The Biharis have been part of Calcutta since the last few centuries. The three states of Bihar, Orissa and Bengal comprised what was in the nineteenth century rather officiously called ‘Greater Bengal’. With both the geographical proximity and the absence of any geological barriers encouraging movement of people among these states, migration to the city of Calcutta has been a regular phenomenon. Interestingly, though the term ‘Bihari’ predates the recent division of the larger state of Bihar, the term was generally not used to refer to people from areas which today are included in the Jharkhand state. The cities and towns of the modern state of Jharkhand – Hazaribagh, Jamshedpur, Maithan, Ranchi, are viewed by most Calcuttans as being familiar enough to be mistaken for towns of Bengal. It has been the people from the districts of Monghyr, Katihar, Purnea, Bhagalpur, Saran (with its subdivision of Chhapra) who have always been identified as the ‘real’ Biharis.

Though the image of the Bihari migrant is often of one who is among the poorest, this may not always reflect reality. Much of the rural–urban migration, as other researches in South Asia and Africa has also shown, is of a circular character. Almost all the Bihari migrants continue to maintain links with their areas of origin in rural Bihar. In the southern African context, or colonial India, this has been attributed to policies that restrict the settlement of migrants with their families.