Comments on: A mythical place called Bangla Motors

By: Mahmud

Mahmud — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 00:18:00 +0000

It seems to me that our desire to rid the symbols of Pakistan had a great deal to do with the emergence of Bangladesh through a bloody war against the occupation. Perhaps the brevity of the Pakistan period, not even 25 years, also meant that it wasn’t very hard to rid ourselves of the symbols of that period. The British period spanned a couple of centuries, the imprint in our social fabric was deeper, and besides, the departure of the British rule is not, in Bengal, remembered so much as freedom as it is remembered as “partition.” In popular consciousness, a different narrative triumphed over the anti-colonial one.
However, your question about how the history of the Pakistan period is taught in Bangladesh is an interesting one. I don’t know the answer. I do know that the history of the post-independence period, the history that is propagated in the popular realm, has been thoroughly politicized in the framework of the factionalism of our two main political parties.

By: prachi

prachi — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 11:57:00 +0000

enjoyed this entry, mahmud. the question you raise is a serious one, with sometimes hilarious but mostly tragic consequences: think ayodhya, for one. sometimes i think that the “recentness” of the conquest brings with it an urgency to remove all traces of it and then we indulge in our favourite activity of renaming stuff hoping all those traces will immediately vanish…. but then we’ve also seen how it’s more important to erase muslim symbols than british ones in india. so perhaps it’s the ‘other’ that is critical to one’s selfhood that gets most treatment, while smaller others are deemed less threatening: in the case of bangladesh, certainly, that other is pakistan, no? actually, i am also curious about how the pakistan movement, which was very strong and vocal in urban centers like dhaka and chittagong, is taught nowadays in standard bangladeshi history classes.

By: Farah Ghuznavi

Farah Ghuznavi — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 10:31:00 +0000

I loved this! It reminded me of many of the “flavours” I recall from my own childhood (i.e. the occasional encounter with a completely unknown object such as a “diet drink”, the odd and inexplicable relative whom everyone has a certain take on etc), when Dhaka was not just a different place, but a different world…This piece captures the sense of that very well.