined with the city, Muzaffar gradually ceased to display strong attachment to his rural origins. Despite periodic absence, the city was to become the setting of his social and political activities. He remained in touch with the rural milieu he had left behind, yet it was no longer his world. Muzaffar's immediate rural environment had propelled him towards the city. In the vortex of metropolitan upheavals, his life would take a completely different turn. A new political focus, previously absent, was going to emerge.

For those born in genteel poverty in the rural areas of Bengal in the 1880s, the city represented a gateway to material opportunities and social advancement. From the second half of the nineteenth century, the middle and lower strata of landed proprietors in the Bengal countryside were increasingly unable to sustain themselves from agrarian income. The impending loss of class and property could only be prevented by branching out to civil professions. Western education, and particularly some [End Page 214] knowledge of English, was the bridge that had to be crossed to make one's way in a colonized society.2 The material constraints in Sandwip, a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, a part of the Noakhali district...

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