Pradhuman Tiwari supervised by Dr. Sushmita Banerji received his Master of Science – Dual Degree in Computating and Human Sciences (CHD). Here’s a summary of his research work on Navigating Silence in Bengali Partition Short Stories

This research systematizes the exploration of deliberate use of silence in Bengali Partition short stories by proposing an eight-part analytical framework that can be used to categorize instances of silence in these stories into different categories based on the narrative function. The categories are determined through thematically reading for silence in a diverse corpus of Bengali Partition stories. The thesis puts the framework to the test and validates its analytical usefulness through a detailed close reading of selected representative short stories, five each from East Bengal/Bangladesh and West Bengal. Insights from this analytical exercise show that silence serves as a ‘universal grammar’ for expressing the fundamental traumas of Partition and is also a very flexible tool that can be ‘reengineered’ to express the specific social and historical anxieties of the region. This study also provides nuanced insights on the gendered lens of literary silence by looking at the deployment of silence as a complex strategy for male characters as well. This thesis significantly contributes to the Partition studies by casting new light on the silences present in the Bengali Partition short stories and providing a transferable and robust analytical tool to aid this exploration. By systematically studying silence as a narrative strategy, this work enhances our comprehension of the texts at hand and gives scholars a new framework for engaging with Partition’s literary afterlives on the eastern frontier of the subcontinent. 

July 2026