Interrogating the Spirit of 1971: Beyond Historicisms

The tale of Bangladesh’s liberation war of 1971 cannot be told without the ‘before’ and a bit of the ‘after’ of that year, as it would then turn into a futile exercise in historicism,2 merely, ‘capturing’ that instant of extensive explosion which ascended like the phoenix, while ignoring the intensive seedbed of creative ‘becoming’ from which it arose. ‘Although it is the glow of an event that catches our eye and fascinates us, French historian Braudel argues that such superficialities belie greater complexities, for events emerge from an impenetrable milieu ― a darkness or contingency ― and this black night must be taken seriously’.3 And, of course, we were that contingency, that morass of untold narratives which now face the threat of being overwritten, if not erased.