Ballads, Public Memory, and History in the Littoral Zone of Eastern Bengal

Introduction This paper is an attempt to use local ballads as sources of history in the littoral zone of eastern Bengal. My primary sources for ballads from this micro-region are the volumes edited, translated and published by Dineshchandra Sen, and then recollected and edited by Kshitish Candra Moulik.2 This chapter will examine plural social bonds, boundary transgressions, identity changes, and social conflict in ‘romantic’ and ‘historical’ ballads that Sen and Moulik collected.