মানচিত্রের ক্ষত, বিপন্ন অস্তিত্ব ও প্রান্তিক আত্মার অন্বেষণ : উত্তর-পূর্ব ভারতের বাংলা ছোটগল্প/ MANCHITRER KHATA, BIPANNA ASTITWA O PRANTIK ATMAR ANWESHAN : UTTAR-PURBA BHARATER BANGLA CHATAGALPA

Abstract

In the long journey of Bengali literature, the writings of North-East India occupy a distinct and sovereign space, independent of the literary trajectories of West Bengal or Bangladesh. These short stories have attained a unique dimension, reflecting the eternal lament of people inhabiting a blood-etched map and their grueling struggle for existence. The 1947 Partition did not merely bifurcate the land; it drew a melancholy line across the geographical and psychological maps of the people, rendering their existence precarious. From this searing anguish emerged a defiant literary stream. Unlike the urban-centric literature of West Bengal or the liberation-war-driven narratives of Bangladesh, the literary sphere here treats ‘marginality’ not as a theoretical term, but as a harsh daily reality. The nine stories under discussion - ‘Abba-janer Haar’, ‘Bangshir Bhatar’, ‘Bing O Murgichhana’, ‘Kalabatir Baromashya’, ‘Anyopath’, ‘Anubhav’, ‘Deola’, ‘Jalochchwas’, and ‘Guli Athaba Gulir Shabda’—boldly unveil the scars of this landscape.

          The existential crisis of people ensnared in the legal traps of the NRC is vividly portrayed in ‘Abba-janer Haar’ and ‘Anyopath’, while ‘Bing O Murgichhana’ and ‘Guli Athaba Gulir Shabda’ recount the tragic history of childhoods scorched by war. In ‘Kalabatir Baromashya’ and ‘Bangshir Bhatar’, poverty is so visceral that the primal struggle for food becomes the ultimate battle for survival. Conversely, ‘Deola’ and ‘Jalochchwas’ capture the erosion of ideals and the somber nostalgia of a vanishing aristocracy. Bimal Choudhury’s ‘Anubhav’ transcends barbed wires and religious boundaries to show a path of supreme human unity. Analyzing these through a theoretical lens, we find the voice of the ‘Subaltern’, as described by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak—the marginalized who seek their inevitable identity within this literary realm. When state power prioritizes legal documents over human relationships, the struggle for survival becomes a bloody epic. The wounds of Partition remain embedded in the souls of this region’s people; this extreme existential vulnerability has granted North-East Indian Bengali short stories a unique humanistic and political dignity on the global stage.