-- On Thu, 3/24/11, Sayed Chowdhury <sayedchowdhury@hotmail.com> wrote:
From: Sayed Chowdhury <sayedchowdhury@hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: [Alapon] Arnold Zeitlin's comments: samila bose's book on the 1971 war
To: alapon@yahoogroups.com, "Prof. Abdul Mannan" <abman1971@gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, March 24, 2011, 4:10 AM
Dear Prof Mannan
As far as I know, Sarmila Bose is not a niece of Netaji. Sarmila Bose is the daughter of Dr Sisir Bose, who is the son of Netaji's brother Sarat Bose (barrister and politician - collaborated with Suhrawardy-Abul Hashim in their effort for united Bengal on the eve of partition). It was Sisir Bose who had driven the family car when his youngest uncle Netaji escaped from 'house arrest' at their Elgin Road family home. He eventually travelled in disguise through Afghanistan and finally arrived in Austria/Germany.
Sarmila's mother is Prof. Krishna Bose, who is a former MP. The eminent writer late Nirad C Chaudhuri is Krishna Bose's uncle.
Regards
Sayed Chowdhury
Sydney
To: alapon@yahoogroups.com
From: abman1971@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:56:44 +0600
Subject: Re: [Alapon] Arnold Zeitlin's comments: samila bose's book on the 1971 war
Thanks Mr. Zeitlin for your note. I have followed Ms. Bose for sometimes and my honest conclusion is that she is being financed by Pakistan's ISI.Unfortunately her uncle Netaji Subas Bose was my childhood hero. I write for few national dailies in Bangladesh. One of writing on Ms. Bose's program in the Woodrow Wilson Center is expected to be published in Daily Prothom Alo in next couple of days. I intend to write one in English next week for the Daily Sun. I have mentioned your participation in the book launching ceremony. When my writeup gets published I will send you the link.
Regards and warm wishes.
Abdul Mannan
On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 3:55 AM, Hemayet Ullah <ullah1@verizon.net> wrote:
-- SWISS CHEESE SCHOLARSHIP!!!! Right description of Ms. Bose's book With numerous holes)
Mar 23, 2011 04:40:56 PM, azeitlin@hotmail.com wrote:
the brief burst of applause from the bangladeshis in the audience after i finished speaking at the woodrow wilson center for international scholars in washington DC was the only demonstration of the day despite a controversial subject for discussion. the occasion was the launching of a book, dead reckoning: memories of the 1971 bangladesh war , by sarmila bose. the wilson center described the book as reconstructing the conflict through interviews in Bangladesh and Pakistan, news reports, documents published and unpublished and other sources and "challenging assumptions about the nature of the conflict...". the center concluded: "for better or worse, her new book is being described as a definitive study of the 1971 bangladesh war." many bangladeshis believe her book not only denies the oppression they felt from west pakistan and the killings and rapes by the pakistan army in 1971 but is an apology for the army and blames the conflict on the bengalis. one bangladeshi called her "a dedicated advocate for a genocidal regime." before the program, the wilson center and i were bombarded by protest messages from bangladeshis demanding either the session be cancelled or they be allowed to speak their side of the issue. my bangladeshi friends complained that the wilson center would not give exposure to a book denying the nazi holocaust. they felt the same way about dead reckoning.
after ms. bose, a research scholar at oxford university and a former journalist, delivered a 30-minute chapter-by-chapter description of her book. i commented for a few minutes beyond my allotted 10 minutes (there was so much to say) in my role as a reporter who covered the period in what then was east pakistan (I was associated press bureau chief in pakistan at the time).
for those who are gluttons for punishment, the wilson center says it is posting the 90-minute proceedings on its website at www.wilson center.org.
i anticipated a more demonstrative audience. A friend, bill milam, a wilson scholar and former ambassador to both pakistan and bangladesh who has collaborated with ms. bose on an article about pakistan, said he had already witnessed bitter, noisy exchanges between outraged bangladeshis and ms. bose over articles she had written on the issue. one cabinet-level friend in dhaka wrote me that he knew sarmila and her distinguished calcutta family, adding " like her brothers I have kept distance from her because of her very vitriolic and partisan advocacy in the garb of scholarship. She is not taken seriously by scholars."
i anticipated a free-for-all at the staid wilson center. however, robert hathaway, director of wilson's asia program, served as moderator and ruled the discussion with an iron hand -- he allowed no one in the audience to speak more than three minutes, an interdiction that stifled passion.
in her introduction to her book, ms. bose says the aim of her study was to "humanize the war" through a series of interviews with survivors in bangladesh and in pakistan as well as cut through the myths that had grown up around it over the 40 years since 1971. in addition to the extensive interviews, she studied memoirs, official and unofficial documents, published and unpublished, and news media reports to create what she believes is a basis for "non-partisan analysis" of the struggle. .
i said in my comment at the wilson center that her work was a service to history, putting a human face on the tragedy as well as providing raw material for the day if and when a comprehensive and objective account of that conflict is produced. such an account has yet to appear in bangladesh or pakistan. years ago, i wrote an article for the now-defunct far eastern economic review , bemoaning the fact that bangladesh had produced no reliable history of its independenc struggle, partly because so many bangladeshis had so much to hide about their behavior in that affair.
i read dead reckoning from an electronic proof that was sent to me by the publisher in london. copies are now just appearing in the united states.
the book disappointed, if not astonished me. need for a revised look at the events certainly exists. although bose's interviews and anecdotal reporting adds significantly to the literature, dead reckoning doesn't satisfy the need. ms. bose seems still too distressed by the awami league propaganda she said she heard while a pre-teen in calcutta (she was 12 years old in 1971) to provide a dispassionate and thorough examination of the period. her book is so full of holes, i can describe her work only as swiss cheese scholarship, with the same excess of bias that exists in so many other books of the period (i brought a batch of books about the conflict from my library to pile up at the session to illustrate my belief that dead reckoningt was just one more book for the pile). what we need is a genuine revision. what we got was, i said, not so much revision as just another biased version, a distortion of history.
for those who have read this far, you may wish to peel off, now that i have revealed my opinion of the work. i hope in the following paragraphs to substantiate my opinion at length if not ad nauseum.
ms. bose says she started her project sympathetic to the cause of the east pakistani bengalis. she says out of her probing of memories, often conflicting, emerged a story that was at odds with the conventional story of the war and its emphasis on east pakistani suffering and grievances. faced with a challenge of what she said was "seeking the right balance between detachment and involvement", she now appears to see the story of that conflict more through the lens of the losers than the victors. the single best word to describe her reaction at best is "ingenuous," as in naive and artless, or even at worse the more harsher "disingenuous.".
for example, she is distressed that bengali propaganda of the time demonized general yahya khan, the pakistan military ruler of that time. this is her description of him:
"As General Yahya Khan was...the person responsible for the decision to launch a military action to crush the Bengali rebellion, it is only to be expected that he would be the prime symbol for 'demonization' by the rebels. Yet it is supremely ironic, as indicated in earlier chapters, as General Yahya personally seems to have neither harboured nor brooked prejudice againt Bengalis. On the contrary, he accepted their economic grievances as legitimate, took steps to redress the imbalance in Bengali representation in the Army and civil service, replaced the 'parity principle' with elections based on 'on person one vote' which ensured the more numerous Bengalis an advantage in democratic politics, and seemed to be prepared to make a deal with Sheik Mujib, the winner, whom he referred to publicly as the 'future prime minister of Pakistan.
As for sheik mujib, he led, according to her, a "political agitation" and was among the political leaders inciting the public in march 1971, using fatal clashes between the military and the public "to strengthen his bargaining position to become the prime minister of all pakistan."
mujib, she said at the center, played "a double game."
her book focusses on the killing and rapes and whom to blame, obscuring the major intent of the conflict which was not about killing but about a struggle for self determination. much of her interview research does create a balance between the propaganda of the time and the reality. her distress at the exaggerated numbers of rapes and killings in the propaganda of all sides warps her balance. if one bengali woman was raped, if one bengali professor or bihari motor mechanic was slain randomly...in each case, it was already one too many. her bookkeeping of death otherwise does little to change the forces that led to the conflict.
she sees the conflict this way: "what matters is the nature of the conflict, which was fundamentally a complex and violent struggle for power among several different parties with a terrible human toll...." no kidding, colonel qaddafi. what struggle isn't?
for example, here's a comment from brigadier a.r. siddiqi, the senior pakistan army spokesman in those days. in a book published long after the fray, he echoed ms. bose's power view in writing about the efforts of martial law ruler, general yahya, to manipulate domestic politics:
"this then was the thinner edge of the wedge leading to the deepening involvement of his regime in the insane power game..."
as for a double game, take it from one who was on the scene at the time, all sides, yahya, mujib, zulfiqar ali bhutto, and almost everyone else, were playing double games. these were flawed human beings grappling with an issue that was, perhaps, beyond their powers to solve.
a case can be made that yahya had a darker side that affected his decision making. i saw him drunk the day in 1970 he arrived in east pakistan from china (where he was secretly helping henry kissinger arrange nixon's meeting with mao), presumeably to boost the province's morale after a cyclone and tsunami that took more than 300,000 lives. he was drunk the night of 22 november 71 when indian troops moved aggressively into east pakistan. at a reception that evening at the intercontinental hotel in rawalpindi, i stepped out to question him. he drunkenly shouted, "i know you! i know you!' and tottered off without an answer. brigadier f.b. ali, now retired from the pakistan army and who as much as any single person contributed to the ouster of yahya as pakistan's leader in december 1971, sent this message after i sent him ms. bose's description of the general:
"by 1970/71 he was an alcoholic who spent most of his time in a drunken haze and didn't really direct or control policy. this was made by others around him, and OKd by him. these people had no intentioin of letting east pakistan rule or separate. the 'deal with mujib' that she talks about was...just camouflage to give the army time to prepare for the crackdown...."
having raised the example of yahya's beneficence, ms. bose had an obligation in the name of balance to flesh out her picture of the general.
as for mujib. a case can also be made that he searched desperately for a resolution that would make him either the prime minister of all pakistan or at least the supreme leader in east pakistan. he repeatedly tried to hold off the radical, younger elements in his awami league pressing him to declare independence. he showed his reluctance in his famous 7 march 71 speech to hundreds of thousands who had gathered in the belief he would declare independence. he did not.
i saw a sign of his desperation after i reported in february 1971 that bhutto (in a drunken interview with me during a february midnight in peshawar) had suggested two prime ministers for pakistan. he had made the same suggestion in a previous, little-noticed interview with times of london reporter peter hazelhurst. few realized it at the time but bhutto sensed already that the people of pakistan had voted in 1970 for separation.
mujib summoned me to his home on road 16 in dhanmondi in dhaka. he and i sat alone in his living room (an unusual occurance in a house that was always overrun with followers). he asked me to describe what bhutto told me.
"if that is what he wants," mujib said with opening his hands, palms up, in a hopeless gesture and a sigh, "i agree."
i trotted off to send a story that a basis for agreement existed between the country's two top political leaders.
mujib promptly denied it. he told me i had misquoted him. i told him he damn well knew i didn't. "that story will hurt me in west paksitsn," he said finally, referring to other west pakistani politicians who detested bhutto and wanted to deal with mujib.
an agreement that might have saved thousands of lives never got off the ground.
in her portrayal of mujib as a cunning, if not hypocritical leader (a view unsourced by her and speculative), ms. bose had an obligation to give her readers a more balanced picture of the man.
ms. bose's interviews often substantiate her thesis that the bengalis in east pakistan were sinners in violence in killing non-bengalis and hindus as well as they were sinned against by the pakistan army. she tends to treat this information as a revelation; but it is hardly fresh news.
in my first visit to dhaka in december 1969, three months after i arrived in pakistan as AP bureau chief, i found myself in the midst of a state of emergency ordered by the military governor, admiral ahsan, bengalis and biharis, urdu-speaking people who had moved into east pakistan during the bloody 1947 paritition of india, were killing each other. having just arrived after three years of covering the biafra civil war in nigeria, in which the eastern province of the country had tried to secede, i was impressed. in my first dispatch, i wrote that east pakistan was going to be the next biafra.
ben bassett, the ap's foreign editor in new york, responded. he asked, with one thousand miles of india separating the two wings of pakistan, how were they going to get at each other?
"i don't know," i answered. "but they will find a way." fifteen months later, they did.
if i, a rank outsider, could see immediately the hatred that led to further killings and rapes less than two years later, imagine what the insiders knew.
in this chronicle of hatred, ms. bose had an obligation to tell the story behind that hatred. she doesn't. i imagine a reader with slim knowledge of the founding of pakistan wondering why these people hated so deeply. we can go back at least a half century to pakistan founder mohammed ali jinnah and his insistence that urdu be the language of a united pakistan, despite the fact that more than half the population spoke bengali. we can go back to ayub khan's published distaste for bengalis and the widespread belief of the west pakistani establishment and army that somehow bengali culture in east pakistan was hindu and that bengalis were not real moslems (an attitude that made it a lot easier for westerners to kill easterners). ms. bose provides little context for the violence that ensured in 1971.
while supporting the contention that bengalis committed atrocious killings and rapes as did their enemies, she graphically describes through interviews, the random killings by the pakistan army at dhaka university the nights of 25-26 march 71, when the army moved to crack down on the awami league. she provides a chilling portrayal of random killings of hindus in a village by a pakistan army platoon. she concludes:
"for by the massacre of unarmed and helpless hindu refugees at chuknagar, a band of 25 to 30 men brought lasting disgrace to an entire army and a while nation."
a case can be made in the name of balance that this operation was not out of the ordinary, as she suggests in what amounts to an apology, but represented incidents that the army repeated throughout east pakistan.
according to brigadier f.b. ali:
"on the general issue of atrocities....they were commited by both sides. unfortunately, in an insurgency which develops in to a guerilla war, they happen quite often. my view is that the pakistan army, being a professional military force, should be held to a higher standard than the 'rebels,' and are thus more culpable. also, because the scale of their actions was considerably more than those of the otherside. totally criminal were the actions of certain commanders who ordered atrocities to be committed....
"...the soldiers and younger officers fought well in EP....the mid-level officers performance was a mixed bag, some good, some bad, most average. the senior officers (brig and above) performed poorly, with some exceptions. many of the generals behaved terribly and should have been shot for cowardice and the war crimes they committed by directing or allowing their troops to commit atrocities against the civilian population."
this view was worth considering; ms. bose fails to explore this side of the issue, dismissing complaints as bengali nationalist propaganda. instead, she is enthusiastic in her admiration for the commanding general of the pakistan forces in east pakistan, lt. general amir abdullah khan niazi, whom she describes as having a "distinguished past and a tragic fate." because he surrendered to the indians in december 1971, niazi became the fall guy for pakistanis. i'll turn again to f.b. ali for a different view of the man:
"'tiger' niazi was a disgrace to the uniform....he was a fraud, a lecher and a coward. when he was GOC (general officer commanding) 10 division, it was well known in the garrison (i was there) that his staff car would often be found standing in heera mandi (lahore's red light district). as GOC EP he used to go around visiting troops and asking JCOs: how many bengalis women have you raped? when discussing his surrender with the indian general, he tried to ingratiate himself by telling dirty jokes..."
ms. bose contends that the bengali insurgency was wiped out within weeks after niazi took command in east pakistan. to support her contention, she quotes mort rosenblum, then a correspondent for the associated press and one of the first five foreign newsmen allowed into east pakistan after the march crackdown. by the way, brigadier siddiqi recalls that when niazi met the reporters, he shot off a steam of dirty jokes. mort joined the group because the pakistan authorities would not let me back in east pakistan then; presumeably i knew too much. after a guided tour of east pakistaan with the group, mort wrote, as quoted by ms. bose, that the bengalis were in a state of "submissive inactivity."
when i recently jogged mort's memory of that occasion, he wrote to me:
"the passion for independence was just sparking to a full flame. wondered what would have happened if they had FB (facebook) and twitter."
there is much more to say. ms. bose went on inordinately in her book and at the wilson center meeting about the fact that bengalis hurled nasty names at the pakistan army ("sticks and stones.....etc"). she placed significance that in her interviews, many rural bengalis in particular praised 'beluch" soldiers for their kindnesses. she took this as remarkable insomuch as there were few, if any soldiers in east pakistan from baluchistan, a western province of the west wing (although two of the pakistan army regiments in east pakistan at the time were labeled the 20 and 22 baluch, mostly staffed by punjabi or pathan personnel). rather than considering the "beluch" label a mis-identification by ignorant and usually illiterate bengali peasants, ms. bose speculates that these "beluch" did not exist but were only in the "ethnic imagination of bengali nationalists." to what end, she never makes clear.
throughout her book, she rails against otherwise unidentified "bengali nationslists" or such vague targets as "bengali nationalist narrative" or "bengali liberation literature," giving the reader no examples or references. much of her discontent is with exaggerated propaganda. common to all sides and dismissed as inconsequential by sophisticated observers.
she takes on in the book a numbers game questioning the support of sheikh and his awami league, which in 1971 convincingly won 160 of 162 seats in east pakistan and none in west pakistan in the 1970 election. his seat total was enough to give the party a majority in a national assembly that was never convened, hence mujib's designation as the future prime minister of pakistan.
but wait, says ms. bose. although the awami league received 75 percent of the east pakistan vote, just 56 percent of the eligible electorate turned out. that figure was less than the turnout in the west pakistan punjab (66 percent) or sind (58 percent). it was higher than in baluchistan (39 percent) or the northwest frontier (47 percent). so? she concludes, on the basis of no evidence, "that 44 percent of the east pakistan electorate was too disinterested in the issues of the election to vote, or else had some disincentive to get out to vote." maybe some people were sick or had to work the farm or were among the province's many poor and homeless, too interested in finding a daily meal than in politics. is she suggesting that sheikh mujib and party really had no popular mandate, which so many of us foolishly believed 40 years ago? we don't know. neither does ms. bose. in the course of her research, she certainly did not ask anyone who either voted or not at that time.
not only that, she says, doing the math, 75 percent of the 56 percent turnout, mean that only 42 percent of eligible citizens voted for the awami league. in an outburst of pure speculation, she argues, "this who voted...may have been expressing their alienation from the existing regime, in favor of change, redress of perceived discrimination and greater autonomy." but she really doesn't know does she? i wish i had done the math, too, in time for our discussion. i would have asked her this: since she is so proud of the interviews which demonstrated that bengalis killed people, too, why did she not interview voters and non-voters to find out what was on their minds at election time? such is an example of her scholarship and research.
robert hathaway kindly gave me the last word in our discussion. i tried to raise the level of discourse to embrace the present. rather than idle away time and energy in the past, why not look to the present and, possibly the future? the violence outlined in the book continues -- just look at the murderous cultures today both in pakistan with its sunni-shite clashes, its suicide bombers and assassinations and in bangladesh, with its political and student murders and crossfire killings. whatever lessons dead reckoning offers remain to be learned.
regards all, az
______________________________
___
Abdul Mannan
Professor
School of Business
University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh
House # 56, Road # 4/A
Dhanmondi R/A, Dhaka-1209
Bangladesh.
BDT=GMT +6
Working Days Sunday-Thursday
E-mail: abman1971@gmail.com
http://www.ulab.edu.bd
Abdul Mannan
Professor
School of Business
University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh
House # 56, Road # 4/A
Dhanmondi R/A, Dhaka-1209
Bangladesh.
BDT=GMT +6
Working Days Sunday-Thursday
E-mail: abman1971@gmail.com
http://www.ulab.edu.bd
On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 6:57 PM, Isha Khan <bdmailer@gmail.com> wrote:
Comment from Ayesha Siddiqa on Sarmila Bose' s recent book
Mar 23, 2011 07:16:29 PM, ayesha.siddiqa@gmail.com wrote:
I can claim to have seen Sarmila's book grow in front of my eyes. We were together in DC in 2004-05 when she started writing her book. It was pointed out to her even then that there was serious problem with her presentation. First, most of her information was gleaned from one particular source. She has been wined and dined by Pakistani military establishment on several occasions. Second, her framework is flawed. Sure when violence happens then a lot of people are involved. However, the problem with her presentation is that it makes both sides look alike without telling the difference that an aggressor's violence is different from a victim's. Had the aggressor not done what it did, the victim may not have responded the same way. The problem is not even in finding the correct numbers of people who died or women who were raped. The more annoying and unforgivable part is that this was state policy. I have never managed to understand what Sarmila wanted to do with this kind of a book. Surely, it will be a best seller in Pakistan. All military colleges, institutes and academies will buy the book and tell the rest of us who are critical of the institution how an Indian had better things to say about it.Sarmila's book is indeed problematic as are a couple of other titles that Hurst is publishing this year.Cheersayesha
Ayesha Siddiqa
Author and Defense AnalystAppearance Date:Jan 2008 - May 2008Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa is the author of two books – Military Inc, Inside Pakistan's Military Economy and Pakistan's Arms Procurement and Military Buildup, 1979-99: In Search of a Policy – on defense decision-making and political-economy of the military. She has 17 years work experience in research, consulting, teaching, and running public sector projects with a particular focus on defense decision-making, defense economics, arms procurement and production, and revolution in military affairs (RMA) in South Asia.
Dr. Siddiqa has worked extensively on national security policymaking, military strategy, and the politics of Pakistan and South Asia. She is currently working the politics of democracy and development in the developing world, with special emphasis on Asia and Latin America, two regions which are crucial for understanding the subject, and the politics of Islam in Asia.
She has a B.A. from the Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore, Pakistan, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Punjab, Lahore, and a Ph.D. from King's College, University of London, UK.
She was also a visiting faculty member at the South Asia Studies Department for Spring 2008.
__._,_.___
