Suppressed Histories of Conflicts in South Asia

Some of the most festering conflicts in the postcolonial world are to be found in South Asia. This includes conventional wars fought by rival armies, civil wars fought between different, usually religious factions, ethnic strife, state-sponsored cross-border terrorism, suppression of political extremism (could come in different shades from national separatism to Mao-inspired communism) by military action and even cold war-like situations with threats of nuclear weapon deployment.  I don't know if that leaves out any form of conflict known to people. 

There are ups and downs, but the belligerence and animosity never really goes away, lessons are not learned, and battle fatigue never seems to set in - instead panning out like cheesy TV megaserials, of which Kashmir commands the highest TRP.  Of course many different reasons could be identified behind the persistence of conflict .  A complicated modern history flagged off by British imperialism is of course one of the factors. The colonizers first exploited the region economically and promptly left when postwar realities made that imperative, bequeathing the region a host of problems, foremost being the religious polarization leading up to Partition. Then again these countries have  predominantly feudal class structures with sketchy records of democracy, and often the rich and the powerful have stood to benefit from ultra-nationalistic discourse or religious bigotry.  Large populations competing over limited resources, and the overall social backwardness of these populations, could also be cited as reasons. 

Here I am trying to make what is most probably a less obvious point - that of lack of objective historical inquiry into these episodes of conflict.  Public memory is unexpectedly not long in a region where large sections of the population live in poverty and ignorance. Bad fact finding and record keeping lets rival political ideologies hijack the truth. Politicians find this obscurity very convenient and will obviously do little to change this situation, or for that matter any kind of status quo that has kept them in power. 

The immediate inspiration for this post is the occasion of the Bangladesh war - a momentous event in the history of this subcontinent, a second Partition if you want to call it that. In fact the war ended 40 years ago to the date. Aside the obvious sense of tragedy that reading  about the enormous human cost of this war brings, I also feel a sense of academic frustration at how little objective research has been done to fully document this dramatic chain of events. Everybody agrees that mass slaughter and rape were unleashed on the civilian population of Bangladesh (then called East Pakistan) by the predominantly West Pakistani army and their local collaborators, but the death toll could be placed anywhere between one hundred thousand and three million depending on who you ask. Some see it as necessary martial action to combat increasingly belligerent separatists, and the large human cost as an unfortunate fallout of an essentially legitimate action. Others would see this as genocide, systematic killing of a civilian population based on their ethnicity and religion (the Hindu minority which then numbered 20% of the total population of East Pakistan was given special attention). Surely a better job could be done at estimating the toll in a conflict that was so recent if those in power were willing to support such an exercise? Yes. The fact remains that post-independence Bangladesh has been torn between two political factions, the nationalistic secular party that initiated the movement for independence and the more conservative party with Islamist leanings that seeks a natural allegiance with Pakistan. Both try to propagandize and suit facts to needs.  My frustration is not merely academic. Though some recognition was accorded to the freedom fighters in post-Independence Bangladesh, the people responsible for the brutalities, Pakistani army officers and their local collaborators, were never brought to justice.  In fact the latter enjoy a great deal of patronage from the rival Islamist political faction. 

The same pattern is repeated elsewhere. The state-sponsored pogrom unleashed on Sikhs in Delhi   and elsewhere involved the high and mighty in the government. The police and the bureaucracy bore mute witness.  Very few were ever accused. In Gujarat it was the Hindu nationalists attacking Muslims. Reported death tolls vary widely. Speculations about the incidents that led to the flaring of the riot have not been laid to rest by courts of law, especially as two different commisions constituted by two different governments have come to different conclusions. The perpetrators mostly went free, some even emerged with their reputations enhanced. In other theaters, repression plays out slowly and surely. Men are dragged out of their homes at night never to be seen again, people are shot on mere suspicion, women are raped and never heard from again. No heavily militarized region is sanitized enough for normal civilian life - as those in Kashmir or India's Northeast, or the Tamils in northern Sri Lanka, or the Balochis  in Pakistan must be made painfully aware of in every living moment. Accurate pictures never reach the people in other parts of these countries, who live perennially surrounded by a  propaganda of how their respective armies are doing great jobs in protecting their borders and holding the country together. 

One feels that if perhaps our people were made conscious of genocide and repression, abuse and slaughter at the hand of warmongers,  in the way that the widely publicized facts of WW2 or the Holocaust  (through journalism, popular culture, academic fact-finding, and judicial processes) have done for most Europeans, we would be better off today. Our governments wouldn't  continue to so brazenly deflect attention from real issues by  showing us the bugbear of the enemy state, frontier land separatists or anti-national religious minorities, at every opportune moment. Of course there are plenty of other factors at work, but this is where our journalists and intellectuals could start instead of just fulfilling the role of apparitchiks.