The paper makes an existentialist analysis of refugee Camps in West Bengal that came into being after the Indian Partition in 1947 when the state received a large number of asylum seekers from the-then East Pakistan. The objective of the paper is to discuss the construction of Camp life in terms of the affect of fear. Camps have been largely interpreted as the active agents of rehabilitation, space of political movements or supplier of informal labourers. The principal enquiry here however would be to interrogate if the camp is home for the refugees or it has a separate existential reality in the face of fear which goes beyond the questions of rehabilitation. Borrowed from Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) the concept of fear in this paper does not indicate any specific character or definite future. Rather, fear unfolds as an ‘affect’. In West Bengal, construction of the Camp by the government was presupposed for rehabilitation of the refugees from East Pakistan (Bangladesh). Hence, in-itself a Refugee Camp functioned to control the population by its norms, rules, and regulations. On the other hand, it was constructed as temporary shelter for the refugees. Therefore, the temporal character signifies how Camp constitutes the refugees through ‘care’ and how they encounter reality in that situational condition. The paper will not focus on fear as only as detrimental to the life of the refugees. Rather, it tries to show how the affect of fear may also unfold the possibility of that space by engaging with the elements of speech, silence or listening that constitutes the discourse of Camp. The paper would explore how as a temporary shelter of the refugees, Camp life has been constructed as a discourse in terms of spatial boundary and limits. Coopers Camp in Ranaghat, West Bengal here is taken as a case study to explicate the discourse of camp life in the light of fear and ontologically address the refugee question in post-Partition subcontinent.

中文翻译：

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对营地生活的恐惧：理解话语的空间现实和形成

该论文对西孟加拉邦的难民营进行了存在主义分析，该难民营是在 1947 年印度分治之后形成的，当时该州从当时的东巴基斯坦接收了大量寻求庇护者。本文的目的是从恐惧的影响角度讨论营地生活的构建。营地在很大程度上被解释为康复的积极推动者、政治运动的空间或非正式劳工的供应商。然而，这里的主要调查是询问难民营是否是难民的家，或者它是否有一个单独的存在现实，面对超越康复问题的恐惧。借用马丁·海德格尔（Martin Heidegger）的《存在与时间》（1927），本文中的恐惧概念并不表示任何特定的特征或确定的未来。相反，恐惧是作为一种“影响”展开的。在西孟加拉邦，政府建造难民营是为了让来自东巴基斯坦（孟加拉国）的难民康复。因此，难民营本身的功能是通过其规范、规则和规定来控制人口。另一方面，它被建造为难民的临时住所。因此，时间特征意味着坎普如何通过“关怀”构成难民，以及他们如何在这种情境条件下遇到现实。这篇论文不会只关注对难民生活有害的恐惧。相反，它试图展示恐惧的影响如何通过与构成坎普话语的言语、沉默或聆听的元素结合来展现该空间的可能性。该论文将探讨如何作为难民的临时庇护所，营地生活被构建为空间边界和限制的话语。这里以西孟加拉邦拉纳加特的库珀营地为例，从恐惧的角度解释营地生活的话语，并从本体论上解决分裂后次大陆的难民问题。