Object description

Marichjhanpi is an island set in the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans in West Bengal, India. It is mostly remembered today for the incident in 1979 when the newly elected Communist Party of India government of West Bengal forcibly evicted thousands of Bengali refugees who had occupied the reserved forest land on the island. The government's actions resulted in the deaths of many refugees; although the exact number is unknown, researchers believe that at least several hundred people died from police brutality, disease and starvation. The Marichjhanpi massacre forms the backdrop of Amitav Ghosh's novel, The Hungry Tide.