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Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War

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Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War
AuthorSarmila Bose
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistory
PublisherC. Hurst & Co.
Publication date
1 April 2011
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback and paperback)
Pages288
ISBN978-1-84904-049-5

Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War is a controversial book on the Bangladesh Liberation War written by Sarmila Bose.[1] The book has been accused of flawed and biased methodology, historical negationism and downplaying genocide.[2][3][4][5][6][7]

Overview

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Bose aims for a revisionist reconstruction of the Bangladesh Liberation War in a chronological fashion using material evidence as well as public memory.[8] This was to counter the prevailing multitude of poor and partisan scholarship on the issue, and Bose claimed that hers will be a unique work for years.[8][9][10]

She notes the war to have had its origins in a xenophobic and communal expressions of Bengali nationalism.[11] Military operations by Pakistani Army were mostly political reprisals and started in response to provocations by Mujib's movement which engaged in violence despite Yahya Khan's efforts to restore democracy.[11][6] In the process, Bose also seeks to prove that the death-count portrayed by Bangladesh is often unreliable and aimed at distorting the truth about the nature and number of war-crimes.[8]

Reception

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Scholars have accused her of flawed reasoning, deep-rooted pro-Pakistani sentiment and biased methodology unsuitable any academic review of this nature as clear attempt at historical revisionism by cherry-picking sources, and downplaying recorded war crimes and ethnic cleansing.

Positive reviews

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Martin Woollacott, the foreign correspondent of The Guardian, found it to be a long-overdue study which exonerated the Pakistani Government of planning to rule Bangladesh (East Pakistan) by force and stood to provoke "fresh research and fresh thinking".[12] Atul Mishra, an assistant professor in international relations at the Central University of Gujarat, reviewing for Contemporary South Asia, found the work to be "soundly conceptualized and professional", and an ideal read for doctoral students.[13]

Pakistan

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The book was subject to positive reception in Pakistan for its rare favorable portrayal.[14]

Pakistani book authors and media journalists meanwhile have also published their own works challenging the allegations of the Bangladeshi government on the events of the 1971 war.[15][16][17]

Negative reviews

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Chaity Das, reviewing over Journal of South Asian Development, found the book to be an exercise in "glossy revisionism"; failing to see beyond the number of casualties, Bose engaged in an opportunistic and inconsistent pitting of memory against memory to discredit the narratives of victims and exonerate the Pakistan Army.[18] Arnold Zeitlin, a journalist who had covered the '71 war, argued the monograph to be a "distortion of history" that carried the author's prejudices and had an idiosyncratic emphasis upon getting an accurate number of casualties, whilst refusing to tackle the underlying themes and issues surrounding the event.[19][20] Gita Sahgal, writing for The Daily Star, expressed similar concerns; lacking in any theoretical or political framework and engaging in a selective usage of sources, Bose only served to adulate the Pakistan Military.[21] Several issues — Jamaat-e-Islami, Al-Badr etc. — that would have proved inconvenient for her central thesis, were skipped.[21] Likewise, Jayanta Kumar Ray claims bias in Bose's extensive usage of pro-Pakistan sources and accuses her of getting "basic facts wrong" in counting of rapes.[22]

Urvashi Butalia, a feminist historian of memory, reviewing for Tehelka, noted the work to be spoiled by her "hubris and irrational biases"; Bose exonerated Pakistani officers of mass-rape and wanton violence by taking their accounts as "straightforward" truth but labeled all Bangladeshi accounts as "claims".[9] A review in The Hindu found the book to have created a moral equivalence between the oppressors and oppressed — her work had evident bias in the manner she conducted much rigorous interviews of relevant Bangladeshi figures than their Pakistani counterparts and deemed the ethnic attitude of Bengalis to lie at the root of all issues.[10] Nayanika Mookherjee, a social anthropologist studying memories of '71 wartime rapes, found the book to be methodologically inconsistent, informed by a disdain for Bangladeshi Self Determination — to Bose, Bangladeshis were guided by blind hate against the "fine men" of Pakistan army who had "no ethnic bias" and they either exhibited "bestial" violence or were "cowards".[23] She also criticizes Bose for failing to cite post-nationalist scholarship in vernacular, which discussed the role of Bengali Muslims in killing Bihari/non-Bengali collaborators and communities.[23]

Srinath Raghavan, an Indian historian of contemporary history, reviewing for The Indian Express characterized Bose's work to be a "disturbing misrepresentation of the 1971 war" — "it [was] impossible to review the entire catalogue of evasions, obfuscations, omissions and methodological errors".[11][3][24][25]

Response

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Bose has responded to Naeem Mohaiemen and others in The Economic and Political Weekly.[4] She maintains that her research is unbiased and the critics were only "those who [had] profited for so long from mythologizing the history of 1971."[8][4]

References

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  1. ^ Lawson, Alastair (16 June 2011). "Controversial book accuses Bengalis of 1971 war crimes". BBC. Archived from the original on 8 July 2013. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  2. ^ Ahsan, Syed Badrul (13 July 2011). "Sarmila Bose and bad arithmetic". The Daily Star. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  3. ^ a b Mohaiemen, Naeem (3 September 2011). "Flying Blind: Waiting for a Real Reckoning on 1971" (PDF). Economic and Political Weekly. 46 (36): 40–52. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 41719936. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 April 2012. Retrieved 20 December 2013.
  4. ^ a b c Bose, Sarmila (31 December 2011). "'Dead Reckoning': A Response" (PDF). Economic & Political Weekly. 46 (53): 76–79. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 July 2013. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  5. ^ Mohaiemen, Naeem (31 December 2011). "Another Reckoning" (PDF). Economic & Political Weekly. 46 (53): 79–80. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 July 2013. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
  6. ^ a b Zeitlin, Arnold (17 November 2013). "Thoughts on Dead Reckoning". The Daily Star. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
  7. ^ Imdad, Mohammed Parvez (26 March 2018). "Debunking Bose's Myths". The Daily Star.
  8. ^ a b c d Bose, Sarmila (9 May 2011). "Myth-busting the Bangladesh war of 1971". Opinion. No. 1. Aljazeera. Archived from the original on 5 June 2017. Retrieved 3 May 2017.
  9. ^ a b Butalia, Urvashi (13 August 2011). "She Does Not Know Best". Tehelka. Archived from the original on 18 July 2013. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  10. ^ a b Subramanian, Nirupama (27 September 2011). "1971: a different history". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
  11. ^ a b c Raghavan, Srinath (30 July 2011). "A Dhaka Debacle: A disturbing misrepresentation of the 1971 war". The Indian Express. Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 5 July 2017.
  12. ^ Woollacott, Martin (1 July 2011). "Dead Reckoning by Sarmila Bose - review". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
  13. ^ Mishra, Atul (18 February 2013). "Dead reckoning: memories of the 1971 Bangladesh war". Contemporary South Asia. 21: 76–77. doi:10.1080/09584935.2012.758473. ISSN 0958-4935. S2CID 145110816.
  14. ^ Zia, Afiya S. (12 January 2012). "Reading and writing 1971". The Express Tribune. Archived from the original on 22 December 2013. Retrieved 20 December 2013.
  15. ^ Ahmed, Junaid (2016). Creation of Bangladesh: Myths Exploded. LIGHTNING SOURCE Incorporated. ISBN 9789692316903.
  16. ^ "The myths of 1971". The Express Tribune. 10 June 2023.
  17. ^ "Tales of survivors: 1971 war, the ordeal of the non-Bengalis". The Express Tribune. 15 December 2017.
  18. ^ Das, Chaity (1 April 2013). "Book Reviews: Sarmila Bose. 2011. Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War". Journal of South Asian Development. 8 (1): 136–138. doi:10.1177/0973174113477014. ISSN 0973-1741. S2CID 154746511.
  19. ^ "Book Event: Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War". Wilson Center. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
  20. ^ "Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War; Book review". South Asia Journal. 8 June 2020. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
  21. ^ a b Sahgal, Gita (18 December 2011). "Dead Reckoning: Disappearing stories and evidence". The Daily Star. Archived from the original on 20 October 2013. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
  22. ^ Bhaumik, Subir (29 April 2011). "Book, film greeted with fury among Bengalis". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 30 January 2014. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  23. ^ a b Mookherjee, Nayanika (7 June 2011). "This account of the Bangladesh war should not be seen as unbiased". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 28 December 2020. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
  24. ^ Singh, Priyanka (2012). "Bose Sarmila, Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War, London: Hurst & Company, 2011, 239 pp. £19.00 (pbk), £42.75 (hbk)". Nations and Nationalism. 18 (3): 554–555. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2012.00557_5.x. ISSN 1469-8129.
  25. ^ "South Asia Book Talk Series • The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute". The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. Retrieved 21 March 2021.

Further reading

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