February 21 resonates with special meaning for Bangladeshis. That morning in 1952, hundreds of students of what was then known as Dacca University, came to their campus to protest against restrictions placed on public assembly. The students were part of the movement that sought equal recognition for the language spoken most widely in East Bengal, and the mother-tongue of most -- Bangla. Bangladesh was part of Pakistan then, and the national language was Urdu.
The police arrested some students, and more students went to demonstrate at the East Bengal Legislative Assembly. When some students attempted to enter the premises, police opened fire and several students were killed. For Bangla nationalists, February 21 became martyrs’ day; the language movement, which would ultimately culminate in what Bangladeshis call the war of liberation, and the country’s independence in 1971, was now unstoppable.
On February 21 this year, I was in Lahore. I entered the hall at the impressive Al-Hamra Arts Centre, the home of the Lahore Literary Festival, before a nearly-packed audience of Pakistanis who were curious about my book, The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy, published last November.
The talented radical musician Taimur Rahman, who is part of the progressive group Laal, and teaches political science at the Lahore University of Management Science, had the unenviable task of steering a discussion about my book -- and the 1971 war, which broke Pakistan -- that was bound to reopen old wounds.
My co-panelists were Sadaf Saaz Siddiqi, a poet from Dhaka who has worked for the rehabilitation of birangonas, as the Bangladeshi women who survived sexual violence in 1971 are known, and the brave human rights activist from Lahore, Hina Jilani, who protested against the war and would later during that hour tell us about her experience of trying to get Pakistanis to oppose violence in East Pakistan by signing petitions on Mall Road in Lahore, only to be ridiculed, and she recalled others telling her they were occasionally spat at.
Taimur was generous in his praise of my book; he called it “a readable unreadable book,” saying it was easy to read, but the stories it contained made him uncomfortable as a Pakistani. Our initial conversation was like a tense test match -- straight deliveries, played back with a straight bat.
But then Taimur turned, as he should, to the tougher questions: Here I was, in Lahore, telling Pakistanis what they had done. How did I feel?
It wasn’t an easy question to answer. The audience included at least half, if not more, who weren’t born at the time of the war. They were interested in literature and ideas; they were Lahore liberals, willing to listen to another point of view. They had shown courage in attending a literature festival, taking place within days of a bomb blast. There were security vehicles and armed guards outside the arts complex to prevent any terrorist act; there were snipers on the rooftops, and uniformed men with weapons inside the complex. They knew, and applauded, Jilani’s views on Pakistan’s army. But what I had written about went close to the bone.
Some probably saw me for what is part of my identity -- a man born in India, with a Hindu name. India, not any other country, but the one with which Pakistan fought wars, and which local textbooks blame for dismembering Pakistan and deviously helping Bangladesh become independent.
We all have our baggage: My textbooks told me that India intervened in 1971 only after the Pakistani Air Force struck Indian airfields on December 2, and that Indian motives were primarily driven by the humanitarian impulse -- to end conflict, to bring peace, and to help the nearly 10 million refugees return home -- a view not only many Pakistanis, but some Bangladeshis too question.
Those in the audience in front of me were not responsible for what Pakistan’s army did in 1971. Yahya Khan wasn’t elected; his was a military dictatorship that was refusing to hand over power to the AL, which had won the majority of seats in the elections.
All Pakistanis did not endorse the government. So I mentioned some courageous, positive examples -- like the story of an air force officer who became conscientious objector and refused to bomb civilians; of a colonel who left the army, and over the years wrote poetry and tried to reconcile the two nations; of another officer, who wrote about the incidents of rape he knew were happening; of an anguished Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who would write the moving ghazal, known as Dhaka se wapasi:
Ham ke thehre ajnabi itni madaaraaton ke baad
Phir baneinge aashna kitni mulaaqaaton ke baad
(The Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali translated it as:
After those many encounters, that easy intimacy, we are strangers now –
After how many meetings will we be that close again?)
Horrible things were done in your name and there has been no accountability, I said to the audience.
Hina Jilani was not one to let her compatriots off easily. She challenged my interpretation; she said that hardly any Pakistani spoke up. She recalled how her father, who wrote a letter to General Yahya Khan protesting the military crackdown, was arrested and was kept in jail from March to September 1971. She recounted the humiliating taunts pacifists on Mall Road endured. Things were done, she said; we were silent, she reminded the people; we were responsible. And she got resounding applause.