Sujata Halder

Journalist Deep Halder debut book Blood Island: An Oral History of the Marichjhapi Massacre deals with what happened with roughly around one and half lakh Hindu refugees, mostly belonging to the lower castes, when they were thrown out of Marichjhapi, an island in the Sundarbans in West Bengal, in 1979 by Jyoti Basu's Left Front government. The book narrates the chilling tale of the hardships, the deaths, hunger, economic loss and deprivation that these refugees suffered in the process of being relocated. The book is nostalgic in its essence and tries to reconstruct a history of the Marichjhapi refugees which has been almost lost from the public memory. It tries to bring to the fore the experiences of the survivors of Marichjhapi episode on Bengal so as to manifest what has been deliberately and consciously been kept out of public recollection. It is a must read for each and everyone who in some way or the other is related to Bengal not only for the intensity of its portrayal of the Marichjhapi refugees, but also to relate to the tales of woe of these people and their humanistic portrayal.