Author: Mohana Chatterjee, Diamond Harbour Women’s University
Editorial Summary
The paper examines violence against Bengali refugees in MV-26, a settlement in Odisha’s Malkangiri district, in December 2025. It argues this crisis stems from the long history of Partition-era displacement and rehabilitation. The Dandakaranya Project resettled Bengali refugees, many from lower-caste communities, on forest land inhabited by Adivasi groups. This created tensions over land and resources. The murder of an Adivasi woman triggered arson and displacement of Bengali families. The paper shows how refugees, settled decades ago, still face questions about legitimacy and belonging, with some being labelled illegal Bangladeshi settlers. It concludes that Partition’s consequences persist through ongoing contests over citizenship and social acceptance in rehabilitation regions.
Introduction
The history of refugee rehabilitation in postcolonial India continues to shape contemporary conflicts over land, settlement, and political belonging in several frontier regions of the country. The crisis that unfolded at MV-26, a refugee settlement village in Odisha’s Malkangiri district, in December 2025 exposed unresolved tensions within the social and political landscape of the region. Following the murder of an Adivasi woman in the area, retaliatory attacks targeting Bengali refugee households resulted in widespread arson, displacement, and heavy security deployment in MV-26. Public discussions surrounding the incident largely interpreted the violence through the language of criminality, ethnic hostility, and administrative breakdown. Yet the rapid escalation of tensions revealed deeper historical anxieties rooted in histories of refugeehood and contested belonging in regions shaped by refugee rehabilitation.
This article argues that the crisis in MV-26 must be understood within the broader historical trajectory of refugee rehabilitation and resettlement in postcolonial India. Engaging with the idea of the “long Partition,” it demonstrates how the consequences of Partition extended far beyond 1947 through processes of displacement, rehabilitation, demographic transformation, and contested belonging in regions such as Malkangiri. Drawing upon oral testimonies, field interviews, media reports, archival materials, and secondary literature, the article examines the contemporary crisis through the lens of Partition and refugeehood. In doing so, it reveals the fragility of belonging among Bengali settlers in Malkangiri, who continue to confront questions of legitimacy and acceptance in a region they have long called ‘home’.
Refugee Crisis and the Making of the Dandakaranya Project
The migration of refugees from East Pakistan into India did not occur as a single movement triggered by the Partition of 1947. Rather, it unfolded through successive waves extending over several decades. While the initial years of Partition witnessed large-scale refugee movements, migration continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s as recurring episodes of communal violence, economic insecurity, political instability, and discrimination compelled many Bengali Hindus to leave East Pakistan[1]. The refugee question in eastern India therefore cannot be understood as a finite event associated solely with 1947. Instead, it evolved into a prolonged historical process marked by repeated displacement, uneven rehabilitation, and continuing struggles over citizenship and belonging[2].
The social composition of refugee migration also changed significantly over time. The earlier phases of migration largely consisted of upper caste and middle class Bengali Hindus who possessed relatively greater access to urban networks, education, and employment opportunities within West Bengal. By contrast, later refugee populations increasingly consisted of lower-caste agrarian communities, particularly the Namasudras, a Dalit (Scheduled Caste) community whose members formed a substantial proportion of the refugee influx from East Pakistan[3]. Unlike many earlier migrants, these refugees often lacked access to urban networks and economic resources, making them especially vulnerable to exclusion within the rehabilitation process. Their limited economic resources also meant that many remained dependent upon state assistance, including relief and rehabilitation doles, which considerably constrained their ability to negotiate with government authorities regarding the terms and locations of their rehabilitation[4].
By the late 1950s, the Government of West Bengal repeatedly expressed its inability to absorb the growing refugee population within the already strained demographic and economic conditions of the state. Rehabilitation consequently became structured along caste and class lines, with large numbers of lower-caste refugees being redirected to rehabilitation schemes outside Bengal. It was within this context that the Government of India increasingly turned towards large-scale resettlement projects beyond the borders of West Bengal. In June 1957, the Dandakaranya Project was formally announced as a major rehabilitation scheme for refugees from East Pakistan. The project became operational in 1958 under the Dandakaranya Development Authority and continued to function until 1988. It aimed to rehabilitate Bengali refugees in Dandakaranya, a vast forested region in central India extending across parts of Orissa (present-day Odisha) and Madhya Pradesh (present-day Chhattisgarh)[5].
The name Dandakaranya, derived from Sanskrit, literally translates as the “forest of punishment” (danda meaning punishment and aranya meaning forest). For many refugees who were already reluctant to leave Bengal, the name itself reinforced fears and uncertainties surrounding rehabilitation in an unfamiliar forested region[6]. Spread across nearly 30,000 square miles, the Dandakaranya Project was divided into four principal zones: Malkangiri and Umerkote in Koraput district of Orissa, and Paralkot and Kondagaon in the Bastar region of Madhya Pradesh. The selection of Dandakaranya was influenced by the availability of extensive tracts of sparsely populated forest land that planners considered suitable for large-scale settlement and agricultural expansion. Beyond refugee rehabilitation, the project also reflected the postcolonial state’s developmental vision of transforming the region into a productive agrarian landscape through planned settlement and land reclamation. Although conceived as a permanent solution to the refugee crisis, the project remained marked by persistent criticism, refugee dissatisfaction, and repeated instances of desertion throughout its three decades of operation[7].
Refugees and Adivasis: A History of Coexistence and Conflict
Long before the arrival of Bengali refugees, the forests of Dandakaranya were inhabited by diverse Adivasi communities such as the Koya, Bonda, Gadaba, Bhumia, and Paraja. The rehabilitation of refugees under the Dandakaranya Project significantly altered the demographic composition of the region and introduced a large settler population into an area long shaped by tribal patterns of livelihood, land use, and social organisation. In designing the rehabilitation scheme, policymakers largely treated Dandakaranya as a space available for settlement and development, paying limited attention to the existing social and economic worlds of its tribal inhabitants. For the Adivasi communities, forests constituted the foundation of everyday life, providing access to land, food, forest produce, and cultural resources. The objectives of the Dandakaranya Project, however, were closely tied to the expansion of settled agriculture through forest clearance and land reclamation.
Official policy documents frequently portrayed Dandakaranya as an economically underdeveloped region whose resources remained inadequately utilised. Tribal livelihood practices, including shifting cultivation and forest-based subsistence, were often viewed by planners as obstacles to agricultural modernisation and economic growth. Refugee rehabilitation was consequently expected to serve a dual purpose: providing land to displaced populations while simultaneously promoting settled agriculture and increasing agricultural output within the region.
Government reports even proposed allocating a portion of reclaimed land to tribal communities in the hope of encouraging a transition away from shifting cultivation[8]. However, such assumptions failed to recognise that tribal and agrarian economies were organised around different relationships with land and natural resources[9]. While the rehabilitation programme viewed forests as land to be reclaimed and cultivated, many tribal communities understood them as integral to their social and economic existence. The expansion of refugee settlements therefore altered not only the demographic composition of the region but also existing patterns of land use and resource access. These transformations created conditions for friction between refugee settlers and Adivasi communities, tensions that would continue to shape social and political relations in the Dandakaranya region long after the formal implementation of the project.
The Bengali refugees came from the fertile riverine plains of East Pakistan, where wet-rice cultivation formed the basis of agrarian life. The rugged terrain and ecological conditions of Dandakaranya differed significantly from the environment they had left behind[10]. Consequently, the refugees frequently complained that the land allotted to them was infertile, difficult to cultivate, and yielded poor returns[11]. At the same time, many refugees perceived that tribal communities had access to more productive agricultural land, particularly in the protected upland areas of the region[12]. These perceptions contributed to growing resentment among sections of the refugee population and added another layer to the tensions that gradually emerged between refugee settlers and local Adivasi communities.
The Contemporary Crisis in MV-26: Fragility of Rehabilitation and Contested Belonging
Originally a subdivision of Koraput district, Malkangiri was elevated to the status of an independent district in 1992. Under the Dandakaranya Project, large numbers of Bengali refugee families were settled in specially designated colonies established across the region. These settlements were administratively identified through a numerical system and came to be known as MV villages, with “MV” standing for “Malkangiri Village.” MV-26 was one such refugee settlement village established under the rehabilitation scheme. Decades after the implementation of the Dandakaranya Project, the village found itself at the centre of a major crisis, drawing renewed attention to the fragility of refugee rehabilitation and the unresolved tensions embedded within the region’s social and political landscape.
Refugee dissatisfaction with the quality of land allocated under the Dandakaranya Project encouraged many Bengali settlers to seek access to more productive agricultural land through informal arrangements with local tribal communities. In several instances, Adivasi landowners leased out their land to refugee cultivators, creating new economic relationships that simultaneously generated dependence and conflict.
According to local accounts and media reports, the Adivasi woman whose murder triggered the unrest had previously leased agricultural land to a Bengali cultivator but after a few years sought to reclaim it for her own use. Disputes reportedly emerged over the cultivation of the land before her disappearance. The subsequent discovery of her headless body generated widespread anger among local tribal communities. Thereafter, on 7th and 8th December 2025, a tribal mob from neighbouring Rakhelguda village allegedly stormed the Bengali settlement at MV-26, resulting in widespread arson, looting, and displacement.
Sudhir Mondol, a Bengali resident of MV-26, stated, “All the Bengali families of MV-26 had to face the consequences of the actions of an individual. More than 10,000 angry Adivasis attacked our houses and looted our valuables. All of us left the village and took shelter in a nearby place. No lives were lost because we had already left beforehand, but we still shiver when we think about what could have happened had we not been able to leave in time.”[13] More than 163 of the 188 houses in MV-26 were reportedly set ablaze during the crisis, leaving many residents displaced. Among those affected was Mahananda Bairagi, a former sarpanch whose family had been rehabilitated in the region after migrating from East Pakistan in 1963. Reflecting on the destruction, he remarked: “They burnt down everything — my house, my motorcycles, even my son’s savings for his daughter’s marriage. We fled East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) 62 years ago to escape persecution. Where do we go now?” For Bairagi, the crisis revived memories of an earlier displacement. Drawing parallels between the recent events and his family’s migration from East Pakistan, he observed: “We left our homes once because we were tortured for being Hindu. Now, after six decades, we are suffering again — only this time, in the land we thought was home.”[14]
The crisis in MV-26 also revived longstanding debates regarding the legitimacy and belonging of Bengali settlers in the region. In the aftermath of the unrest, sections of public discourse portrayed the affected residents as “illegal Bangladeshi settlers,” despite the fact that these families were descendants of refugees rehabilitated in Malkangiri under the Dandakaranya Project decades earlier. The recurrence of such claims revealed the continuing fragility of belonging among Bengali-speaking populations in the region[15].
Gouranga Karmakar, president of the Malkangiri Bangali Samaj (MBS), located the roots of the crisis in the gradual emergence of anti-Bengali sentiments within the region. According to him, sections of the local political leadership and tribal organisations had, over the past few years, sought to portray Bengali residents as outsiders despite their decades-long presence in Malkangiri. He argued that such narratives increasingly questioned the legitimacy of the Bengali population and their place within the region. In his words, “They have spread false narratives portraying us as temporary settlers, land encroachers and ‘Bangladeshi anuprabeshkari’ who must be driven out, poisoning the minds of tribal youth despite long-standing harmonious relations.”[16]
Conclusion
The crisis in MV-26 revealed the continuing vulnerability of Bengali families, for whom questions of legitimacy, belonging, and citizenship continue to resurface during moments of crisis. The experiences and testimonies of these Bengali settlers suggest that displacement remains a living memory rather than a closed chapter of the past. As Anindita Ghoshal pointed out in an interview, the situation in MV-26 was not an isolated incident; rather, similar tensions have recurred across the broader history of refugee rehabilitation in postcolonial India. Ghoshal drew attention to the northeastern frontiers of India, particularly Assam and Tripura, where the rehabilitation of large numbers of Bengali refugees after Partition generated similar anxieties surrounding migration, citizenship, and belonging. She observed that refugee populations in these regions have continued to encounter periodic hostility long after their resettlement, especially around questions of political legitimacy and territorial claims[17].
The crisis in MV-26 indicates that the consequences of Partition cannot be confined to the moment of territorial division in 1947, but persist through recurring contestations over legitimacy and social belonging in regions shaped by refugee rehabilitation. Far from being an isolated rupture within an otherwise stable social landscape, the events in MV-26 exposed the fragility of refugee rehabilitation in postcolonial India and revealed how the descendants of Partition refugees continue to bear the burden of displacement, contested belonging, and uncertain legitimacy even generations after their rehabilitation and resettlement.
Footnotes
[1] Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay, Udbastu (Kolkata: Deep Prakashan, 2021).
[2] Anindita Ghoshal, Refugees, Borders and Identities: Rights and Habitat in East and Northeast India (New Delhi: Routledge India, 2021).
[3] Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, Caste and Partition in Bengal: The Story of Dalit Refugees, 1946–1961, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022); Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872–1947, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011).
[4] Prafulla Kumar Chakrabarti, The Marginal Men: The Refugees and the Left Political Syndrome in West Bengal (Kalyani: Lumi`ere Books, 1990).
[5] The Dandakaranya Project and the Resettlement of Displaced Persons from East Pakistan, Ministry of Rehabilitation. New Delhi: Government of India, 1958.
[6] Manoranjan Byapari, Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit, translated by Sipra Mukherjee (Kolkata: Stree-Samya, 2018), p.25.
[7] 30th Report of the Estimates Committee (1978-79), Dandakaranya Project Exodus of Settlers (1978), 6th Lok Sabha, Department of Rehabilitation, New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1979.
[8] Government of India, Estimates Committee, Ninety-Seventh Report (Second Lok Sabha): Ministry of Rehabilitation, Dandakaranya Project (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, April 1960), p.39.
[9] Aijazuddin Ahmad, “Regional Development Process and Redistribution of Tribal Population in Mid-India,” in Population Redistribution and Development in South Asia, ed. Leszek A. Kosinski and K. Maudood Elahi (Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 1991), pp.65–78.
[10] K. Maudood Elahi, ‘Refugees in Dandakaranya’, International Migration Review, Vol. 15, No. ½, Refugees Today (Spring– Summer, 1981), pp.219-225.
[11] S. K. Gupta, “Dandakaranya: A Survey of Rehabilitation; I—The State of Agriculture,” The Economic Weekly, 2 January 1965, pp.15–26; Shaibal Kumar Gupta Private Papers Collection, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi.
[12] Based on field interviews and oral testimonies collected by the author among Bengali refugee settlers in Malkangiri district, Odisha, October 2021.
[13] Interview with Sudhir Mondol, resident of MV-26, conducted by the author, 5th April 2026.
[14] Subhashish Mohanty, “Odisha Bengalis Face Tribal Rage: Homes Torched Following Brutal Killing of Woman,” The Telegraph, 11 December 2025, accessed on 11 May 2026.
[15] Ankita Mahalanobish and Indradeep Bhattacharyya, “Odisha Violence: Villagers Attacked by Tribals in Malkangiri Not ‘Illegal Bangladeshi Settlers’,” Alt News, 12 December 2025, accessed on 13 May 2026.
[16] Subhashish Mohanty, “Malkangiri Bengalis Cry ‘Bias’: False ‘Infiltrator’ Narrative Flagged in Delhi Meetings,” The Telegraph, 14 February 2026, accessed on 11 May 2026.
[17] Interview with Dr. Anindita Ghoshal, conducted by the author, 17th May 2026. Ghoshal’s research focuses on Partition, migration and refugeehood in eastern and northeastern India.