Yasmin Saikia

National remembrances of 1971 have thus far failed to acknowledge the war’s extraordinary human losses. A renewal of our human values and the capacity to bear witness to the truth is critical for delivering justice to survivors of the war–and for effecting positive change in the subcontinent. Every year on December 16, in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India memorialization of the 1971 war is reenacted in the public space. In Pakistan, a silent mourning of the loss of East Pakistan commemorates public remembrance and newspapers retell the memories of the failed military might of the Pakistan Army in the horrific war. There is no variation in the theme. In Bangladesh, songs of liberation reverberates the air and public meetings recalling the moment of triumph make everyone feel good temporarily, forgetting the national losses that Bangladesh has since suffered on multiple fronts. India celebrates 1971 as a victory over Pakistan and proudly discusses in public sites the destruction of Pakistan that it had engineered and succeeded in accomplishing. The customary and habitual theatre of faking remembrance in the national sites of the three countries undermines an extraordinary moment of loss that was suffered by the people of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent.  Millions of […]