Fragments of Memories: Researching Violence in the 1971 Bangladesh War

ISSN： 1363-3554

Source： History Workshop Journal, Vol.73, Iss.1, 2012-04, pp. : 285-295

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Abstract

In this recounting of her experience over several years in trying to reconstruct particular incidents of violence in East Pakistan/Bangladesh during the 1971 war, the author relates her motivation and original expectations and plans, and how they changed as she encountered the memories of the participants, victims and witnesses in the incidents. She discusses the opportunities and difficulties associated with utilizing memories to discover what had happened in a bitter conflict several decades before, and how they had shaped her work. What emerges is a professional and personal journey of discovery of the human stories that comprise a seismic yet long-neglected conflagration in South Asia, and the revelation of the grim realities of competing nationalisms that accompanied the second partition of the sub-continent.