About
In 2018, I was awarded grant support from the Serendipity Arts Foundation, to work on the contemporary issue of identity politics in India. I envisaged the long term project Sons of the Soil. I have travelled extensively nearly one thousand kilometres since August 2018 to date. The last time I visited Assam was in Jan-Feb 2021, and the proposed visit will be in the middle of Sept 2021. For the project I met, many victims who fall prey to the newly amended citizenship act are now stateless, families where a member committed suicide or in custody in a detention centre. Their stories impelled me for an in-depth narrative. For several decades, the state deliberately twisting the migration history of the people in Assam while branding them as illegal immigrants.
I belong to a refugee family. My parents migrated from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to Calcutta for safety to avoid religious persecution. The Indian Government then extended my family with citizenship in India. I was born and grew as an Indian citizen in Calcutta. My familiarity with refugees since childhood embarked me on this project. I was keenly aware of their issue witnessed in my younger days. The situation of the stateless people rekindled me the memory of the sufferings and agony of my grandfathers and neighbours in the refugee colony. Constant throbs of the refugee issue, smeared by political interests, seventy-five years after the independence, still their anxiety deepens.
Sons of the Soil is the constitution of my earlier projects The Bloodiest Border and The Enclave People, both based on Bengal Partition & Maigration and its effect on the people. Since the end of 2014, I initiated the visual stories related to Bengal Partition & Migration to void the visual chronicles of the Partition effect. The project will provide an in-depth narrative on refugee issues linked with identity politics. It is a vicious circle authored with chauvinistic ideology and interests that jeopardised millions of refugee lives. Religious polarisation making the issue more complex and a divide in the society. My understanding of the refugee issue and formal education in photography inspired me to do this project.
Partha Sengupta. Calcutta
The red dots indicate the places I visited in Assam for the story. Since September 2018, I have travelled more than 100,000 kilometres to unravel the truth.