Borders And Boundaries Ritu Menon Free Public Full

ENCOUNTERING THE ELUSIVE ARCHIVE A summer research grant enabled me to travel to Bangladesh in 1999 and launch a pilot study on womens experiences during the Liberation W ar, as well as their later memories.

I intend to write a public biography (Bar- On 2002) of survivors in order to rethink issues of religious communalism, nationalism, and violence in postcolonial South Asia as well as engage the ambiguity of history evident in event and narrative.

By public biography I mean a text that incorporates the investigation of violence at a theoretical level as well as through autobiographical testimonials of survivors.

By survivors I mean both victims and perpetrators, because in a strange, problematic way they were bound together; and it is by framing them together in the context of violence that we can begin to understand what happened in the war of 1971 fought by Pakistan, India, and the Mukti Bahini (Bengali militia founded and supported by the Indian government) that led to the creation of Bangladesh.

Here I focus on a small segment of my larger project-the historiographical silence concerning gendered violence in the war and the mechanisms used by both state and society in Bangladesh to keep the experiences of the victims secret.

I ask the following questions: Should we not interrogate the patriarchal society that has colluded with the government to marginalize womens voices Can we move beyond the official silence and create a new space of understanding the meaning of violence and the human cost of war I conclude by looking at the pain of women to highlight it as a possible site for generating a new regional history of postcolonial South Asia.

Borders And Boundaries Ritu Menon Free Public Full

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One was a civil war fought between West and East Pakistan, and the other an international war fought between West Pakistan and India.

In the wars ethnicity colluded with national interests and state politics, and the armies of West Pakistan and India became involved in violence, mainly targeted against the civilian population of East Pakistan, particularly women.

Both the Pakistan and Indian armies were occupying forces and were assisted in their activities by local supporters.

The Bihari community (Muslim Urdu speakers and recent migrants to East Pakistan from India after the partition in 1947) supported the West Pakistan army in the hope of saving a united Pakistan.

A sizeable number of Bengalis, members of the Muslim League, the political organiz- ation that had conceived and created Pakistan, also supported the West Pakistan army.

The Indian army, by and large, was supported by the nationalist Bengalis of East Pakistan, both Muslims and Hindus.

With the help of the Indian government, the Bengalis created a local militia called the Mukti Bahini (Liberation Army).

The combined forces of the Indian army and Mukti Bahini defeated the West Pakistan army and forced them to surrender.

At the end of the civil war the Pakistan government lost legit- imacy in its eastern province; the international war resulted in the parti- tioning of Pakistan and creation of an independent nation-state of Bangladesh.

The two wars of 1971 are generally referred to by a single name: the Liberation War of Bangladesh.

The inner conicts within the communities that led to rampant violence against women in the wars are overlooked and womens voices are actively silenced.

As a result womens experiences and memories of the war are rendered invisible in the ofcial history of 1971.

T o overcome the silences concerning gendered violence and to document a peoples history of 1971, I have undertaken to reconstruct through oral history, eldwork, and archival research the experiences of survivors men and women in History W orkshop Journal Issue 58 History W orkshop Journal 2004 15 dbh041 (ds) 9904 3:55 pm Page 275.

Courtesy of the Liberation War Museum.

Page 276.

My aim is to probe into the moments of violence, the victimization of women, the actions and experiences of men, and the trauma produced as a consequence.

Through this exploration of personal and collective memories, I hope to demonstrate the linked, though conicting, experiences of suffering of people in the subcontinent and to construct a story of survivors of the Liberation War.

This research is also an attempt to rethink communal and state violence in postcolonial South Asia and arrive at a clearer understanding of the legacies of the partitions of 1947 and 1971.

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