Dr. Md Pervejur Rahaman

I'm a historian with interests in the Partition of India 1947 (Bengal), with a focus on Hindu-Muslim relationships and violence, Gandhi, and public historical interpretations of the event. I'm currently working on my book mansucripts, tentatively titled Hindu-Muslim Relations during the Long Partition of Bengal: The Case of Noakhali, 1946-65, in which I examine how the riots, Gandhi’s visit, and the larger processes set in motion by partition reshaped the social and intellectual life of Bengali Hindus and Muslims in Noakhali, beginning with the 1946 riots and ending with the 1965 India-Pakistan War—which led to the permanent separation of Muslims from their workplaces in Calcutta. Questioning the dominant notion that religious distinctions inevitably produced animosity between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal before and after partition, I show that the experiences of the common people were far more complex than narratives of simple, inevitable religious hatred suggest.

I’m also writing an article on Maredla Satyanarayan, a Gandhi disciple from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India, who worked to bridge and transcend the Hindu-Muslim religious divide in Noakhali through philanthropic activities beginning in 1946, an idea inspired by Gandhi’s sojourn in this region. Satyanarayan insisted on, partly in a Gandhian way and partly in his own way, that Hindus and Muslims get along even after the partition violence.

In separate research, I’m working on a community-engaged oral history project that extracts family stories of partition, displacement, and properties from marginalized people whose voices have never found expression in the public sphere. Using memories and Bengali books written primarily from Noakhali, this study aims to examine how the partition permeated in the stories of regular people, perhaps even more how partition came home in the local areas.