Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-z2ts4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-08T08:18:58.061Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sorry for what? Asking the right questions about the Bangladeshi liberation war and Pakistan's military operation in 1971

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2023

Ali Usman Qasmi
Ali Usman Qasmi*
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan
*
Email: ali.qasmi@lums.edu.pk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Three aspects of the historical memory of 1971 remain highly contentious. The first concerns the (il)legitimacy of the military operation and the description of Bengali resistance against it as ‘national liberation’. The second centres on the accusation of the Pakistani military's genocidal violence, the use of rape as a weapon, and the counter-allegation of a Bihari genocide. The third focuses on the way forward: whether this should be by forgetting the past or seeking an apology for war crimes.

This article will focus on all three aspects of the debate about the violent events of the 1971 war. Instead of writing a history of 1971 as such, I will propose a methodological framework for writing a history of the war: that of asking the right kind of questions. I invoke this method not for a correct answer, or even a different kind of history, but mainly for its interruptive power to sabotage the dominant discourse, force a moment of introspection, and open up a reflective space for the possibility of reparative justice through an intimate historical narrativisation.

Keywords

South Asian historypolitical violencehistory of Bangladeshhistory of PakistangenocideBangladeshi liberation warlanguage of historical justice

Information

Type
Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 2023 , pp. 871 - 897
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Asiatic Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

The original version of this article was published with an error in the title. A notice detailing this has been published and the error rectified in the online and print PDF and HTML copies.

References

1 Raja, Khadim Husain, A Stranger in My Own Country: East Pakistan, 1969–1971 (Karachi, 2012), p. 52Google Scholar.

2 Kabir, Nurul, Birth of Bangladesh: The Politics of History and the History of Politics (Dhaka, 2022), pp. 70–71Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 101.

4 Ibid., p. 889.

5 Mustafa, Golam (ed.), History of Bangladesh War of Independence Documents (Dhaka, 2009)Google Scholar; Arefin, A. S. M. Shamsul (ed.), Bangladesh Documents 1971 (Dhaka, 2009)Google Scholar.

6 Arild Engelsen Ruud, ‘Bangabandhu as the eternal sovereign: on the construction of a civil religion’, Religion (July 2022).

7 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/opinion/the-politics-of-bangladeshs-genocide-debate.html (accessed 16 May 2023).

8 Kokab, Rizwan Ullah, Separatism in East Pakistan: A Study of Failed Leadership (Karachi, 2018)Google Scholar.

9 Zakaria, Anam, 1971: A People's History from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India (Delhi, 2019)Google Scholar. A recent addition to this literaure is Tariq Rahman's meticulously researched account of wars fought by the Pakistani military. See Rahman, Tariq, Pakistan's Wars: An Alternative History (New Delhi, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Bose, Sarmila, Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War (Karachi, 2011)Google Scholar. I am using the version distributed by the Pakistani military's General Headquarters (GHQ) as part of its Services Book Club.

11 Ahmad, Junaid, Creation of Bangladesh: Myths Exploded (Sindh, 2017)Google Scholar is an excellent example of such historical views about the creation of Bangladesh. The author exonerates the Pakistani military of any wrongdoing and blames India and Bengal rebels for inflicting violence on civilians.

12 There are dozens of such works. Here, a select few published by Oxford University Press: Cf. Niazi, A. A. K., The Betrayal of East Pakistan (Karachi, 1999)Google Scholar; Khan, Rao Farman Ali, How Pakistan Got Divided (Karachi, 2017)Google Scholar; Ahmed, Habib, The Battle of Hussainiwala and Qaiser-i-Hind: The 1971 War (Karachi, 2015)Google Scholar; Qureshi, Hakeem Arshad, The 1971 Indo-Pak War: A Soldier's Narrative (Karachi, 2013)Google Scholar; Raja, Khadim Hussain, A Stranger in My Own Country: East Pakistan, 1969–1971 (Karachi, 2012)Google Scholar; Salik, Siddiq, Witness to Surrender (Karachi, 1998)Google Scholar; Siddiqi, A. R., East Pakistan: The Endgame: An Onlooker's Journal 1969–1971 (Karachi, 2004)Google Scholar.

13 Some of the important new works include a special issue of Strategic Analysis 45.6 (2021); Carney, Scott and Milkian, Jason, The Vortex: A True Story of History's Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation (New York 2022)Google Scholar; Khondker, Habibul, Muurlink, Olav and Ali, Asif Bin (eds), The Emergence of Bangladesh: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Cham, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taj Hashmi, Fifty Years of Bangladesh, 1971–2021 (Cham, 2022); Azra Rashid, Gender, Nationalism, and Genocide in Bangladesh (Abingdon, 2019); Farhan Karim (ed.), ‘The memorial reproduction of 1971 in present-day Bangladesh’, special issue of South Asia Chronicle 10 (2020); ‘The Walking Museum: 1971 Genocide and the University of Dhaka’, Centre for Genocide Studies, University of Dhaka, 2021.

14 Some examples include Jo Bichar Gaye, a Geo TV production based on the autobiographical account of Colonel Z. I. Furrukh, and a Hum TV production Khawab Tut Jatay Hain based on a book by a pro-Pakistani Bengali, Professor Sajjad Husain. Javed Jabbar, known for his links with the Pakistani military establishment, has produced an ‘impartial’ documentary titled Separation of East Pakistan: The Untold Story.

15 https://globalvoices.org/2021/03/26/cancellation-of-conference-on-50th-anniversary-of-the-bangladesh-war-of-liberation-sparks-criticism/ (accessed 16 May 2023).

16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t3dMZ4B9JM (accessed 7 July 2023).

17 Cited in Ahmed, Shahab, What is Islam: The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, 2016), p. 542CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Collingwood, R. G., Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 274Google Scholar.

19 Collingwood, R. G., An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), pp. 23–33Google Scholar.

20 Ibid.

21 Hintikka, Jaakko, Socratic Epistemology: Explorations of Knowledge-Seeking by Questioning (Cambridge, 2007), p. 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 I am grateful to Dr Tania Saeed for drawing my attention to the extensive literature by social scientists—especially educational psychologists and marketing experts—that deals with the importance of asking the right questions. However, the literature is almost exclusively concerned with developing better pedagogical strategies for teaching or preparing more effective questionnaires for marketing surveys and polls. Scholars of the humanities, on the other hand, have not used this thematic framework frequently for an alternative conceptualisation of historical narrativisation or critical inquiry. Exceptions include Edward Shapiro, ‘America and the bombing of Auschwitz: the importance of asking the right questions’, Society 56.6 (2019), pp. 625–633. Shapiro's article gives examples of historians positing questions about a particular theme—such as ‘why there was no socialism in the US’ or ‘why the Confederates lost the Civil War’—and the outcome of their scholarly analysis shaped by that question.

23 Ahmad, Abul Mansur, End of a Betrayal and Restoration of Lahore Resolution (Dacca, 1975)Google Scholar, cited in Rachel Fell McDermott, Leonard A. Gordon, Ainslie T. Embree, Frances W. Pritchett and Dennis Dalton (eds), Sources of Indian Traditions: Modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (New York, 2014), pp. 862–864.

24 Žižek, Slavoj, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (New York, 2008), p. 187Google Scholar.

25 Jan, Ammar Ali, Rule by Fear: Eight Theses on Authoritarianism in Pakistan (Lahore, 2021)Google Scholar.

26 Jan made this argument at a seminar held at LUMS on 13 April 2019 to commemorate the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The proceedings of the event can be accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Mw_a55Y4c (accessed 16 May 2023).

27 Walter Benjamin, ‘Critique of violence’, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings. Volume I: 1913–1926, (eds) Markus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 243.

28 Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of law: the “mystical foundations of authority”’, in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, (eds) Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld and David Gray Carlson (New York, 1992), p. 43.

29 Mitha, A. O., Unlikely Beginnings: A Soldier's Life (Karachi, 2003), pp. 347–348Google Scholar.

30 Hamoodur Rahman Commission of Inquiry into the 1971 India-Pakistan War: Supplementary Report (Rockville, MD, 2007), p. 14.

31 Nuqta e Nazar with Mujeeb Ur Rehman Shami and Ajmal Jami, 16 December 2021, Dunya News, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjKXRI5G0BQ (accessed 16 May 2023).

32 Brigadier (Retd) Karrar Ali Agha, Witness to Carnage 1971: Contemporary Account of the Bengali Insurgency and Pakistan Army Operation Searchlight (March to May 1971) (Lahore, 2011), p. 272. In addition to Agha, the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, too, referred to the Camilla massacre. However, Bose, in her usual style of glossing over Pakistani military's gruesome war crimes, calls it an ‘alleged massacre’, refers to Lt. Col. Yaqub's denial of any such charge, and does not bother to investigate it any further. Bose, Dead Reckoning, p. 216, fn. 55.

33 Sisson, Richard and Rose, Leo E., War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh (Berkeley, 1990), p. 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 I am grateful to Sharika Thiranagama for drawing my attention to this particular understanding of Benjamin's critique of violence.

35 Hussain, Nasser, The Jurisprudence of Emergency: Colonialism and the Rule of Law (Ann Arbor, 2003), p. 107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Nawaz, Shuja, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within (Karachi, 2008), pp. 264–266Google Scholar.

37 Ilyas Chattha's upcoming meticulously researched monograph gives a detailed account of these internment camps and the efforts made by Bengalis to escape from them.

38 Agha, Witness to Carnage 1971, p. 209.

39 Hafsa Khawaja, ‘Vicious and Embodied Imaginations: Martial Masculinities, Pakistan Army and Sexual Violence in 1971’ (MA thesis, Columbia University, 2021).

40 Faisal Devji, ‘End of the postcolonial state’, Economic and Political Weekly 56.44 (30 October 2021), p. 68.

41 Ali Riaz, Bangladesh: A Political History since Independence (London, 2016), pp. 28–33.

42 Cited in Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and a Forgotten Genocide (New York, 2013), p. 419.

43 Cf. M. Rafiqul Islam, ‘Secessionist self-determination: some lessons from Katanga, Biafra and Bangladesh’, Journal of Peace Research 22.3 (September 1985), pp. 211–221; National Trials of International Crimes in Bangladesh: Transnational Justice as Reflected in Judgments (Leiden, 2019).

44 Devji, ‘End of the postcolonial state’, p. 72.

45 Cf. Crispin Bates and Marina Carter, ‘An uneasy commemoration: 1957, the British in India and the “sepoy mutiny”’, in Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857. Volume VI, (eds) Crispin Bates and Marina Carter (New Delhi, 2014).

46 Walter Benjamin, ‘On the Concept of History’, accessed from https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm (accessed 16 May 2023).

47 Cited in Felman, Shoshana, The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA, 2002), p. 33Google Scholar.

48 Bose, Dead Reckoning, pp. 5–6.

49 Ibid., p. 5.

50 Ibid., p. 181.

51 Ibid., p. 6.

52 Ibid., p. 7.

53 Ibid., p. 11.

54 Ibid., p. 12.

55 Žižek, Violence, p. 4.

56 Bose, Dead Reckoning, pp. 142–143.

57 Naeem Mohaiemen, ‘Flying blind: waiting for a real reckoning on 1971’, Economic and Political Weekly 46.36 (3 September 2011), p. 48.

58 Bose, Dead Reckoning, p. 21.

59 Ibid., p. 170.

60 Ibid., p. 189.

61 Sorel, Georges, Reflections on Violence (Cambridge, 2004), p. 14Google Scholar.

62 Bose, Dead Reckoning, p. 112.

63 Ibid., p. 159.

64 Ibid., p. 180.

65 Butler, Judith, The Force of Non-Violence: An Ethico-Political Bind (London, 2020), p. 74Google Scholar.

66 Bose, Dead Reckoning, p. 163.

67 Bose, Dead Reckoning, p. 27.

68 Ibid.

69 The officer in-charge of Sheikh Mujib during his imprisonment has given a detailed account of the period from March to December 1971 when Mujib was kept in solitary confinement. This interview was recorded and aired on a private Pakistani channel about six years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoINiarhCS4 (accessed 16 May 2023).

70 Cf. Kabir, Birth of Bangladesh, especially chapter VIII.

71 Bose, Dead Reckoning, p. 125.

72 Ibid., p. 122.

73 Ibid., p. 19.

74 Raja, A Stranger in My Own Country, p. 61.

75 Bina D’ Costa, Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia (New York, 2011); Jalal Alamgir and Bina D’ Costa, ‘The 1971 genocide: war crimes and political crimes’, Economic and Political Weekly 46.13 (26 March–1 April 2011), pp. 38–41.

76 Yasmin Saikia, Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971 (Karachi, 2011); Nayanika Mookherjee, The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War of 1971 (Durham, 2015).

77 Felman, The Juridical Unconscious, p. 125.

78 Žižek, Violence, p. 4.

79 Felman, The Juridical Unconscious, p. 33.

80 Ibid., p. 133.

81 Saikia, Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh, p. 278.

82 Derrida, ‘Force of law’, p. 60.

83 On the statelessness of Biharis living in Bangladesh, cf. Redclift, Victoria, Statelessness and Citizenship: Camps and the Creation of Political Space (Abingdon, 2015)Google Scholar; Datta, Antara, Refugees and Borders in South Asia: The Great Exodus of 1971 (Abingdon, 2013)Google Scholar.

84 Khalid, Saleem Mansur, Al-badar (Lahore, 1985)Google Scholar.

85 Mohaieman, ‘Flying blind’, p. 41.

86 Cited in Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley, 2007), pp. 39–40.

87 Ibid., p. 40.

88 Vilashini Coopan, ‘Time-maps: a field guide to the decolonial imaginary’, Critical Times 2.3 (December 2019), p. 413.

89 Nayanika Mookherjee, ‘1971: Pakistan's past and knowing what not to narrate’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 39.1 (1 May 2019), p. 212.

90 Arendt, Hannah, Responsibility and Judgment (New York, 2003), p. 21Google Scholar.

91 Ibid., p. 28.

92 Jaspers, Karl, The Question of German Guilt (New York, 2001), pp. 25–26Google Scholar.

93 Jasper, The Question of German Guilt, p. 56.

94 Arendt, Hannah, Responsibility and Judgment (New York, 2003), p. 44Google Scholar.

95 Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, p. 26.

96 Cited Schaap, Andrew, ‘Guilty subjects and political responsibility: Arendt, Jaspers and the resonance of the “German Question” in politics of reconciliation’, Political Studies 49.4 (2001), p. 758CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 Ibid., pp. 762–763.

98 Kabir, Birth of Bangladesh, p. 1034.

99 Ibid., p. 1046.

100 Ibid., p. 1047.

101 Žižek, Violence, pp. 4–5.