Hemanga biswas biography examples
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Talk:Hemanga Biswas
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The Partition of Sylhet
Historian Peter Geyl famously stated that history is a never-ending argument. This is particularly true of oral history, where the historian examines the testimony of living people, and not just archival documents, in order to reconstruct and interpret a specific historical event or personality on the basis of memories and perceptions.
Since the 1980s, this methodology has been used increasingly in the study of the 1947 Partition of the Indian Subcontinent. Historians are beginning to put on “stouter boots” – as the English historian R H Tawney put it – entering the field to collect and document testimonies from eyewitnesses and survivors in order to understand the impact of Partition on the everyday lives of ordinary people from the Punjab, Bengal, and more recently, Sylhet. Given the dearth of published historical works on Sylhet, it is not entirely surprising that a large chunk of the current knowledge about Partition there should come from an array of oral sources. Like many oral history projects, the story of Sylhet’s Patition is also evolving, emerging and incomplete. Some may ask: does this kind of memory have the ability to produce a narrative that is authentic, dependable and verifiable?
Several factors add to the complexities involv
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A Day in Barkhola: Memory, History and the Fading Everyday in India’s Northeast
By Rongili Biswas
The Beginning
Hemango Biswas (1912-1987) was one of the founding members of the IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association) movement, whose impact on modern Indian culture has been momentous. A freedom fighter in the early thirties, he was initiated into the communist movement as a prisoner in British jail. In the forties, he took a leading part in organizing political and cultural campaigns, and became the founder of the Assam wing of the IPTA soon after the organization was established in Bombay in 1943. He won wide recognition as one of the finest composers of the new music created by the movement. He was also a legendary folk singer. He was a unique figure in the leftist cultural resurgence, who left a lasting impact as a political thinker, cultural strategist and creative artist.
During the 1940s, Hemango Biswas was actively involved in the leftist cultural revival in Cachar. His closest companion there was Irawat Singh who was another legend himself. Irawat singlehandedly organized and consolidated leftist political movements in Cachar, especially among Cachar’s Manipuri settlements and tea-garden workers. He was a remarkable orator, dancer, singer, organizer, sp