It was the first time someone asked me about my memories or role in the 1971 war. I was not at all prepared, nor do I usually dare to comment on our liberation war other than paying respect to the great man whose voice got us into a war and ultimately got an independent nation for our people, to the commanders of the forces, the military warriors, and more importantly, the thousands of civilian “Mukti Bahini” members drawn from every walk of life – students, farmers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, and so many more.
Though it was all about commenting on the budget and the country’s economic performance and future, we could not avoid the discussion on the liberation war, since it was the early hours of March 26. The bad part was, I was becoming very emotional narrating a totally unknown and silent story of a 10 year-old boy’s fight against the Pakistan occupying forces in the most indigenous way – throwing a pebble at their jeep passing by and sinking in the nearby pond. It was tough to regain my voice to talk about the hard realities on GDP growth, privatisation, implementation of the growth-impacting projects, and broadening the tax base.
Our problem is that we could never discuss the unbiased story of our liberation, and most importantly could not offer an unbiased, properly scrutinised story of our liberation war to the rest of the world. Many during my audit days in Africa or Asia thought that the number of people killed in the war was seriously exaggerated. Many felt it was more of a war between the two super powers – America and Russia. Many more felt the creation of Bangladesh was nothing but the outcome of an age-old hatred between Pakistan and India. They strongly felt our country had become a playground for RAW and ISI.
I recently skimmed through three interesting books on Bangladesh’s independence – Dead Reckoning by Sarmila Bose, 1971 by Srinath Raghavan, and The Blood Telegram by Gary J Bass. I was also privy to two recently made movies – Gunday in Hindi, and Shongram made by British-Bangladeshi Munsur Ali.
My friends didn’t like Sarmila Bose’s Dead Reckoning and a few of them declined to let me have a copy. They thought it failed to tell the true story of our liberation, that it leant towards the Pakistan occupying forces and more importantly, favoured the Urdu-speaking Biharis in East Pakistan. The author rather thought the allegation of genocide and rape by the Pakistan army was seriously exaggerated; many historians ignored the atrocities against the Biharis in East Pakistan, and considered the death toll of 3 million to be hollow and self-promoting.
Though I thought the book was not a well-written and articulated one, I do agree with what Ian Jack said while writing about the book: “A truth about Bangladesh war is that remarkably few scholars and historians have given it thorough independent scrutiny. Bangladeshis are prone to melodrama and self pity.” While I myself could never prove to my English friend whether the death toll was 3 million or 3 lakh, I do emphasise with Sarmila Bose that “research [is] to be conducted by a credible team of international scholars in a systematic and verifiable manner.”
It does not matter to me whether it was a political killing by the West Pakistan army or genocide. However, it is painful to see that our liberation war could not arrest the attention of international researchers as in the World Wars, Vietnam Wars, or even the Gulf War. Even people in the West don’t talk much about the 1971 killings nearly as much as they talk about the Rwanda or other killings.
I quite liked the book 1971: A global history of the creation of Bangladesh by Srinath Raghavan. The writer thought the 1971 war was a significant geopolitical event for India and Pakistan since its partition in 1947. The writer thought the war tilted the balance of power between India and Pakistan steeply in favour of India. He further thought the line of control in Kashmir, the nuclearisation of Pakistan and India, the conflicts of Siachen glacier and Kargil, the insurgency in Kashmir, and the political travails of Bangladesh can all be traced back to the intense nine months in 1971.
Raghavan also contends that far from being a predestined event, the creation of Bangladesh was the product of conjuncture and contingency, choice and chance. He thought the breakup of Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh can be understood only in a wider context of the period: Decolonisation, the cold war, and incipient globalization. In a narrative populated by the likes of Nixon, Kissinger, Zou Enlai, Indira Gandhi, Zulfiker Ali Bhutto, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, George Harrison, Tariq Ali, Ravi Shankar, and Bob Dylan, Raghavan vividly portrayed the prominent international cast that shaped the origin and outcome of the Bangladesh crisis.
In The Blood Telegram, we get to see Kissinger deliberately hiding the atrocities done by the Pakistan armed forces on the innocent Bangladeshis. Nixon, the American president always admired Yahya Khan and considered him a friend. While Kissinger may have privately not thought much of him, he saw in him a supremely useful instrument to pursue America’s geopolitical interests. The author was right to say: “The months of killings were sustained by schemes radiating out from Washington.”
In the movie Gunday, apart from the touchy story of two kids, Bikram and Bala, torn from their families by the partition that created the nation of Bangladesh and unceremoniously dumped in Kolkata with few options, we also get to see the long-drawn Indian version of the liberation war. In fact, most global stories on the war are the outcome of how the Indians perceived it. We could not do much about this.
The movie Shongram by a Bangladesh-born British citizen Munsur Ali is a romantic drama set during the 1971 liberation struggle. A daring reporter in London (Asia Argento) interviews a Bangladeshi Londoner named Karim (Anupam Kher) on his deathbed in 2013, who finally shared his account from four decades ago. While it nicely brought in the NBC news loops, Major Zia declaring independence on behalf of the great leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, what I liked most was the way the movie ended – the editor throwing the Bangladesh genocide story into the bin as the story is not yet marketable to the international community.
Unless Bangladesh matters significantly to the rest of the world, we may not get a true and more acceptable history of the emergence of the country beyond the story of Bangladesh being the outcome of an Indo-Pak war, or a domain created by the Americans and the Russians. There are stories beyond, the story of a respectable nation in the making against an unjust war forced on them.