Dr. Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan explains why it is a counterproductive approach for Bangladesh’s major opposition party– BNP to raise questions about the number of martyrs of Bangladesh’s liberation war taken place in 1971. He argues that it is unheard of mainstream politicians in anywhere in the world to challenge popularly accepted notions related to the Liberation War.
Dr. Nayanika Mookherjee summarises her new book exclusively for Alochonaa readers: “In this ethnography of sexual violence during the 1971 Bangladesh War for Independence, I show how the public celebration of women raped during the war and called ‘birangonas’ by the state – works to homogenize the experiences of these women. I demonstrate that while this celebration of birangonas as heroes keeps them in the public memory, they exist in the public consciousness as what I call a spectral wound. Dominant representations of birangonas as dehumanized victims with dishevelled hair, a vacant look, and rejected by their communities create this wound and flatten the diversity of their experiences.”
Alochonaa (Dialogue) 