ALL nations are based on founding myths and Pakistan is no exception. Every day, students across the country are presented a version of history that frames the events of the past in terms of an unending and inevitable battle between Islam and the Hindu ‘other’. From Muhammad Bin Qasim to Babur and the Mughals, Muslim conquerors in the subcontinent are depicted as engaging in an existential struggle to spread Islam and subjugate infidels. The complexity and nuances of history and politics are swept away, replaced by simple stories involving binary antagonists defined entirely by their religion. The Muslims of South Asia, like their Hindu counterparts, are reduced to an undifferentiated mass of people sharing a common history, culture, and political orientation.

This is the logic that underpins the Two-Nation Theory, which justifies the creation of Pakistan by suggesting that Partition was inevitable because Hindus and Muslims were (and are) two completely discrete and separate communities that could never hope to co-exist. Over time, as is all too evident in the present context, defining Pakistani nationalism in purely religious terms has had serious consequences; even as notions of citizenship and belonging have come to be characterised by ever-narrower, increasingly parochial interpretations of orthodox Sunni Islam, the cynical use of religion by the political and military establishment to acquire legitimacy and pursue different strategic objectives has led to the creation of a situation in which intolerance, bigotry, and violence have become an ineluctable part of life in Pakistan.

It is in this context that I have often wondered what would happen if tales of Muslim glory and Hindu perfidy in Pakistan’s textbooks were to be supplemented with a frank and honest account of Operation Searchlight. Initiated on the 25th of March, 1971, Operation Searchlight was launched by the West Pakistani military establishment to restore ‘order’ in the Eastern wing of the country. What this meant was a campaign of violence in which the Pakistani military allegedly killed thousands of Hindu and Bengali nationalists in Dhaka. The bond of religion that allegedly united East and West Pakistan did little to stem the bloodshed. This ultimately futile attempt to eliminate ethno-national sentiment in East Pakistan began with a night-time raid on Dhaka University in which students and academics residing on campus were shot.

By the end of the year, approximately 10 million refugees had allegedly streamed into neighbouring India to escape the bloodshed, 90,000 troops and 25,000 West Pakistani civilians had been taken prisoner, and Bangladesh had emerged as the world’s newest independent nation. Estimates of the total number of Bengalis who died in 1971 vary tremendously; official figures promoted and published by the Bangladeshi government suggest three million people lost their lives, while the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report in Pakistan claimed that there were ‘only’ 26,000 casualties.

While Salil Tripathi does not have anything conclusive to say about the total number of people who died during the Bangladeshi liberation war, his extremely moving account of the events that took place in 1971 underlines and emphasises the fact that, in a way, fixating on the exact number of people who died misses the point. The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy is based on hundreds of interviews of politicians, military personnel, activists, liberation fighters, victims, and survivors, with the individual accounts of these people highlighting the tremendous human cost of 1971 and the long shadow it continues to cast over contemporary Bangladeshi politics and society. In recent years, considerable work has been done on understanding and analysing the events of 1971; however, where a lot of this scholarship focuses on states, leaders, and movements, Tripathi’s narrative is one that focuses on the individuals caught in the currents of larger political forces. The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is a book that provides its readers with an insight into the horrors of war, recounting tales of suffering and loss that illustrate how 1971 must also be viewed as an agglomeration of countless personal tragedies, each of which has left enduring scars on those who have lived to tell their stories.

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent attempts to cover a broad swathe of Bangladeshi history, charting the evolution of a distinct Bengali cultural and religious identity before examining the processes that eventually led to East Pakistan seceding from West Pakistan. The account given here is one that is in accord with previous work on this area that has demonstrated how economic and political marginalisation, coupled with an increasingly virulent disdain and disrespect for Bengali identity, gave rise to the ethno-national sentiment that fuelled the Bangladeshi movement for independence. This is followed by several exhaustive chapters on the war itself, including one in which Tripathi recounts the experiences of women allegedly raped by the Pakistani military. The final third of the book is devoted to documenting and explaining events after 1971, with a particular focus on the factors that led to the assassinations of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and General Ziaur Rehman, and the dynamics of the political struggle between the Awami League, headed by Mujib’s daughter Hasina Wajid, and the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), headed by General Zia’s widow Khaleda Zia.

The broader point that Tripathi makes about Bangladesh is one that should find some resonance in Pakistan. Post-independence Bangladesh was saddled with the legacy of its violent origins and 24 years of Pakistani rule. The Awami League government that came to power under Mujibur Rehman was one that immediately had to contend with imminent economic collapse, a deteriorating law-and-order situation, demands for power and representation coming from liberation fighters and activists, and a party and governance structure that, like the rest of South Asia, was characterised by nepotism and rent-seeking. The problems faced by the new government were compounded by two immediate sources of opposition: a military old guard bearing the imprint of Pakistani training that revolved around opposition to India and commitment to Islam, and left-wing parties that questioned the Awami League’s radical credentials. Much like his Pakistani counterpart Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mujibur Rehman’s response to these challenges was to centralise power while simultaneously presiding over a regime wracked by inefficiency and corruption. Like Bhutto, Mujibur Rehman lost his government and his life to a military coup that explicitly justified its actions — including the murder of Mujibur Rehman’s 10-year-old son Russell — in the name of national security.

As Tripathi’s narrative makes clear, the military’s discontent with Mujibur Rehman was rooted in several factors: the Awami League was seen as being too close to India and too secular; its preference for officers and soldiers who had fought in 1971 rankled with those who had been unable to do so, and its corruption was viewed as being inimical to Bangladesh’s prosperity. While Tripathi does not invoke an explicit comparison with Pakistan in this regard, it is clear that the authoritarian turn in the politics of both countries has similar structural roots. Immediately after Bangladeshi independence, Hamza Alavi argued that Bangladesh and Pakistan both possessed an ‘overdeveloped’ postcolonial state characterised by the presence of a powerful military invested in politics at the expense of civilians. The similarity between Pakistan and Bangladesh can also be seen in the political strategy adopted by successive military regimes in the latter. In contrast with the secular, pro-India stance of the Awami League, the military-backed BNP drew on Islam as a means through which to oppose India and forge an alternative Bengali identity. The polarisation of Bangladeshi politics was also exacerbated by differing approaches to the religious right — while parties like the Jamaat-i-Islami were complicit with the Pakistani military’s actions in Bangladesh, and were treated as such by the Awami League, the BNP was more than willing to work with the party as a political partner.

The consequences of this for Bangladesh are clear. Even though 40 years have passed since the events of 1971, the country continues to grapple with fundamental questions about its identity. Indeed, even though Lt. Colonel Farooq (the unrepentant colonel from the title of the book who was involved in the assassination of Mujibur Rehman) and four of his collaborators were executed by the latest Awami League government in 2010 after enjoying years of official impunity, disputes between the Awami League, the BNP, and the Jamaat over questions related to the prosecution of leaders accused of abetting war crimes in 1971, as well as over issues like blasphemy, expose the deep fault lines in the Bangladeshi body politic. In 2013, the execution of Jamaat leader Abdul Qadir Molla led to riots which killed hundreds of people in Bangladesh, and prompted a crackdown on thousands of Jamaat activists. The April 2015 execution of Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, another Jamaat leader, will only deepen the distrust and animosity between the Awami League and its opponents, with this having profound implications for the future of Bangladeshi politics.

Similarly, while Bangladesh has made a transition to democracy, the ever-present threat of the military remains in place, contributing to further political instability. Despite seceding from Pakistan, Bangladesh ironically faces dilemmas that are not dissimilar to those confronted by the former.

Although The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is arguably at its strongest when recounting the testimonies of those who experienced and endured the travails of 1971, it also provides a fresh perspective on the mo-tivations and aspirations of those involved in fighting for, and ruling, Bangladesh. In addition to interviews with surviving members of Mujibur Rehman’s family, Tripathi also makes use of conversations with Lt. Col. Farooq Rahman, as well as other functionaries, politicians, and military personnel, to provide a balanced and comprehensive account of why politics in Bangladesh took the bloody turn that it did so soon after independence. Without explicitly condoning or condemning what happened, Tripathi succeeds in maintaining an air of neutrality throughout his narrative, giving space to justifications for Mujib’s assassination while also referring to alternative points of view. The result of this adherence to objectivity is the overwhelming sense that regardless of what the motivations and justifications might have been, the different factions arrayed against each other in Bangladesh share collective responsibility for the country’s current problems.

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is an extremely accessible and engaging read, and will be of great interest to all who have an interest in questions relating to politics in Bangladesh, as well as the existential angst that seems to define the national narratives of South Asia. Tripathi has done an excellent job of documenting what happened in 1971 and its aftermath, and has successfully shown how deeply entrenched the challenges faced by Bangladesh are.

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy

(WAR)

By Salil Tripathi

Aleph, New Delhi

ISBN 978-9382277187

400 pp.