Escaping the Authentic Self: New Refugee Politics in South Asia
Dr Rajarshi Dasgupta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Refugees and migration increasingly trouble nation states in the twenty-first century. Given the vexing legacy of partition South Asia is no exception where the anxieties over citizenship have intensified, especially of late. Based on biometric identification new citizenship registers are in the making that will supposedly authenticate the refugees and separate them from illegal immigrants. As a consequence, governmental apparatuses are now focusing on the precise and permanent identity of refugees that will be preserved hereafter. Interestingly, this emphasis on the authentic identity has been the centre of attention for much scholarship on the partition refugees, whose politics involved the right to be counted in the new state. As the state now turns to a new round of enumeration, however, this paper argues that one can witness a remarkable shift in the politics of refugees in this regard, which is the very opposite of owning an authentic identity or even a thick sense of selfhood in some sense.
The discussion will draw upon extensive fieldwork at different sites in eastern India and Bangladesh, which includes functioning refugee camps, housing lower caste Hindu refugees in suburban West Bengal and Urdu speaking Muslim refugees in Bangladesh. The paper will outline the background of these settlements and illustrate what we can describe as a new technique of refugee politics that involves escaping authenticity.
Monday 8 April at 6.15pm in Arts G003.
