Nostalgia for a Lost Homeland: A Reading of Partition Memories in Sunanda Sikdar's Dayamoyeer Katha

Abstract

The partition of 1947 of the Indian subcontinent was a cataclysmic event in history, leading to the formation of two nations, namely India and Pakistan. The national rupture resulted in migration, displacement, communal riots, and violent acts of massacres, abductions, and the rape of women. Fictional writings, memoirs, and oral histories offer subjective accounts of the devastating effects of that social and political upheaval. Dayamoyeer Katha is a partition memoir of Bengal written by Sunanda Sikdar. The memoir, set in Dighpait, recounts her memories of the first ten years of her life spent there. Dighpait became part of East Pakistan after the partition. The memoir focuses on her experiences with social life, customs, taboos, prejudices, and the subtle demographic changes. Sikdar’s painful experience of leaving her ‘desh’, Dighpait, is the central trope of her memoir. In “One Who Stayed Back: Sunanda Shikdar’s Partition Memoir Dayamoyeer Katha,” Debjani Sengupta states, “In Bangla partition memoirs, elements of the pastoral are used to recreate a history of its people” (Sengupta 10). This paper aims to explore how the memoir unearths painful insights into the trauma of displacement through the perceptive understanding of a girl-child narrator. It also critiques the formation of two nations that have complicated Sikdar’s sense of belonging and identity.