Stories that we tell ourselves

How should a nation memorialise its history? How should a people respectfully bear witness to the trauma and violence of the past, while also celebrating their achievements? And as recent memory becomes distant history, and generations drift further and further away from the events that shaped their nation's identity, how can we stop these remembrances from becoming hollow and tokenistic?

At the risk of sounding cliched, when Dickens wrote, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times", he could just as easily be talking about 1971 as the French Revolution. The most ordinary people did extraordinary things during the Liberation War. It was a time of great hope for the people of this country, whose resilience, courage and spirit led to the birth of an independent country.

But it was also a time of unthinkable bloodshed and slaughter. The barbarity of the Pakistani soldiers' attacks on Bangalees/Bangladeshis, especially from Hindu communities, has been well-documented. It is difficult to forget some of the images taken by photojournalists during 1971, reflecting the horrific and indiscriminate torture and murder of ordinary civilians. The country is still dotted by unmarked graves, and many of those who survived the war continue to carry its scars with them today.

And every year, as we celebrate our Independence and Victory Days, so close on the heels of March 25 and December 14 – days that mark the beginning of the genocide against the Bangladeshi (then East Pakistani) population by the Pakistani military forces, and the targeted mass killing of Bangalee intellectuals – I can't help but wonder, have we been able to properly retell the stories of the "best and worst" time in our national history?

Do the post-1971 generations really understand what it means for a country to have faced genocide and the enormity of what ordinary Bangladeshis achieved? Or do they only know dates and names from a period in history because their schoolteachers forced them to memorise it?

The reality is that, the further removed the younger generations become from the events of 1971, the harder it will become for them to connect to them. It won't matter how many art competitions we hold every year, or how many patriotic songs children learn in school, and how often we wear red and green outfits to mark our national days – if we fail to tell them stories of the Liberation War that they can form an emotional attachment to, it will stop being real to them.

In this regard, there is a lot more that needs to be done. As a nation, we have made a mess of how we remember history. At different points in time, political parties and military dictatorships that once held power have misrepresented history, or told a biased version of it. I remember when I was in school, our private educators decided to skip the chapters on 1971 altogether in order to "avoid conflict".

Although this is in the process of being rectified, it is possible that the younger generations now know even less about history prior to 1971, and next to nothing about Partition and colonial rule in Bengal. While the crucial events of the Liberation War are now common knowledge, the stories of farmers and day labourers who secretly trained for combat, of boatmen who ferried weapons, families who risked everything to hide freedom fighters in their homes, and the everyday stories of courage and resistance, I do not believe, are common knowledge to younger generations in Bangladesh.

Do the post-1971 generations really understand what it means for a country to have faced genocide and the enormity of what ordinary Bangladeshis achieved? Or do they only know dates and names from a period in history because their schoolteachers forced them to memorise it?

And how would they be known? As far as I am aware, the Liberation War Museum is the only organisation in the country that has conducted a nationwide drive to collect oral histories from 1971 by asking schoolchildren to interview someone from their locality/village who survived the war, write down their stories, and send to the museum. This archive is now a treasure trove that brought together a winning combination – children who harnessed the power of story-telling to record the stories of their communities, thus exercising their agency and feeling connected to their local histories in the process.

Local memorials can also play an important role in creating these connections. The fact that almost every locality in the country has a Shaheed Minar definitely has an impact in keeping the Language Movement alive, and in many unions and district towns, they have become centres for the community's congregations and movements as well. So why are there not more memorials to the Liberation War and the Muktibahini? What about memorials for the Birangana? Why is there not at least a plaque commemorating every known site of killings during 1971?

Of course, certain local memorials have been put up in recent years, such as the monument in Syedpur to commemorate the Golahat train massacre. One hopes this points to a realisation from the administration of the value of such national symbols, and of empowering communities to remember that they too are a part of this country's shared history.

Unfortunately, where we have failed most spectacularly is in using the most powerful tool available to us in the modern world – the mass media. Many people around the world are aware of the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia because of movies like Hotel Rwanda and The Killing Fields. Despite the First World War having taken place over a hundred years ago, the movie All Quiet on the Western Front still made it to this year's list of Oscar-nominated films.

I'm not suggesting that we should be making content of this calibre by the end of this year. But there is definitely reason for us to ask why our film and TV industry has had so little success in bringing stories, at least to native viewers, of a period of history that is such a huge part of who we are.

The stories that we tell ourselves, and tell the world about ourselves, are a crucial part of nation-building, and of the process of constructing a national identity. They can help a nation process the trauma of living through genocide, and at least lead to a certain symbolic justice through the recognition of said genocide from the outside world. And remembering the tragic waste of human life that is the end result of any war can then become an important tool to remind future generations of the idea of "never again".

As we move forward as a country, if we truly want the 1971 genocide to be remembered and recognised, we need to make sure our stories are heard – not just the mainstream narratives of dates, events and actors as copied down in textbooks, but the tales of ordinary Bangladeshis who, despite the odds stacked against them, struggled against a cruel and unjust system of power and brought it to its knees.

Shuprova Tasneem is a Bangladeshi journalist. Her Twitter handle is@ShuprovaTasneem.