Scattered memories of 1971

The close links between history and memory have been written about at length, but in the context of Southasia the line between the two is blurred to the point of near non-existence. For a region where the two oldest countries only just passed their 60th birthday, the people's memories of the past, and the 'truth' about what really happened, are inextricably linked. Researchers attempting to write about Partition, the 1983 anti-Tamil riots in Colombo or the 1984 anti-Sikh riots of Delhi and elsewhere often run into similar obstacles: there are so many who lived through these experiences still alive today that their emotion-laden memories of those dark days tend to overshadow efforts to analyse and objectively re-examine the past.

For Bangladesh, the traumatic memories of 1971 continue to haunt its very sense of identity, similar to how the memories of 1947 continually reflect on the way India and Pakistan deal with each other's existence. Indeed, there is much that is similar between 1947 and 1971: both involved the dramatic and traumatic dismemberment of nations, followed by a massive migration of people, and violence that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. As with 1971 between Pakistan and Bangladesh, India and Pakistan continue to define much of their national sense of selfhood vis-à-vis one another, with 1947 forming the traumatic backdrop.