Breaking the silence: New book portrays the atrocities of the 1971 war
Oxford University Press on Thursday launched its latest publication 'Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971' written by Yasmin Saikia at a local hotel, here on Thursday.
The book focuses on the story of gender violence in the 1971 war of Bangladesh to probe the relationship between nation, history and women - one of the most vulnerable groups in post-colonial South Asia.Moving beyond the external story of the war as a clash of ideologies and struggle for power between rivals India and Pakistan and East and West Pakistan, the author relates the story of the war as a human event of individual losses and personal tragedies suffered by both women and men.Women talk of rape and torture on a mass scale and of the loss of status and citizenship.
They also speak of their role as agents of change, as social workers, caregivers and wartime fighters.In addition, a few men recollect their wartime brutality as well as their post-war efforts to regain a sense of humanity, to reconcile and heal unresolved traumas.
By combining oral testimony with archival research in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, this book sheds new light on the social, political and cultural history of the subcontinent after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 to show the gaps between people and their governments, memories and history.Yasmin Saikia is Hardt-Nickachos chairman in Peace Studies and Professor of History, Arizona State University.
She is the author of numerous articles and two books, In the Meadows of Gold and Fragmented Memories: Struggling to be Ta/-A horn in India.The evening featured a stimulating discussion between Asif Farrukhi, literary critic, translator, and short story writer, and Yasmin Saikia.
While discussing the subject of her book, the author highlighted how important it was to study violence and know it ethically and personally to develop a human language for reconciliation between victims and perpetrators.
She pointed out that the individual stories of the 1971 survivors articulate a collective loss of humanity that transcends the politics of history and nation.In her welcome address, Ameena Saiyid, Managing Director, Oxford University Press Pakistan, introduced the author, and said that the book is part of the data bank that will go a long way in showing the whole event as well as the cultures and times that generated it.
She further added that Saikia also threw light on the problems of collecting authentic material for historiography and her account shows how highly relevant material is suppressed or used for political mileage, and often withdrawn from the scrutiny of unbiased historians.
"It is of course in our interest to learn how not to edit or distort history, if we are ever to learn its lessons," she said.
http://www.brecorder.com/general-news/single/599/172/1266066/
http://tribune.com.pk/story/313872/breaking-the-silence-new-book-portrays-the-atrocities-of-the-1971-war/
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