A vast number of poems have been written in Bengali on the Partition. However, until now, those poems had never been translated. That long-overdue task has finally been accomplished. Edited by Angshuman Kar, The Lost Pendant – a collection of English translations of Bengali poems on the Partition – has been published on 7 June. The book was launched at the Ethos Literary Festival in New Delhi.

The poems in the anthology have been selected by the editor. The translations have been done by Sanjukta Dasgupta, Mandakranta Sen, Rajarshi Patranabis, Himalaya Jana, Souva Chattopadhyay, and the editor himself. The collection features poems by poets who directly experienced the trauma and the pangs of the Partition, as well as poems by those who witnessed it but were not direct victims of it. The anthology includes poems by major poets who were the direct victims of the Partition such as Sunil Gangopadhyay, Sankha Ghosh, and Tarapada Roy, alongside works by Bishnu Dey, Subhash Mukhopadhyay, and Shakti Chattopadhyay who witnessed the Partition from a closed distance. Notably, the collection also presents rare poems on the Bengal Partition by Rittwik Ghatak and Manik Bandopadhyay.

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What makes this anthology special is that it does not limit itself to the poets from West Bengal. It also includes poems by poets from Assam, Tripura, and Bangladesh. Poets such as Jasimuddin, Shamsur Rahman, Mahadev Saha, Shaktipada Brahmachari, and Piyush Raut are featured in the collection.

Editor Angshuman Kar has stated that this translation project—of Bengali poems on the Partition—will be completed in three volumes. This is the first volume. In the preface, he has written: “The book doesn’t consider poetry as just a tool to confirm what we already know. It, rather, argues that, like oral histories and memoirs, poetry too should be considered a valuable part of history. It is history of another kind in which not merely facts but the emotive aspects of a deadening event have been recorded. The book in a way tries to rewrite the history and aftermath of the Partition through verse.” The book has been published by Hawakal.