By Sonan Tabindah
I have an old photograph from 1999 in which I am sitting on a wide concrete stair with my parents and my sister, who had only just been born. It is one of those family pictures that might seem ordinary at first glance, the kind that quietly sits in albums for years. Yet it has always stayed with me for a particular reason. Behind us, slightly blurred by distance and the softness of the camera, stands the unmistakable silhouette of the স্মৃতিসৌধ, also known as the National Martyrs’ Memorial in Savar. The monument appears faint in the background, almost ghostlike, yet still distinct enough for its sharp triangular structures to rise through the haze of the photograph.
I must have been around four years old when that picture was taken. I am smiling widely, unaware of where I am, unaware that behind me stands a monument commemorating one of the most painful and transformative chapters in Bangladesh’s history. At that age, the towering structure in the background meant nothing more to me than an interesting place my parents had taken us to visit. Only years later did I begin to understand that the monument was designed not merely as an architectural landmark but as a symbolic space — a place meant to honour the countless lives lost during the struggle that eventually led to Bangladesh’s independence in 1971.
When you are in school, much of what you learn about your country arrives through textbooks. These books present history as a series of neat events and dates, carefully arranged into chapters that can be memorised for exams. Yet textbooks are rarely neutral. They are written, revised, and sometimes rewritten by those in positions of authority, often selecting certain facts while leaving out others. In doing so, they can flatten history into something far simpler than it actually was, filtering out the layers of complexity, contradiction, and human experience that truly shape the birth of a nation.
As children, we accept these narratives without much question. Independence becomes a chapter, the Liberation War timeline, and the stories of sacrifice a few pages of printed text. But as you grow older, a different realisation begins to unfold: the history described in those books was not lived by distant figures alone. It was witnessed, endured, and survived by people who are still around us today — by neighbours, relatives, parents, grandparents, teachers, and strangers whose lives were permanently marked by those nine months in 1971. The war is not only something that exists in archives and memorials; it lives quietly within the memories of people who continue to carry fragments of that time.
And yet, many of these stories remain untold. They exist in fragments — in half-finished conversations, in silences at family gatherings, in memories that surface briefly before being pushed aside. We live among living archives of history, people whose experiences could deepen our understanding of the war far beyond what any textbook could offer. But unless these stories are shared, listened to, and remembered, they risk fading into silence, leaving future generations with only simplified versions of the past.
Perhaps that is why, when I look back at that photograph today, it feels different from how it once did. What once appeared as an ordinary family picture now carries a quiet weight. The monument in the background is no longer just an architectural structure; it represents collective memory, national memory, and the fragile responsibility to preserve it. As a child, I had no understanding of the events that led to the creation of that memorial. But growing older meant gradually becoming aware that Bangladesh’s independence was not simply the result of a political struggle alone or a distant historical moment. It was the outcome of immense suffering, resistance, and sacrifice that unfolded across countless lives.
When we begin to listen more closely to the stories of those who lived through 1971, the night of 26 March emerges again and again as a moment when everything changed. It was on that night that the Pakistani military launched what came to be known as Operation Searchlight, a coordinated campaign designed to crush the growing Bengali independence movement through overwhelming force. Under the cover of darkness, troops moved into Dhaka and other major cities, targeting university dormitories, political centres, and residential neighbourhoods. Tanks rolled through the streets of the capital, while soldiers opened fire on civilians, students, and intellectuals who were believed to support the autonomy movement. One of the most devastating attacks took place at Dhaka University, where student halls were stormed, and many young people were killed in their rooms or as they tried to flee.
What unfolded that night was not a spontaneous eruption of violence but a carefully planned attempt to silence an entire population that had been demanding political recognition and self-determination. The military crackdown quickly spread beyond the capital. Villages were burned, neighborhoods were raided, and thousands of people were forced to flee their homes in search of safety. Within days, what had begun as a brutal military operation escalated into a full-scale war. For many families, that night marked the beginning of months of uncertainty, displacement, and survival.
For a long time, my understanding of these events remained limited to the simplified versions presented in textbooks. The war was described through familiar symbols, heroic freedom fighters, political leaders, decisive battles, and eventual victory. While these narratives are undoubtedly important, they often leave little room for the complexities and contradictions of lived history. It was only much later, through reading literature and engaging with personal testimonies, that I began to realise how limited my earlier understanding had been.
Books such as Ami Birangona Bolchi by eminent author NilimaIbrahim, opened a different doorway into the history of 1971. Unlike official narratives that often prioritise military strategy or political leadership, these accounts centre the voices of women whose experiences had long remained marginalised. Women in particular encountered the violence of 1971 in ways that exposed the deeply gendered nature of conflict. Sexual violence was systematically used as a weapon of war by the Pakistani military and their collaborators, leaving thousands of women with wounds that extended far beyond the physical. In the aftermath of independence, the newly formed Bangladeshi state attempted to recognise these women through the title “Birangona,” meaning “war heroine.” The intention behind the term was to restore honour and dignity to survivors who had endured unimaginable trauma.
Yet over time, the word Birangona has come to reveal a complicated tension between recognition and erasure. On one hand, it was meant to challenge the social stigma that survivors of sexual violence often face. On the other hand, by placing thousands of women under a single symbolic label, it risked flattening their identities into a single category. Each of these women had a life before the war, an experience during it, and a long aftermath that unfolded in different ways. Some survived by fleeing their homes, others by enduring violence in captivity. Their stories cannot be contained within one word, no matter how honourable its intention might have been.
The dominance of masculine narratives within war memory is not unique to Bangladesh; it is a pattern that appears across many societies that have experienced conflict. Battles and military victories are often easier to commemorate than the quieter forms of survival that take place away from the battlefield. But when memory becomes too narrowly focused on a particular image of heroism, it risks leaving out the voices that complicate and deepen our understanding of what war truly meant for those who lived through it.
Reading these testimonies was unsettling, not only because of the pain they revealed but also because of the silence that had surrounded them for so long. The war suddenly felt closer, more intimate, and far more complex than I had previously imagined. It became clear that the story of Bangladesh’s independence cannot be fully understood without listening to the voices of those pushed to the margins of history.
In many ways, this process of rediscovering these stories is part of a broader effort to decolonise memory. To understand why the events of 1971 unfolded the way they did, it is important to recognise that the struggle for Bangladesh’s independence did not begin in March of that year. Its roots stretch much further back, shaped by long histories of colonial rule and political domination. Under British colonialism, Bengal was frequently portrayed through racial stereotypes that depicted Bengalis as weak, overly emotional, and incapable of governing themselves. These narratives were not accidental; they were part of a broader colonial logic that justified imperial control by portraying the colonised as inferior. The scholar Edward Said would later describe this system of representation as Orientalism—a way of producing knowledge about colonised societies that ultimately reinforced the power of the coloniser.
When the British left the subcontinent in 1947, the formal structures of colonial rule disappeared, but many of these hierarchies of perception remained. Within the new state of Pakistan, East Pakistan—what is now Bangladesh—was often treated as culturally and politically subordinate to the ruling elite in West Pakistan. Bengalis were frequently described as insufficiently Muslim, too influenced by regional culture, and linguistically different from the Urdu-speaking political establishment that dominated the state. Language itself became a site of struggle, most visibly during the Language Movement of 1952, when students and activists demanded recognition of Bangla as a state language.
Over time, these tensions deepened. Economic disparities, political marginalisation, and cultural discrimination created a growing sense that the people of East Pakistan were being systematically excluded from meaningful participation in their own governance. The demand for autonomy—and eventually independence—was therefore not simply about political power. It was also about dignity, identity, and the right to exist without being defined as inferior by those who held authority.
The philosopher Frantz Fanon once wrote that true decolonisation requires more than the removal of colonial administrators; it also requires a psychological transformation in which the colonised reclaim their sense of self. In many ways, the Liberation War of 1971 can be understood as such a moment. The struggle was not only about territory or governance. It was about reclaiming language, culture, and historical agency after generations of being told who Bengalis were supposed to be.
Against this backdrop, the Liberation War of 1971 represented more than just a fight for territorial independence. It was also a struggle to reclaim identity to assert that the lived experiences of the people of this region were worthy of recognition and respect. The demand for self-determination was deeply tied to the desire to dismantle systems that had long treated Bengalis as subordinate.
However, remembering this struggle in its full complexity requires more than simply celebrating victory. It requires confronting the uncomfortable parts of history, as well as the trauma, the silences, and the stories that have not always received the attention they deserve. In many commemorations of the war, the narrative often centres around masculine heroism: the bravery of soldiers, the sacrifices of fighters, the imagery of men taking up arms for the nation. While these stories are undeniably significant, they can also overshadow other forms of participation and suffering that were equally central to the history of 1971.
To broaden our understanding of that history, it’s essential to recognise the contributions and sacrifices of Adivasi and indigenous communities—from the plains of Rajshahi and Rangpur to the hills of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Indigenous youths from communities such as the Oraon, Munda, Santal, Kora, Kol, Mahali, Rajuar, Marma, Tripura and others joined the struggle as fighters, organisers, scouts and informants, often at great personal cost. Many fought alongside the Mukti Bahini, sometimes armed with traditional weapons like bows and arrows, and engaged in key operations including attacks on Pakistani positions, battles for local cantonments, and strategic sabotage, such as demolishing bridges and disrupting enemy lines. Yet, despite their courage, their names and stories have frequently been marginalised or left out of mainstream narratives, and only a fraction have been officially recognised as freedom fighters.
Indigenous women also played vital roles—serving not just as combatants but as nurses, informants and logistics supporters, often facing persecution, injury, and the threat of violence both during and after the war. Their multidimensional participation challenges a narrow conception of heroism and broadens our understanding of what it meant to resist and survive. A genuinely inclusive commemoration of 1971 must bring these voices out of the shadows, honouring not only the familiar narratives of martial valor but also the courage shown by communities whose contributions have too long been overlooked.
This is why storytelling matters so deeply when we speak about 1971. History does not exist only in monuments, textbooks, or official ceremonies. It lives within the stories people carry with them, stories that sometimes begin on the night of 26 March but, for others, much earlier, shaped by years of political tension, cultural resistance, and personal loss. The Liberation War was not a single moment but a continuum of experiences that unfolded differently across families, villages, and communities.
Even today, many of us live alongside people whose lives were touched by that time. Some fought directly in the war. Some fled their homes. Some lost family members. Others witnessed violence that they had carried silently for decades. Their memories form an invisible archive that surrounds us, waiting to be heard.
Perhaps that is why looking at that childhood photograph now feels like looking through two different timelines at once. In the foreground is a child who has no understanding of her history. In the background stands a monument built to preserve the memory of a struggle that shaped the nation she would grow up in. The distance between those two realities, innocence and understanding, reflects the journey many of us go through as we begin to learn more about our history.
And maybe that journey is never truly complete. Each story we hear, each book we read, each conversation we have with those who lived through that time adds another layer to our understanding of what independence really meant, and what it continues to mean today. It reminds us that history is not something finished or settled. It is something we must continue to revisit, question, and protect.
As the Bengali poet Bharatchandra Ray Gunakar once wrote, “নগরে আগুন লাগলে দেবালয়ও রক্ষা পায় না”, when a city catches fire, even the temple cannot remain untouched. The line carries a powerful reminder. When injustice and violence spread through a society, no space remains truly insulated from its consequences. The Liberation War of 1971 was one such moment when the fire of oppression engulfed an entire people. But it was also a moment when resistance emerged from every corner of society. Remembering that fire and the lives it transformed is perhaps one of the most important responsibilities we inherit today.