Saikia HWJ Article

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Beyond the Archive of Silence: Narratives of Violence of the 1971 Liberation War ofBangladeshAuthor(s): Yasmin SaikiaReviewed work(s):Source: History Workshop Journal, No. 58 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 275-287

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HISTORY ON THE LINEBeyond theArchive of Silence:Narratives ofViolence of the 1971LiberationWar ofBangladeshbyYasmin Saikia

In 1971 two wars broke out inEast Pakistan. One was a civil war foughtbetween West and East Pakistan, and the other an international war foughtbetween West Pakistan and India. In the wars ethnicity colluded withnational interests and state politics, and the armies ofWest Pakistan andIndia became involved in violence, mainly targeted against the civilianpopulation of East Pakistan, particularly women. Both the Pakistan andIndian armies were occupying forces and were assisted in their activities bylocal supporters. The Bihari community (Muslim Urdu speakers and recentmigrants toEast Pakistan from India after the partition in 1947) supportedtheWest Pakistan army in the hope of saving a united Pakistan. A sizeablenumber of Bengalis, members of theMuslim League, thepolitical organization that had conceived and created Pakistan, also supported theWestPakistan army. The Indian army, by and large, was supported by thenationalist Bengalis of East Pakistan, both Muslims and Hindus. With thehelp of the Indian government, the Bengalis created a local militia calledtheMukti Bahini (Liberation Army). The combined forces of the Indianarmy andMukti Bahini defeated theWest Pakistan army and forced themto surrender. At the end of the civilwar thePakistan government lost legitimacy in its eastern province; the international war resulted in the partitioning of Pakistan and creation of an independent nation-state ofBangladesh. The two wars of 1971 are generally referred to by a singlename: the Liberation War of Bangladesh.The current historiography on the Liberation War is focused solely onthe investigation and discussion of conflicts between the armies andmilitiasofWest Pakistan, East Pakistan, and India, and the external contexts ofbattles between the different ethnic groups of Bengalis, Biharis, andPakistanis.1 The inner conflictswithin the communities that led to rampantviolence against women in thewars are overlooked and women's voices areactively silenced. As a resultwomen's experiences and memories of thewarare rendered invisible in the official history of 1971. To overcome thesilences concerning gendered violence and to document a people's historyof 1971,1 have undertaken to reconstruct through oral history, fieldwork,and archival research the experiences of survivors - men and women in

History Workshop Journal Issue 58 ? History Workshop Journal 2004

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276 HistoryWorkshop Journal

Fig. 1. Protest poster showing familybrutalized and killed in1971.

WIGBB^^B^BK^^^+^^^^BPLJ^BI^^^^^^^^^BBE^BBB ?

Fig. 2. Salina Par veen, journalist, abducted and killed in1971.



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History on the ine 277Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India who participated in, experienced, andwitnessed the Liberation War. My aim is to probe into themoments ofviolence, the victimization ofwomen, the actions and experiences ofmen,and the trauma produced as a consequence. Through this exploration ofpersonal and collective memories, I hope todemonstrate the linked, thoughconflicting, experiences of suffering of people in the subcontinent and toconstruct a story of survivors of the Liberation War. This research is alsoan attempt to rethink communal and state violence in postcolonial SouthAsia and arrive at a clearer understanding of the legacies of the partitionsof 1947 and 1971.

ENCOUNTERING THE ELUSIVE ARCHIVEA summer research grant enabled me to travel toBangladesh in 1999 andlaunch a pilot study on women's experiences during theLiberation War, aswell as their latermemories. During this initial visit toBangladesh, I foundthatnothing was recorded about women in the traditional sites forhistoricalresearch - inarchives and libraries. In themedia, however, I heard the shrillvoices of politicians invoking the violence of 1971 and demanding redress.In this political-public discourse everyman fromPakistan was reduced tothe generic label of 'perpetrator' and every Bangladeshi man became amukti judha, a war hero. In this national political memorializing, womenwere tellingly absent, even though a count of 200,000 rape victims was usedby politicians tomobilize anger against Pakistani enemies several decadeslater. Such narratives created and clearly demarcated societies - 'evil'Pakistan and 'good' Bangladesh. No possibilities existed for blurring theboundaries and generating a dialogue between the two.My initial investigation of thisnarrative innewspapers made itevident that government officials, scholars, and political and religious leaders all restricted women'sspeech. There was a definite unwillingness to ask difficult questions thatcould potentially expose and force people to come to termswith the realityof a horrific past inwhich Bengali men participated, along with Pakistaniand Bihari men, in brutalizing women. The silence was all pervading. Thequestion that arose forme was how could one move beyond such institutional silence and recover women's voices? Iwas convinced that survivorscould tell their experiences if theywere allowed to do so.

Determined to overcome the silence of the state archives, I returned toBangladesh in 2001 and lived there for a year. I embarked on amulti-sitedand multidisciplinary project, combining oral history with literary, audiovisual, and newspaper research. I started my research in the DhakaNational Library and Archive reviewing local and national dailies from1971 and 1972 to investigate how they represented violence against women.The newspaper reports did not give women's stories, but allowed me totrace the path of soldiers and map their camp sites. I had become awarethrough reading Bengali novels that these were places where women were



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278HistoryWorkshop Journalheld in captivity for sexual slavery during thewar.2 In addition, the audiorecordings about women's experiences available at the Dhaka RadioStation, relating mainly to the loss of family members, and the visualmaterials and family documents in the Liberation War Museum, enabledme to develop an outline of the kind of violence thatwomen experiencedand the strategies later adopted to organize a silence about them, evidentacross a range of the nation's public institutions. Armed with this initialresearch and documentation, I began my oral history project with the aimof correcting the imbalance and placing women's suppressed memories inthe narratives on 1971.

Many social activists and women's rights advocates discouraged me fromthe project. They warned me that 'women will not speak' and insisted thatIwas wasting my time trying to findwomen who would bear witness to thecrimes of 1971. They actively discouraged me from including Bihari women,the enemies of Bengalis, inmy research project. Undeterred, I went toCamp Geneva in Dhaka, a 'forbidden space' for most Bengalis inBangladesh, where Bihari refugees have been living since the end of thewar, for over three decades, as 'stateless' people. After some initial hesitation and reluctance, many women came forward to assist me in locatingwitnesses and victims of 1971, as well as some of the children who hadsuffered violence. Conversations with the survivors confirmed thatwomenhad been subject to extreme violence. Some of them shared with me theirtightly-guarded secrets and asked me to ensure that their stories gainedinternational attention.

These initial encounters inCamp Geneva ledme tomany more Biharirefugee camps across Bangladesh where I heard and recorded testimoniesthat established thewidespread brutality against women during thewar. Iinterviewed both Bihari and Bengali victims, initially aided by a culturalorganization themembers ofwhich included a variety of professionals andactivists who used street plays and political dramas to document a publichistory of 1971 in northern Bangladesh. The young women Imet throughthis organization ledme towomen who were brutalized in thewar. In turn,these women led me to many more victims, and I travelled all acrossBangladesh meeting survivors of 1971. Being an outsider inBangladesh butfluent inBengali and Urdu privileged me to speak to, and to build trustwith, anguished Bengali and Bihari women, who were extremely critical oftheirown community and society. It became clear tome that 1971 was trulywhat one woman, Sakeena Begum, a Bihari victim, described as 'the yearof anarchy and end of humanity inBangladesh'.3 I recorded around fiftytestimonies and corroborated these accounts with over two-hundredBengali and Bihari witnesses. From these women, who were of variedethnic, class, religious and social backgrounds, I learned that housewives,school and college students, professional women and sex-workers werevictims of violence. Their ages ranged from twelve to fifty-seven.From thebeginning Iwas concerned about the ethics of the research Iwas



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History on the ine 279pursuing. Iwas troubled whether my probing intowomen's memories wouldinstigatemore violence against them.The women who shared their stories ofpain and sufferingwith me, however, did so expecting that Iwould representtheir experiences to others and so help them toovercome the silence that hadbeen imposed on them, even after liberation, both bymen and by the state.Many said that to have a voice and to have their pain recognized would bejustice done, even ifitwere many years after the event. They were angry thatthe state had not recognized their sacrifices, and had silenced the issue ofgender violence rather than undertaking an investigation.Most of themwerebitter thatnot even a plaque ormemorial was dedicated to women victims.Nonetheless, I remained concerned about the impact on thesewomen ofa public historical interpretation of their lives and memories. There weretimes when I seriously doubted whether itwould be positive. For instanceinone ofmy field trips to northern Bangladesh, Imet a schoolteacher whoat our very firstmeeting indicated tome that she wanted to 'tell her story'.She invitedme toher home, but after ameal when we sat down to talk, threeother women from the village 'stopped by to chat' and stalled the conversation.Although discouraged, on her insistence Iwent back to her home thenext day hoping to listen to her story.But that day the crowd waiting formewas larger, comprising a mixed group of men and women. The menrecounted tome exaggerated stories about their brave feats in 1971. Thewomen were silenced. The thirdday when Iwent back toher house, a hugecrowd ofmen barred my entry demanding why I was repeatedly comingback to speak to the schoolteacher. 'What is your interest in her?', theydemanded. They threatened me, making it clear that they did not want meto return.Weeks later, I received a letter frommy friend, the teacher, thatdetailed a story of starvation, brutality and rape by a Bengali neighbour in1971. She said: T was only thirteen years old then, and this elderly neighbour whom my family had requested to help me get safe passage out of thecamp (where we were kept inPakistani custody) destroyed me'. She forbademe from using her name inmy research and 'the details recounted in theletter'. Her story, and her fears,were far from unique. During my fifteenmonths of research inBangladesh therewere several instances when I seriously doubted the effectsmy research would have.The larger truth however ismore encouraging. By and large, the projecthad a beneficial impact on thewomen themselves. Almost all of thewomenI interviewed confided that sharing their traumatic experiences was therapeutic because someone had cared to listen to them. This shattered the

myth thatwomen did not want to talk. On the contrary, they said thatmywillingness to listen and the opportunity I had provided them to reflect ontheirmemories and make sense of themwere invaluable. At another level,too,my research had an impact.My two research assistants, a Bengali manand a woman, both of the post 1971 generation, discovered an aspect oftheirhistory unknown to them.They became enthusiastic about taking thework a step further and organizing young men and women at the university



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280 History Workshop Journalto begin a dialogue with Bihari and Bengali women in order to overcomethe barriers of distrust and hate that have kept them apart. Their drive torevisit a historical chapter and to democratize it in order to produce a newcommunity was inspiring. I hope they have accomplished some of theirobjectives.Another question that bothered me was how much I could depend onpeople's narratives to construct a reliable picture of what happened in 1971.Recent scholarship has made us aware thatmemory is slippery and selective.4 From the beginning, I remained vigilant with regard to survivors'narratives. But I also realized that three decades of silencing have more orless isolated the victims, pushing them to the extreme margins of society,and have made a coherent narrative of theirmemories of violence almostimpossible. So when some of them tried to recall forme their experiencesof violence they could do so only in disjointed fragmentary sentences. Onmany occasions even thiswas not possible. Mumtaz Begum, a survivor, toldme, T don't remember anything, but I am still in pain'. When I inquiredfurther about thenature and cause of her pain, she said, 'My body is inpain,but I can't tell you what they did tome. Iwas unconscious throughout mycaptivity (which lasted eleven days). I was seven months pregnant whenthey took me to the camp'.5 Her captors, it appeared, were both Bengaliand Pakistani men. Although the memories of survivors are somewhatfoggy and language is not always sufficient, I believe - like ArthurKlienman,6 Veena Das,7 Susan Brison8 and many others - that personalsuffering can and should be made social. Without it, extreme experiencesof individual sufferingwill become unthinkable and therefore unknowable.Scholarly obsession with impersonal and rigorous demands for substantiating individual experience with corroborating evidence bring the danger ofmuzzling, rather than empowering, the voices of women inBangladesh. Iwas aware of the shortcomings of personal memory, but keen to hear whatthewomen had to say. I approached them for information inorder to transformmemory into language and destroy silence by talking about it.

Along with listening to the narratives of survivors, whenever possible, Itried to probe into other sources, including government documents,hospital records, social service and rehabilitation reports, photographs andvisual media. The supplementary materials, whenever available, corroborated women's testimonies and filled inmany gaps. Over time, these documentary materials and testimonies helped me develop a clearer picture ofwhat happened in 1971. A question that continued to bother me was: howdo I find a language to communicate the horrors of 1971? I have been grappling for a language to convey what Inga Clandinnen calls 'catastrophetales'.9 Listening to such tales, asmany know, imposes a responsibility. Weare obliged to tell the stories of survivors, for these are the entry point tounderstand what happened. Along with telling, it is absolutely necessarythatwe learn to listen towhat the people, the survivors, are saying. Onlythenwe can come up with a language to report what we know.



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History on the ine 281The task of tellingwhat happened in 1971 is daunting because there areno laid-out paths to follow; every telling invariably betrays the originalvoice and disrupts the silence that has been kept intact for over three

decades. Nonetheless, following Hayden White's urging to make thehistorian 'amiddle voice', I have decided to insertmy voice in the unveiling of the horrors of gendered violence in 1971.10 For me, this has becomemore than a historical research project. My role has changed during thecourse of the research from that of a chronicler to an advocate. I now see

myself as a storyteller with a mission. My aim is tomake this research ameans of bearing witness to the violence of 1971, and of raising awarenessabout the spurious currency of normality inpostcolonial South Asia.Bearing witness to the crime committed against women in 1971 is anaggressive, iconoclastic act. It is an attempt towrite a counter history anda way to shake the foundations of the history that exists in the subcontinent

today. But I am not a lone voice in demanding a new excavation of postcolonial violence. Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon11 and Urvashi Butalia12pioneered the project of researching and writing alternative narratives ofpartition violence in 1947. They forged a path forother scholars wishing toexpand the boundaries of feminist history in South Asia and to undertakeresearch on the second partition of the subcontinent, in 1971. Like them,my goal is to emphasize thepossibility of alternative retellings of the eventsand history of violence and to demand change.The rich feminist literature on 1947 and my direct encounter withsurvivors of 1971 have helped me to understand one issue. It is not thewomen themselves, but the structures and institutions outside their control,that restrict their speech and force them to forget what they endured.Silence serves as a tool to confuse women, and even now, decades later, thewomen cannot make sense of their horrific experiences nor find answersabout why theywere targeted in thewar thatmen fought and controlled.The story ofMadhumita (name changed) that I quote below illuminateswomen's experiences during and after the war. Madhumita told me herstory inmany parts; I quote only two segments of a larger interview thatwas over six hours long. In her storywe hear the voice of a young BengaliHindu girlwho was brutalized and tormented by her neighbours and familyfriends,who used the occasion of thewar to victimize her.We learn fromher that after thewar her life did not take a better turn,but rather that shewas made to pay dearly for her victimization in 1971.Madhumita was, andcontinues to be, a victim of her own society; the oppression is unending. Imet Madhumita in her home. Her elderly mother (around eighty years old)was also present at the firstmeeting. Madhumita started her storyby introducing herself and her family.

I (Madhumita) was fifteen years old and a student of grade VIII in 1971.Ours was a richHindu merchant family and we lived in a compositeBengali village. On June 21, 1971, local Bengali and Bihari men of the



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282History Workshop JournalMuslim League, supporters of Pakistan, came to our house. My familyused toknow them verywell. They came to arrestmy father and brothersbecause our family was involved in the liberation struggle and weresupporters of theMukti Bahini. But when the Biharis approached ourhouse, all the adult men fled.My youngest brother, who was eleven yearsold, could not escape. I tried to help him, but was apprehended by theattackers. They locked me in a room; my brother was there too.

At this point of the interview, her mother, who was sitting besides her,broke down and started towail. Madhumita stopped recounting the detailsabout the horrible night of her victimization. Her mother's wail penetratedthe stillness of the room. Her cries were heartrending. I had destroyedwhatever peace had existed in the household, and that shook me. But Icould not leave. So I sat there and listened to the painful screams of hermother's agony. The pain of remembering what happened on the fatefulnight was unbearable for her. The old lady slumped and fainted. ThenMadhumita's brother came in, and carried hismother out of the room. Ourconversation stopped for the day. Several weeks later when Imet Madhumita again and she began her narrative where she had left off. On thisoccasion hermother did not join us.Without making direct reference toherexperience of sexual violence, Madhumita said,

After they finished their business they set the house on fire and walkedaway. But I could not letmy brother die. So I dragged myself and despitethepain Iwas suffering, I helped my brother to escape by breaking openthe door. I was badly burned in the process. That night, I hid in ourbackyard pond. Next morning, when I emerged from the pond chunksof flesh started falling offmy body. I had no clothes on, except burnedshreds to cover some parts.When I looked around, I saw some men fromour village returning from theirmorning prayers. On seeing me theymade funny noises and gestures. I tried to tell them Iwas not a prostitute but so-and-so's daughter, and tried to solicit their help. But theywalked away. Since that day I have been a living dead. My body is inpain. I have no status, job, or education. My brother now owns the familybusiness and I live inhis house. I gave up my dignity,my life,everythingformy brother; but today I am no better than his servant. This iswomen's lot inBangladesh.13Madhumita's voice, like that ofmany Bangladeshi women, is the voiceof a victim. Pride in saving her brother is intricately linked with her ownvictimization at the hands of her neighbours. In her storywe hear that her

family's religion and politics provided justification formaking her theenemy body. Bengali and Bihari Muslim men under the guise of savingnation and community destroyed her and then lefther to die and burn.Wealmost smell her burning flesh, and can feel her pain as she emerges from



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History on the ine 283the pond to seek help fromher neighbours only to be rebuffed and treatedever since as a social outcast. As we listen to her we want toundo thenightmare of that night and inject ameasure of normality into her life. Instead,

we are leftwith a sense of her unending loneliness, with no one to share hermemories, fears, anxieties or hopes.I spoke with and recorded the testimonies of over fifty victims inBangladesh during my fifteen months stay. Almost all the women whoshared with me their horrificmemories of war talked at length about thepain of betrayal inflictedbymen they knew - men who belonged, perhaps,to their community, their village, even their family. One Bihari womanrecounted themurder of her daughter in 1971.[My] daughter's name was Fatima. She was eighteen years old in 1971and was married. She was expecting her first child in a fewmonths. Afterthewar was over, on March 28, 1972, some Bengali men from [their]neighborhood stormed into [their] mohalla [compound]. They killedFatima's husband, then they pulled her out of her room into the courtyard. They disrobed her. Then they slit her throat. But that was notenough. They ripped open her stomach, pulled out the unborn child andtore it into two. Fatima died immediately.

Recounting this storywas not an easy task forFatima's mother. She lost hercomposure many times. But she continued.My daughter was innocent. Like all other women inBangladesh shewaslike cattle.We are here because our men wanted us to be here. I cameto this country because ofmy husband. He thought he would be betteroff inEast Pakistan, so we came here in 1957 from India. I never choseto come here, nobody even asked me. No one asked my daughter whatshe wanted. The Bengalis thought she was an enemy because she spokeUrdu. They killed her without showing anymercy. Itwas not her crimethat shewas born a Bihari. Has anyone asked us women what we did todeserve this?Has anyone asked a mother how much ithurts to lose adaughter? I am a victim, and I understand what other victims feel.Women are victims in this country. Help us, please, help us. We alsodeserve to live like human beings.14

These testimonies of women shock us, as they should. 1971 was a nightmare; the violence was relentless. The enemy, as women revealed over andover again, was within, not outside. This iswhy women have been forcedto remain silent.



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284History Workshop JournalINTERROGATING ANOTHER SOURCE: THEPERPETRATORS

Extended conversations with women made me realize that I had to talk tothosemen who made active choices tomaintain women's silence. Iwantedto encourage them to bear witness. Towards this end, I began collectingarmy reports and public records, and turned to oral history to collectpersonal testimonies of doctors, politicians, bureaucrats, veterans and civilians who had joined, supported and assisted in the independence ofBangladesh. The picture that emerged was complicated. They gave me a lotof information about political policies, such as the recruitment ofMuktiBahini soldiers in refugee camps located in India; the performance ofmandatory abortion on pregnant women; the destruction of records andreports on women's rehabilitation programmes tomaintain their 'honour';and the 'silencing' of raped women through abandonment by their ownfamilies. From many decorated officers and women victims I learned aboutmilitary camps, detention centres, public-works projects and similarventures which the Pakistan army organized. These accounts portrayedwomen as theprincipal targets ofmale oppression and violence, both in thecamps, and in towns where fighting war broke out between the MuktiBahini and thePakistan army. Soldiers of theMukti Bahini proudly talkedabout their units, the discipline and regulations theywere taught and livedby, the battles they fought in, and even about the kind of violence towhichthey subjected their enemies - Pakistanis, Biharis, and those Bengalis whoopposed the freedom struggle.The soldiers, however, rarely talked about their treatment of women,although many casually mentioned that they had joined the army not tosave women, but their country. From men who served as wartime securityguards at camps and business premises which were turned into detentioncentres forwomen, I learned about the brutalities inflicted upon women.

Many of thesemen are troubled that they did not do more to save womendetainees, although some are married towomen they rescued. From theseaccounts, itwas easy to read that both action and ideology were carefullyplanned and upheld by the elite state actors who glorified gruesomeviolence as acts of valour and national pride. Perpetrators thus came inmany forms. But sexual violence was not a random act in 1971. The statemade thesemen freedom fighters and gave them power to carry out itswillwith violence, ifneed be. The rhetoric ofwar and perception of Pakistanisand Biharis as the 'enemy' propelled Bengali men to commit horrific acts,and vice versa, and these oftenmetamorphosed into sexual violence againstwomen in order to terrorize and force thewhole communities into fear andsubmission.The violence thatmen indulged induring thewar does not enable us tounderstand the history of the Liberation of Bangladesh. Rather, itmakesus recoil; we want to run away from it.But can we keep running away from



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History on the ine 285thishistory f violence? Indeed it is a depressingknowledgethat amsuggesting we search for.Yet, we are obliged to. Ifwe listen to the voice ofa perpetrator we will understand why we need to search, probe, and know.Biman (name changed) narrated this horrific story tome. He said,

On April 3, 1971, the Pakistan army came to our town. The Biharis inour railway colony were emboldened. We saw themwalking around theplace without fear and itmade us very angry. I and five other friends,who had joined theMukti Bahini, decided to punish them.We went toone of our Bihari neighbours' house. I used to call him 'uncle' and hisdaughter was my sister's friend. She used to refer tome as 'brother'. Butthat day all human tieswere broken.We forcibly entered the house ... grabbed the young girl and strippedher naked. She was struck with fear and shame. She ran out of the houseand we ran after her. The crowd pursuing her grew in size. I had onlyone thought inmy mind. T want to rape and destroy this girl. Iwant todestroy theBiharis, they are our enemies.' ... Abdul Hussain (a personI did not like) saw us chasing the girl.He came out of his house, wrappedthe girlwith a shawl and took her inside. He told the crowd, 'Ifyou wantto take this girl, take her over my dead body.' We all stood there.No onehad the courage to enter his house and drag her out. At thatmoment Irealized I had become a criminal. The gun they had givenme was a toolto kill. They had taughtme how to kill. They made me cold like a snake.'What have I become?', I thought. During thewar, I committed manycrimes ... Nationalism is corrupting; I understand itonly today.15

When I heard this confession from a perpetrator of violence, Iwas dumbfounded. I had not expected tohear such a story.Even as I listened, confusing and contradictory thoughts and feelings clashed inmy mind. I foundmyself asking: What am I supposed to do? Should I tell him, as I had thevictims, that I empathize with his suffering?Do I tell him he is a criminaland deserves the agony of hismemory? Should my role as a researcher bepredictable, to commiserate with the victims and loathe the perpetrators,even one such as Biman, whose pain, though definitely different from hisvictim, is deep and troubling. I was confused. Although I could not comeup with a resolution tomy own troubled thoughts, I understood then, asmuch as I do now, that what I heard was a voice from the grave, a mandamned by his own memories and actions, a lonely, sad figurewho cannottalk about his experiences in thewar because he is not allowed to revealand expose the criminal actions behind nation-building and nationalism.Worse still, his story has no place in a Bangladesh that revels in the gloryof victory in 1971. Perpetrators were thePakistani 'others', so the state tellspeople in Bangladesh. It is an easy, uncomplicated story, until we startinvestigating. Then the picture becomes convoluted, murky and muddy.Perpetrators appear inmany forms and under many guises - Pakistani,



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286History Workshop JournalBengali, Bihari. But there is a common element that binds them within ashared framework. Driven by the spirit of nationalism and nation-building,thesemen committed horrific crimes thathaunt them even today. Pakistanisoldiers and their Bihari supporters raped and killed to save a nation;Bengali men also raped and killed in the hope ofmaking a new nation,which they did. Who is guilty? What was the power that transformedordinary men into criminals? I am not sayingwe should absolve the rapistsand killers, but I am asking who is to blame? I have come to realize fromlistening to the stories of survivors thatwe need tomove beyond the individual and investigate larger institutions such as the state and the ideologyof nationalism that drove the war and used it to aggrandize power. Tounderstand theprocess and creation of the sovereign power of the state thatmade citizens into agents for raping, killing, brutalizing, we have to listento both victims and perpetrators.16 We would be fools not to listen towhatthey are saying, because in their stories is the evidence of what happenedin the Liberation War, a story that has been suppressed.I plan toundertake the next segment ofmy research in Pakistan. My aimthere will be to investigate not simply what soldiers and their supportersdid in East Pakistan (Bangladesh), but what motivated them.How did thestatemake men obedient agents inorder to carry out violence against theircountrymen that seems to defy reason and confound our imagination? DidPakistani soldiers see their victims as people or as detestable'Hindus'/Bengalis? Was gender violence a result of a temporary failure ofcontrol of individual passion, or was itamale madness which was carefullycultivated, orchestrated, and unleashed? My goal is to investigate andunderstand the construction by the state of an ideology of masculine power,and the cultivation of ethnic and religious hatred which were usedsystematically by different groups during thewar. One may ask why shouldwe tell the pain of victims alongside the troubled memories of the perpetrators?How can one be an advocate for victims and give voice to perpetrators too? Bearing witness to 1971 involves a kind of intimacy anddistancing - with people, events, and outcomes. One has to locate oneselfbetween two poles - one of understanding and the other the refusal tounderstand - so thatwe recognize we are all part of it,yet do not becomethatwhich we loathe. I have decided to investigate and give voice to thememories of perpetrators not in order to exonerate or befriend them, butto examine and represent the belief that the perpetrators in our midst can'teach' us something about ourselves, and about the possibilities and limitsof being human. If people are cultivated to become perpetrators ofviolence, and if their ensuing actions affect us, then should we not examinethe interdependence of all humans? Should we not expose those sites ofpower where violent strategies are conceived that validate killing, raping,and brutalizing one human by another human? A close look at the perpetrators of 1971 is essential to develop an 'ethico-political thinking' aboutviolence inpostcolonial South Asia.17



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History on the ine 287NOTES AND REFERENCES

1AnthonyMascarenes, The Rape ofBangladesh,Vikas,New Delhi, 1971; S. Siddiq,Witness toSurrender, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1977; G.W. Choudhury, The Last Daysof United Pakistan, Hurst and Company, London, 1975; I. Cohen, The Pakistan Army, California University Press, Berkeley, 1984; R. Sisson and L. E. Rose, War and Secession: Pakistan,India and the Creation of Bangladesh, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990.2 Nilima Ibrahim, Ami Birangana Bolchi, Jagrati Prakashan, Dhaka, 1998; RabiyaKhatun, Ekattorer Noymas, Agamee Prakashani, Dhaka, 1991; Raflqul Islam, Narihatya ONarinirjatane Kancha, Ananya, Dhaka, 1994.3 Personal interview, 20 February 2001, Syedpur, Bangladesh.4 Pierre Nora, 'Between Memory and History: Les lieux de memoire', transl. MarkRoudebush, Representations 26, 1989, pp. 7-25; J. Fentress and Chris Wickham, SocialMemory, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992; Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory, transl. RendallSteven and Elizabeth Claman, Columbia University Press, New York, 1992; M. Matsuda, TheMemory of theModern, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.5 Personal interview, 10 February 2001, Rangpur, Bangladesh.6 Arthur Klienman (ed.), Social Suffering, Cambridge, Academy of the Arts andSciences, 1996.7 Veena Das, 'Crisis and Representation: Rumor and the Circulation ofHate', inDisturbingRemains: Memory, History and Crisis in the Twentieth Century, ed. M. Roth and C. Salas,The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2001.8 Susan Brison, Aftermath: Violence and theRemaking of Self, Princeton University Press,Princeton, 2002.9 Igna Clendinnen, Reading theHolocaust, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,1999.

10 Hayden White, 'Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth', in Probing theLimits of Representation, ed. S. Friedlander, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1992.11 Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition,Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 1998.12 Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, Duke University Press, Durham NC, 2000.13 Personal interview, 10April and 24 October 2001, Chittagong, Bangladesh.14 Personal interview, 9 November 2001, Khulna, Bangladesh.15 Personal interview, 16November 2001, Chittagong, Bangladesh.16 G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, transl. D. Heller-Roazen,Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1998; G. Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: theWitnessand theArchive, Zone Books, New York, 1999.

17 Hannah Arendt, 'Understanding and Polities', Partisan Review 20: 4,1953, pp. 377-92;Hannah Arendt, Eichmann inJerusalem, Viking Press, New York, 1965; Hannah Arendt, 'Onthe Nature of Totalitarianism: an Essay inUnderstanding' (1953), in her Essays in Understanding, ed. J.Kohn, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1994.

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