it's strange how little consciousness of the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh there is in the West, given how awful it was. a combination of racism and Cold War alliances with Pakistan, I suppose, but you'd think that there would have been some breakthrough book of the "Rape of Nanking" scale by now
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One of my professors in undergrad intl. studies was Bangladeshi and he made sure the class learned about it. I don't think it would have come up in the course if not for him. Harrowing stuff.
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Are there any books at all on this, not just well-known/mass market ones?
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Maybe the first place I read about it was in Midnight’s Children. Possibly the only place too, in fiction certainly. Never stumbled across the topic being covered fully or even just mentioned anywhere else. If you don’t somehow know already and actively look into it further you’d never know.
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Yeah it’s wild
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It does really seem that the West needs to be involved in some direct fashion in a conflict for Westerners to care about it. For example, you would be hard-pressed to find many Westerners who have even heard of the Second Congo War, let alone know it remains the deadliest conflict since WW2.
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Wrong victims, wrong perpetrators, wrong time, wrong side of the world
Its a bummer that we know so little about such a massive portion of humanity in South Asia!
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Occurs to me that the authors of this, published 1983 based on life in a B'desh village in mid-70s, might shed light on matter. They are still both v active in US. Read it 30yrs ago and from memory, there is no ref to genocide even then, and it feels as from villager perspective 1971 brought.....
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Indeed. The 1971 life expectancy is striking (1970 cyclone played a part)
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like, I can think of one work of fiction about it - by an English novelist married to a Bengali-British human rights lawyer - and one (very good) work of non-fiction - "The Blood Telegram" but even that is more about the American political side of things than the atrocities themselves.
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After so many floods and typhoons in Bangladesh killed multi hundreds of thousands each, most Westerners have gone numb to the idea of mass death in Bangladesh. You could say that a million people died in a train derailment there and folks would just sigh and mutter something about overpopulation.
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Why do you hate waffles??
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Nixon in China rather meant sacrificing Bangladesh to Pakistan, until Indira Gandhi stepped in to save the day?
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I think about this sometimes, my 20 something college students are well read and educated but I doubt either of them knows the first thing about the history of the region in the past 100 years much less specifics.
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Not strange. There is no direct connection to the US so it doesn't make it into US history books, so ignorance.
My entry was through George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" which linked to "Concert for Bangledesh" and why that happened.
- only learned about tulsa massacre through watchmen tv show.
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Outside of a few places there isn’t a huge Bangladeshi diaspora positioned to be culturally influential in the West, and specifically, not really in a lot of the places where you’d get academic production focusing on the topic. Lack of those cross-cutting social ties will suppress academic interest.
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Do you have any good resources on this? I have a Bangladeshi cousin in law but don’t want to ask her
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This got a lot of attention in the U.S. when released: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blo.... The West is more conscious of Nanjing because it was well-publicized at the time by Henry Luce who was part of the China Lobby and wanted the U.S. to enter the war (see famous baby photo).
The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide - Wikipedia
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George Harrison would be so pissed about that
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Helps everyone to get along in the UK if we don't talk about the last major Indo-Pakistani war.
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Uhm... Didn't terraistrying already talk to you about this?
Sorry, I just couldn't fucking resist.
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But not surprising in some ways given the lack of awareness of eg. the Suharto massacres. Some things like the Biafra conflict are largely forgotten despite being a big story in the West at the time (and Biafra’s contemporary relevance …)
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Oh one of my buds at an old job's Dad was one of the Bengali resistance leaders who immigrated here to become a stats professor. Where I learned 90% of what I know about it
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There’s a landmark album by a Beatle about it, too!
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hasn't broken through the like the rape of nanking but "the blood telegram" is excellent.
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especially considering that like, one of the frickin Beatles had a big concert/film connected to it
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I think Sam Dalrymple covers it, but I haven't read Shattered Lands myself yet.
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I know a Royal Marine was at our consulate there at the time.
He said it was the worst thing he's ever seen.
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in general we don't talk enough about South Asia in the US
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a friend has made the grim point that it may possibly be one of the few discrete events in human history caused by humans that will be notable in the fossil record to our distant descendants.
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Behind the Bastards covers it in pretty good detail in their series on Henry Kissinger.
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the problem is “Bengal is horrible pit of human misery” has been taught to people for well over a century, and there isn’t room for many new books on it in popular consciousness
