"The history of Bengal's partition has deeply affected me since childhood. I grew up hearing stories from my grandparents and neighbors about riots and mass exodus, which have influenced my present. In 2020, I started a project after witnessing communal violence in the northeast part of Delhi, India. This prompted me to investigate the history of sectarian and religious violence in my homeland, particularly how it historically manifested as patriarchal violence against women. I also aim to highlight the role of women who were not only victims but also played a significant part in resisting religious violence, but have been erased from our land's history." - Taniya Sarkar
The 2020 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), known also as ‘the anti-Muslim law,’ sparked nationwide protests and communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Delhi. As a freelance photojournalist covering the protest, Taniya Sarkar witnessed Hindu mobs attacking women and infants with acid bulbs, and targeting journalists. Later, massive communal clashes broke out in her home state. Women, again, were targeted.
Since 2020, this project has focused on collecting the accounts of women from Bengal who were disproportionately affected by communal polarisation, riots, and migration since the partition of India in 1947. The Calcutta Riots of 1946, also known as ‘The Great Calcutta Killing’, caused profound changes in community relations, leaving a lasting impact on Bengal’s psyche until the immediate postcolonial period and continues today. Additionally, the growth of Hindu nationalism since that time indicates the future of the modern Indian state.
Despite official narratives, survivors of these clashes reveal their complex nature, rooted at the intersection of politics, religion, and patriarchy. Through this project, Taniya intends to fill the gaps in Bengal’s communal violence with portraits, landscapes and visual metaphors of women, whose narratives have long been forgotten from India’s history. In this work, memory is a form of resistance that will always be relevant as long as institutions attempt to marginalise certain histories to legitimize misdeeds.
The project is currently evolving in three parts—the first chapter of this project, Nothing Left to Call Home. The second part of this project, STATE OF BEING STATELESS, delves into the history of forgotten Muslim families who were relocated from West Bengal, India to East Pakistan, Bangladesh. Throughout history, they have been mostly ignored, although history has traditionally concentrated on the journeys of those families (Hindus) who arrive in India. It also investigates abandoned architectural structures in Bangladesh and West Bengal, tracing both communities' relationships with the land and how it has shifted, resulting in modern majority-minority division. ‘When the Sea Tears Down the Fence, Water Reclaims the Blood’ is the third and conclusion chapter of the long-term visual research project that explores border politics in the Bengal delta region of South Asia, through the lens of climate change.
The photographer’s grandmother often recounted how a Muslim mob killed a Hindu milkman in Kolkata in 1946. "Don’t kill him; he is a milkman, not a Hindu," young housewives screamed from their balconies. His identity was defined by his occupation, not his religion. A visual metaphor photographed in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, on 1 February 2022.
50-year-old Bharati Rani Chakrabarty, the wife of local priest Biswanath Chakraborty from Pirgacha upazila in Rangpur district, lives in the Manthana Zamindar house and guards almost the entire estate which still remains. Photographed in Montana Rabari, Pirgacha Upazila, Rangpur, Bangladesh, on 9 April 2023.
In Bengal, young people from both communities, especially women, are often attacked at night while returning home. A visual metaphor photographed in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, in 2020.
Outsider mobs attack domestic families, loot their belongings, rape young women, and set everything on fire in the name of religion. A visual metaphor photographed in Bhatpara, West Bengal, India, on 22 December 2020.
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Taniya Sarkar is an Indian photographer whose work focuses on the socio-political reality of Bengal through the stories of women, exploring religion-related topics to uncover colonial narrative gaps. Her masterclass project, Nothing Left To Call Home, tells the story of Bengali women, in India and Bangladesh, who have been disproportionately affected by communal polarization, riots, and migration since 1947.
For the 28th edition of the Joop Swart Masterclass, we brought together 12 emerging photographers from around the world to develop a project, and develop the tools to make a viable career in photography.
Launched in 1994, the Joop Swart Masterclass is World Press Photo’s best-known educational program for emerging photographers, encouraging new and diverse approaches to photojournalism, documentary photography and visual storytelling. After a three-year hiatus, the Joop Swart Masterclass returns this year, with a focus on the MENA region, thanks to funding from the Porticus Foundation.
Credit: Taniya Sarkar
See more work by 2024 Joop Swart Masterclass participants here
