This article is first published as ‘Interpretations of the Bangladesh War’ in the India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 24, Nos. 2/3, Crossing Boundaries (Monsoon 1997), pp. 219-227
In the year of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the nation, Bangladesh still doesnot have an authoriatative and exhaustive history of the Liberation War. Some have argued that documentation is still insufficient; some say it is a problem of classification of the documents. To others it remains a problem of historiography: namely, how to write a political history which frees the liberation struggle from the inevitable militarist interpretation in the aftermath of 14 years of military rule in Bangladesh.
The problem also is how to investigate the earlier years leading to the cataclysmic event. The war of 1971 should appear in history as the logical outcome of the previous two decades, and not as a sudden episode. Historians now suggest that oral and local accounts have to be collected, and autobiographies and memoirs given greater importance in constructing 1971. For the politics of the nation “an authoritative and comprehensive” his- tory of the liberation war has become imperative.
The history of 1971 is complicated by the many histories imbricated into it. The right chronology, or the right history of events leading up to 1971, is to be retrieved along with the roles of political actors over two decades in united Pakistan, and the struggle for cultural and political autonomy. One obvious problem is how to merge the two “peculiar times” in the same historical time-frame of 1971. These two histories are the times of the growth of left-radical sentiments in Bangladesh through the’50s and most of the ’60s, when a peasant leader like Maulana Bhasani could lead Bengal in the upsurge against Ayub while Sheikh Mujib was in jail. Flags of independence could be seen flying in rallies and assemblies without the sanction of the Awami League leadership. The other is the sudden and phenomenal popularity of the Awami League, erasing all earlier conflicting histories of the country.
The dilemma is: if we were to periodise 1971 working backwards, the other times are erased; or else, the fault lines go so much into visible cracks that 1971 becomes, of necessity, a matter of destiny, a history of separate articulations. A single history of 1971 remains, perhaps, an impossibility.
It is not that as though the historians of Bangladesh engaged in writing the birth of the nation state are unaware of these complications. Their efforts to straighten out these complications are intended to achieve a single and uniform history of 1971. Historians believe that if they can answer certain fundamental questions, they will be able to achieve a comprehensive “history” of the liberation war. These questions relate to the nature of the liberation war, the leadership of the war, the political and military organisation of the war, strategy and tactics, differences in responses of the Left organisations to the liberation war, the widespread phenomenon of traitors and collaborators, the response and reactions of the super powers, India’s role, the role of non-resident Bengalis, and finally the response of the world community. Besides their intrinsic importance, these questions reveal the dilemmas inherent in the historiography of 1971. Most of these questions have differential traces, they overlap, they cross each other’s path—in short, they make a history leading to 1971 impossible. One historian asks, where should we begin this history, that classic moment of ‘break’ from when the specific narrative of 1971 might begin? Prof. Salahuddin Ahmed suggests that this date might be 1905, with the first partition of Bengal; others have their doubts, since this first partition was undone in 1911. Still others suggest this history begins from the Lahore Resolution of 1940; this also is an uncertain journey since the second partition of Bengal in 1947 was contradictory to the Lahore Resolution of many Pakistanis. Faz1u1 Haque’s proposal of more than one Pakistan was not liked by Hossain Shaheed Suhrawardy, who piloted the resolution in 1946 to amend the earlier proposal—to the effect that there should be only one Pakistan. Ironically, only a year later, on 27 April, 1947, Suhrawardy himself proposed a sovereign united Bengal!
The agenda of 1971 was not introduced in the three major charters of the preceding twenty years: the 21point charter of 1954, the 6 point charter of 1966, and the 11 point of 1969. While these were all charters of autonomy, full independence did not occur in any of them. The Kagmari conference of 6-10 February in 1957 was the first occasion for such a parting call, and this came from Maulana Bhasani’s Asalamu Alaikum. But we know that the Kagmari Conference was not endorsed by the dominant leader- ship of the Awami League. Maulana Bhasani had to part ways soon, and the Conference left in its trail bitterness and recrimination. After that, radical politics in East Pakistan remained a movement always ensconced as “environmental opposition”—never to grow into an “organisation” capable of leading a nation to liberation. The anti-Ayub upsurge poses a similar problem in terms of historiography. Immediately after Sheikh Mujib was released and elections were declared, the radical movement was sidelined—although in the odd meetings of the radicals, slogans of full independence would continue to be raised. One way of dealing with the inbuilt contradictions around 1971 would be to sidestep proper historical writings, and enter the world of political memoirs. There, without the bindings and the imperatives of formal history, another history is recorded by the actors. But can a comprehensive history be written on the basis of these memoirs? For, the authors of these memoirs, justifying their political life, determine the genealogy of 1971 in the structure of their own political activities. Therefore, when they look back, do they perceive any moment of break? Abul Mansur Ahmed, one such actor, is found rescuing Shaheed Suhrawardy, the leader of forties and fifties, from the latter’s trapeze acts of mid-fifties—for he cannot tear himself away from the moment of genesis in 1940 (Amar Dekha Rajnitir Ponchas Bochor, 1974). Similarly Tofazzal Hossain Mian has to exorcise the moment of break. and therefore to criticise strayers from the mainstream (Pakistani Rajnitir Bish Bochor, 1981): Ali Ahad’s account (Jatiyo Rajniti 1945-1975) registers another kind of self torment: that 1971 must present a continuity.
In August 1977 the Government of Bangladesh took the initiative of forming a Commission for writing the history of the liberation war. The Commission undertook the task of collecting various documents around the world, and particularly within the country, pertaining to the liberation war. They appointed a Committee of experts for the authentication and credential work. Work started in 1978 January, and by 1985 June fifteen volumes of documents were published under the title Bangladesher Swadhinata Juddha Dalilpatra. Each volume contains an editorial introduction. The editor declared in the introduction to the first volume (Dhaka, 1982, pp 3-12), that it was difficult to avoid subjectivity in historical writings on a momentous event like 1971. Therefore the primary task has been to collect and publish documents. “The main consideration was to have correct documents for correct events. We do not have any comment, we point towards nothing, we offer no explanation, no analysis of our own.
A few thousand questionnaires were distributed among various classes and sections of people, with “no appreciable response”. Many had “no sense of history”, many did not want to part with documents in the hope of “greater reward in future”, some died, and most important, there was no government ordinance to support the collection and preservation of necessary documents. Yet the published documents ran into almost 14,000 pages, and the editor said that the Committee had in its possession almost three and half lakh pages of documents.
The first two of these fifteen volumes deal with the background which starts from 1905, the first Partition of Bengal. The next four are on “Mujibnagar”, the government in exile, and the activities of Bengalis in exile, the campaign over the radio, and other mass media reports like reports of war correspondents, writings in local and small newspapers and journals. The seventh volume deals with Pakistani documents, official and non-official. The eighth volume is on mass slaughter, exodus and refugee camps. The next three volumes are on the armed struggle. The twelfth volume is on the Indian reaction, and the next one is on reactions from the United Nations and other countries. The fourteenth volume reports world public opinion. The last volume is a collection of interviews.
Despite this immense corpus of work being completed, the complaint of not having a proper, authentic history of 1971 has persisted. Although documentation is important for writing a comprehensive history book on 1971, this is not the critical element. Documents are there, but the question is how to link them, find their differential traces, consider the moments of break, so that 1971 itself becomes the moment of break for the post 1971 history of Bangladesh. A comprehensive history thus has to rely ironically, on fragmentary experiences. The question of historicizing 1971 lies in those experiences.
Experiences as fragments mean, however, more because they do get dissolved into the monolithic project of nation- al history. We can take the collection of writings by the radical historian Badruddin Umar, Juddhopurbo Bangladesh (1976), written as features in a newspaper on events of 1970. Written from the viewpoint of the radical Left, these were critical of Mujib, sometimes of Bhasani, sometimes of all political forces— criticisms as only the fringe Left can do. The historian made that self- admission in his preface to the collection in 1976. Yet we have in these essays experiences which cannot be denied. The Sheikh tries to control the radical upswing in the popular mood, the Left gets exasperated with the dominant nationalist leadership, the cyclone leaves thousands dead and lakhs homeless… The Sheikh warns the radicals, the workers’ unrest becomes acute. Nationalism is about to be redefined through being suffused with rising popular expectations, various class demands and an uncompromising mood of the society. Though given little credence in professional, academic history-writing, the history of the previous twenty five years abounds with such experiences in Bangladesh.
The multi-volume document of Bangladesher Swadhinata juddha Dolilpatra full of half-suppressed, subaltern voices provides us again with such instances. The first volume has the engaging two-page deposition of Ila Mitra at the Rajshahi Court in 1950. She was arrested and tortured by the police, who were deployed in heavy numbers for suppressing the Nachol peasant revolt led by Matla Sardar. The deposition was distributed throughout Bengal (pp 150-151). We do not know if the nationalist movement building up at that time took cognizance of the peasant revolt at Nachol. Again, we have the speech of Ataur Rehman Khan on 27 April 1952, at the all-party council meeting convened on the demand for the status of national language for Bengali ending with the words, Rashtrabhasha Bangla Chai, Bandider Mukti Chai, Pakistan Zindabad.
Now when exactly did Pakistan Zindabad give way to a different cry? Do we locate this in those acrimonious words of Fazlul Huq in his letter to Liaquat Ali Khan (8 September, 1941, pp 5-7), which spoke for “33 millions in Bengal” and “Muslim India” in the same breath? Here we may locate the end of praja politics, already drowned in the “phantasm” of “Muslim India”—as also the parting of ways between the peasants and the nationalists of Muslim Bengal. The voice of the Nachol revolt is not to be heard any more in the ensuing “history”. The volume certainly reverts back to the subaltern presence through those documents that relate to the Kagmari Sammelan (pp 591-615) and the events of food crisis, flood and eviction. But by now, the documents have entered a pattern, an “order”.
The history of 1971 appears in the popular mind as a representation of his or her experiences. One example readily coming to mind would be Swadhinata Amar Raktajhara Din “My Bloody Days of Independence”, written by Begum Mushtari Shafi whose husband and brother perished in the battle. In her memoirs, 1971 appears not as a story of the government in exile, nor of military engagements and guerrilla struggles, but as the travails of countless mothers who, having lost sons and husbands, move from one place to another in search of shelter, greeting the day with a vacant mind, surviving to the day when independence would be finally achieved.
It was certainly no accident that a poet, Hasan Hafizur Rehman, was entrusted with the work of Bangladesh Swdhinata buddha Itihash Prakalpo. Literature has been to Bangladesh what history has been to India in the project of nation-making. If historical writings have aroused the imagination here, in Bangladesh historical writings themselves have been the product of the literary imagination which are products of particular historical circumstances but end up as contra-history. How else is one to see in this context the writings of Jahanara Imama Ekattarer Dinolipi, Mushtari Shafi Swadhinata Amar Faktajhara Din, Basanti Guha Thakurta Ekattarer Smriti or of Panna Kaiser Smritir Bhelaya or Hamida Rehman Jiban Smriti? This holds true of earlier writings of the ’40s and ’50s like Abul Fazal’s Rekha Chitra, or Abul Zafar Shamsuddin’s Atmasmriti. These writings have a fictional time that makes a mockery of the chronological time on which the “authoritative” history of 1971 has to be based. There is thus more to the relation between literature and the history of 1971. While the history of 1971 will appear by its nature as a single narrative, its literature by the nature of its function of storytelling will pluralize this. These stories refashion the event, produce differing, at times opposing, commentaries, even programmes for action. There is one more subtle point in this whole problem. They are not just stories, memoirs, biography accouts, dramas, paintings, novels. Hence for a “objective” history of 1971. They are an embarrassment. Yet they cannot be wished away- for the post 1971 developments have already futurized the liberation war. Thus these literary writings will become another history, the “other” of any formal history- ready to be summoned in a futurized account of the past.
Ironically it is literature that suffuses 1971 with ethicality, with desire, with possibilities that an event or an epoch can exceed or transcend itself. Literature, then, does not do away with the history of 1971, and it cannot do so; but the historicity of 1971 requires its presence as the “other” in its history.
The desire to produce a political history of 1971 is of course crucial; because such a desire is born from the fifteen year long military rule in Bangladesh. That period has been glorification of the military in the liberation war, the exaltation of the role of the soldiers, and the “downgrading” of the civilian leadership of the war. In the militarist version, 1971 was principally a military conflict with Pakistan. Most of the civilian political leadership which fled to India, was politically inefficient and corrupt; and the country won liberation war not because of the civilian political leadership, but in spite of them. This militarist version attained dominance. Official accounts invariably tend to stress the military part of the war, ignoring the political nature of popular participation in various forms. Therefore to counter such a militarist history of 1971, oral history of the liberation war has to be emphasized. Without such a “new history” and “new ethnography” of the time, the crucial role of the civilian is lost. Yet, we would be mistaken to assume that a shift away to “oral history” can retrieve and restore the political nature of 1971. The efficacy of such a shift is suspect. First, one does not create oral history, it is there. There are powerful reminiscences of military accounts which reinforce the point that the contradictory politics of 1971 could be resolved only by sudden military interventions. Therefore 1971 itself lends to a military reading. In some of the accounts, we are told how the Indian intervention became a deliberate strategy to pre-empt the advance and subsequent victory of the liberation forces of Bangladesh- when the former found that the guerrilla fighters of Bangladesh were about to achieve victory on their own. And thus the liberation war became a victim of the super power rivalry and the cold war. Also, if we pursue the documents in the three volumes of the Bangladesh Swadhinata Juddha Dalilpatra (Vols 9-11) we cannot but be struck by one feature of the situation, namely the absence of any “central command”, the relative isolation of the military from the political mass, the necessity of a military solution, the impending militarist climax of December.
In short, the point is driven home that in the ultimate analysis the freedom struggle was a militarist solution. Second, an oral history of 1971 will all the more decenter the narrative, thereby making the project of retrieving the political nature of 1971 through a comprehensive history of the war a non-starter. Possibly, behind the legitimate complaint against a militarist reading of 1971 remains the dominant question: on what type of history is this discourse to build itself—an Awami League history or a BNP history—these being the two major mainstream parties.
However, the history of 1971 refuses to be trapped in that bind. Like all cataclysmic events unplanned, very much contingent on a set of historical circumstances, 1971 has remained a “participatory” episode or event. Thus there is a deluge of memoirs, local chronicles, oral accounts, reports that refuse to get historicised in a single frame. These narratives have stepped on the stage of history not with a recognizable cast, but as participants in a continuing carnival scene, refusing the anonymity that the playwright and the prompter may have wished to impose on them.
Therefore if the text of the history of the liberation war in Bangladesh eschews the problem and opts to become a text of “new history” that is, a polyphonic text, (assuming one agrees to use the phrase “new history”), then the contribution of 1971 to the power of the nationalist discourse in Bangladesh needs to be examined; as also how 1971 transcends the frame of contemporary nationalism. In short, 1971 no longer remains a containable text.
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