I was watching a satirical play recently in Karachi in which the actors alluded to the widespread rapes that the Pakistani army committed in 1971. I was shocked.
The rapes were not shocking to me, but the fact that people actually mentioned them. In public.
Even as the play continued, I looked around to see the audience’s reactions, fearing that there might be a very uncomfortable, seething army officer getting ready to interrupt.
With a history as redacted, edited and proofed as Pakistan’s, hearing the truth can be a shocking experience. Here, even the play itself had to get a “No Objection Certificate” issued by the government. (I don’t know how the producers managed).
Silenced by the truth
When the truth is mentioned, it silences everyone. There’s a brief pause when every edifice, every bit of scaffolding and furniture of fibs, half-truths and blatant lies we’ve told ourselves to live in this house of make-believe, is shattered. And then we scurry around trying to rebuild, or pretend like it never fell.
Pakistan’s attitudes towards 1971 and Bangladesh’s independence is like that. In India, we found a scapegoat, so we blame the Partition on the wily Hindus and their malevolent intentions. In the razakars, we found the loyalists – those that worked tirelessly for a united Pakistan. The traitors? The people who joined the Indians, the Mukti Bahini. Who won the war? Indian tanks and gunships. Pakistan’s lesson: Get more tanks and gunships.
Absent from the narrative are the Bangladeshis.
1971, then, was a military loss, nothing else. If only we had bigger guns; if only America helped (staying silent over a bloodbath doesn’t count). Still, when half the country is lost, one must develop some kind of narrative to explain it, to understand it. Our narrative: “Good riddance.” It’s easy to maintain.
Believing the headlines
Only Bangladeshis and the Pakistani army are privy to what happened in Bangladesh; my parents were fed headlines such as “Victory on All Fronts” up until Pakistan surrendered, and the surrender itself appeared as a footnote. The majority of Pakistanis were sheltered from it by distance. Wives and mothers continue to believe their husbands and sons were fighting to “save Pakistan”, not wiping out their countrymen. Pakistan shared hardly any of their resources with East Pakistanis anyway.
East Pakistanis were effectively barred from positions of power in the civilian bureaucracy, and of course, the military. So when Bangladesh did separate, life hardly changed. Sure, the history books had to be rewritten, “bravery” and “insurmountable odds” had to be written about when we couldn’t clothe a defeat as victory.
The "loss" was an artificial one; the lessons, never learnt.
Which is why the rapes, the murders – the genocide – are belittled, obfuscated, neutered. They are reduced to sentences like: “While the possibility of some excesses in a war-like situation cannot be ruled out, the figures quoted [by Bangladeshis] seem to be of mythical proportions.”
In a space of a sub-clause, war crimes are explained away; the number of dead become “mythical.” Our unlearnt lessons are the reason why we protested Qader Mollah’s execution; not because of any principled stand against capital punishment or insistence upon his innocence, but because Mollah continuously professed his “loyalty to Pakistan.”
Today, the way Pakistanis talk about Bangladesh is very similar to the way men talk about women: they patronise, belittle, offend, claim ownership, and don’t understand consent. Perhaps that’s why our soldiers felt so comfortable doing what they did.
With such attitudes, Pakistanis also fail to see how Bangladesh has far overtaken Pakistan in the indicators that matter: women’s employment, literacy, infant mortality, fertility rates, religious tolerance. Even the figures that politicians are concerned about – GDP growth, exports, currency exchange – Bangladesh is ahead.
That means the image of the poor, dark – yes, there is a racial element to the prejudice as well – fisherman can’t stick any more.
So what do we have left to feel better about ourselves? “Dhaka Recaptured [by Afridi].”
A work in progress
All that said, Bangladesh is hardly a finished product. It is a nascent democracy that has seen its fair share of military rule. It has a divided electorate led by two dynastic political parties – one just having indicted the other one – an extreme right-wing, and an increasingly insecure Hindu minority. These challenges are numerous, and grave.
The choices that ordinary Bangladeshis make, including the politicians they choose, will determine how they navigate a (increasingly inundated) terrain that they have so dearly fought for. Still, Bangladesh’s consistent (if not always successful) attempts to keep the country secular are enviable. (In Pakistan, we’re currently trying to convince the Taliban how Sharia-compliant the Pakistani constitution is).
In dealing with all of these issues, Bangladesh has shown greater resolve than Pakistan ever has. It’s been 43 years of well-deserved and well-lived independence. Still carrying a Pakistani passport myself, I am left to reflect on how I can declare mine.
This post originally appeared on the Dhaka Tribune.
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The rapes were not shocking to me, but the fact that people actually mentioned them. In public.
Even as the play continued, I looked around to see the audience’s reactions, fearing that there might be a very uncomfortable, seething army officer getting ready to interrupt.
With a history as redacted, edited and proofed as Pakistan’s, hearing the truth can be a shocking experience. Here, even the play itself had to get a “No Objection Certificate” issued by the government. (I don’t know how the producers managed).
Silenced by the truth
When the truth is mentioned, it silences everyone. There’s a brief pause when every edifice, every bit of scaffolding and furniture of fibs, half-truths and blatant lies we’ve told ourselves to live in this house of make-believe, is shattered. And then we scurry around trying to rebuild, or pretend like it never fell.
Pakistan’s attitudes towards 1971 and Bangladesh’s independence is like that. In India, we found a scapegoat, so we blame the Partition on the wily Hindus and their malevolent intentions. In the razakars, we found the loyalists – those that worked tirelessly for a united Pakistan. The traitors? The people who joined the Indians, the Mukti Bahini. Who won the war? Indian tanks and gunships. Pakistan’s lesson: Get more tanks and gunships.
Absent from the narrative are the Bangladeshis.
1971, then, was a military loss, nothing else. If only we had bigger guns; if only America helped (staying silent over a bloodbath doesn’t count). Still, when half the country is lost, one must develop some kind of narrative to explain it, to understand it. Our narrative: “Good riddance.” It’s easy to maintain.
Believing the headlines
Only Bangladeshis and the Pakistani army are privy to what happened in Bangladesh; my parents were fed headlines such as “Victory on All Fronts” up until Pakistan surrendered, and the surrender itself appeared as a footnote. The majority of Pakistanis were sheltered from it by distance. Wives and mothers continue to believe their husbands and sons were fighting to “save Pakistan”, not wiping out their countrymen. Pakistan shared hardly any of their resources with East Pakistanis anyway.
East Pakistanis were effectively barred from positions of power in the civilian bureaucracy, and of course, the military. So when Bangladesh did separate, life hardly changed. Sure, the history books had to be rewritten, “bravery” and “insurmountable odds” had to be written about when we couldn’t clothe a defeat as victory.
The "loss" was an artificial one; the lessons, never learnt.
Which is why the rapes, the murders – the genocide – are belittled, obfuscated, neutered. They are reduced to sentences like: “While the possibility of some excesses in a war-like situation cannot be ruled out, the figures quoted [by Bangladeshis] seem to be of mythical proportions.”
In a space of a sub-clause, war crimes are explained away; the number of dead become “mythical.” Our unlearnt lessons are the reason why we protested Qader Mollah’s execution; not because of any principled stand against capital punishment or insistence upon his innocence, but because Mollah continuously professed his “loyalty to Pakistan.”
Today, the way Pakistanis talk about Bangladesh is very similar to the way men talk about women: they patronise, belittle, offend, claim ownership, and don’t understand consent. Perhaps that’s why our soldiers felt so comfortable doing what they did.
With such attitudes, Pakistanis also fail to see how Bangladesh has far overtaken Pakistan in the indicators that matter: women’s employment, literacy, infant mortality, fertility rates, religious tolerance. Even the figures that politicians are concerned about – GDP growth, exports, currency exchange – Bangladesh is ahead.
That means the image of the poor, dark – yes, there is a racial element to the prejudice as well – fisherman can’t stick any more.
So what do we have left to feel better about ourselves? “Dhaka Recaptured [by Afridi].”
A work in progress
All that said, Bangladesh is hardly a finished product. It is a nascent democracy that has seen its fair share of military rule. It has a divided electorate led by two dynastic political parties – one just having indicted the other one – an extreme right-wing, and an increasingly insecure Hindu minority. These challenges are numerous, and grave.
The choices that ordinary Bangladeshis make, including the politicians they choose, will determine how they navigate a (increasingly inundated) terrain that they have so dearly fought for. Still, Bangladesh’s consistent (if not always successful) attempts to keep the country secular are enviable. (In Pakistan, we’re currently trying to convince the Taliban how Sharia-compliant the Pakistani constitution is).
In dealing with all of these issues, Bangladesh has shown greater resolve than Pakistan ever has. It’s been 43 years of well-deserved and well-lived independence. Still carrying a Pakistani passport myself, I am left to reflect on how I can declare mine.
This post originally appeared on the Dhaka Tribune.