ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Indian/Bangladeshi response to the unending trail of migration across the east and north-eastern border through fictional representation. Though it is believed that actual migration from the other Bengal to the present one began in 1947, in the wake of Indian Independence and formation of East Pakistan, people had started moving across the border at the time of the Second World War. Migration continues off and on in the 1960s — for religious, economic and political reasons — till there is another outrage in 1971 when the Language Movement, which had begun in 1947, reaches its climax as the Bangladesh Freedom Movement. The process of migration too continues unhindered across the Indo-Bangladesh border as part of the political strategies of securing vote-banks. While most of these migrants are from poor Muslim families, there are also some well-to-do Muslims who hold real estate on both sides of the border.
