1st Edition

The Sundarbans Folk Deities, Monsters and Mortals

By Sutapa Chatterjee Sarkar Copyright 2017
    216 Pages
    by Routledge

    216 Pages
    by Routledge

    The book is about the colonization of the Sunderbans that began with the coming of the British. For two centuries, land-hungry peasants strove to transform the tidal forest vegetation into an agro- ecosystem dominated by paddy fields and fish culture. The construction of a permanent railroad led to the spreading of the co- operative movement, the formation of peasant organizations, and finally culminated in open rebellion by the peasants (tebhaga).

    1. The Sundarbans Folk Deities, Monsters and Mortals: Introduction 2. Fearsome Forests and Rising Tides: A Historical Geography of the Sundarbans 3. The Sundarbans in punthi Literature 4. Tilman Henckell: An Advocate of Colonial Paternalism 5. Land Reclamation from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century 6. Development of the Port at Canning and Gosaba Co-operative 7. Tebhaga in Kakdwip 8. The Sundarbans in Modern Bengali Fiction 9. The Mangrove and the Man: A Conclusion

    Biography

    Sutapa Chatterjee Sarkar is Reader, Department of History in the University of West Bengal State University.