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Elora Halim Chowdhury, Gender Studies Professor at UMass Boston, speaks with Adhishri Seth on Bangladeshi Cinema and the Politics of Historical Memory | SAM Youth Dialogue
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00:07Hi, so I'm Adishree Seth and welcome to South Asia Monitor Conversations. So today we're
00:13starting a new series here at South Asia Monitor where we will be exploring the region through
00:19cinema and we'll look at what films can tell us about its politics, histories and people.
00:24South Asia is a region shaped by partition, wars, displacement and complicated relationships
00:30between states. Yet alongside these differences, there are also cultural connections, shared
00:36histories and everyday experiences that cross the borders separating us. For our very first
00:41conversation, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Elora Halam Chaudhary, Professor and Chair of Women's
00:46Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her work explores gender,
00:52war, memory, human rights and transnational feminism, including looking at it through
00:57the lens of Bangladeshi cinema as well. Dr. Chaudhary, thank you so much for joining us.
01:02It's lovely to have you here. Thank you. How are you, Professor? And of course,
01:09are you excited for this conversation? Yes. Thank you for inviting me to be part of this
01:18conversation and I am very excited, particularly because I appreciate being in conversation with
01:29students, scholars, movie goers in South Asia. So this is, you know, very exciting for me.
01:38Sure. Professor, thank you. I think we'll begin the conversation with a more broader question.
01:45We often understand South Asia through states, borders, wars and diplomatic relationships. What
01:50can cinema help us reveal about the region that conventional political narratives might overlook?
01:59Right. I, as you said, we come to learn about the various nation states in South Asia,
02:08mostly through its political history and most often a very embattled political history, which,
02:18in a way, solidifies these borders, the, you know, sort of isolated ways we tend to study the history
02:28and cultures of South Asia. I think cinema is a particularly interesting mode to understand to
02:40study South Asia as a region because, you know, there is a long history, of course, of trans-regional
02:51cinema. So the various kinds of connectivities historically across South Asia in language, in
03:04cultural formations, the travel that happened in between the industries of these countries,
03:14countries, the movements of peoples and ideas that shaped the foundation of the cinematic histories of
03:25this region. These become clearer to us if we take that long view and understand these borders as more
03:39porous than we are led to believe. And I think that it's also a mode of knowledge production, right, that
03:48we come to
03:50learn about that history through this kind of layered representations and cross-fertilizations. So I find it
04:02really important and fascinating. I think when we talk about the 1971 Liberation War, I think national identity
04:12and collective memory are something that shapes the moment. But when you look at these, like when you look at
04:20the
04:20Bangladeshi cinema and the public memory that has of the 1971 Liberation War, do you think who's,
04:27is, are there experiences that have been like foregrounded or maybe marginalized in these narratives, are there
04:34certain narratives that have been missing? Because I think cinema helps shape narrative and as well give us
04:41a perception about certain things. So how do you think that these representations of the Liberation War,
04:47how have they shaped the national narrative around the war?
04:52That's a really critical question. And, you know, I just, you know, I had, I just mentioned that the
04:59Liberation War cinema in Bangladesh is seen as sort of the national cinema, right? And that, you know,
05:06the ways in which national cinema, you know, represents a unified culture, a unified history. And the history of
05:18war cinema in Bangladesh, it is very political. So, you know, in the sense that
05:26even years prior to the war, leading up to the war, and during the war, films were commissioned by the
05:37then
05:37government by activists and filmmakers to make the world aware of what was happening in this region of
05:50the world. And, you know, the war in Bangladesh, the genocide, in fact, even to this day, really remains
06:00somewhat unknown to a broader global audience, readers, viewers, so on. So, you know, we have films
06:15by activists, writers, filmmakers like Alam Girkobir, Zohir Raihan, who were making documentaries like,
06:28you know, stop genocide, and a host of others as well. And the whole purpose was really to
06:39utilize cinema, the camera, as a tool of the freedom fight at that time that was taking on, right?
06:51You know, and very much, I think, you know, there's also this tradition in Latin American cinematic
06:57history that, you know, using the camera as a tool, as a weapon, in counter-revolutions, in revolutions
07:06for, you know, struggles in self-determination. So, these were very much in that line that these films
07:15were also circulated. They were screened in various international arenas in order to draw attention to
07:25to the struggle for self-determination, that the struggle for decolonization, that, you know,
07:30it was sort of like a part of a, making it part of a global story. And many of these
07:36films were
07:39directed by freedom fighters themselves. Actors in the films were also freedom fighters. The films also,
07:49you know, in a way became, you know, a continuation of documenting in sort of a realist way that,
08:00you know, this is, this is, this is a struggle for liberation. You look at the history, of course,
08:07the really devastating war with astonishing numbers of people who were killed in the war. You know,
08:18the official figure is three million. It's anywhere between one and three is what the official figures
08:27that are suggested, you know, about like 200,000 women were raped during the war. And, you know,
08:36there were many thousands of
08:42pregnancies and, you know, sort of, you know, the children of war and the various kinds of reproductive
08:50choices that were made about women's reproductive role in the country, right? That as a consequence of
09:02the rapes, all of these were mapped onto the prevailing gender ideologies we have about, you know,
09:11war masculinity and femininity. And I think, you know, the films also mapped those onto the productions.
09:25Because I think, especially when you bring in the gender dimension to it, because women who experienced
09:31sexual violence during the war have been publicly recognized as heroines of the nation or the
09:37vironganas as the war heroines. Yet, public recognition does not necessarily always eliminate
09:44the stigma, silence, or the social exclusion. So, how can we understand this tension? And
09:52how, why are women's bodies and experiences so closely tied to this narrative of national honor and war
09:59in South Asian societies specifically?
10:01DR. Yeah, sure. You know, and I would say that it is quite unique that in post-independence
10:13Bangladesh, the survivors of sexual violence in the war, the women, were recognized by the government,
10:27the first president of Bangladesh, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and his government recognized the
10:38women as birangana, or brave women, right? And that this was intended to be an honor for the women who
10:53who participated in the war, who suffered this, this kind of violence. And, however, I would say that,
11:05yes, you know, there is, was a tremendous social stigma associated with women survivors of sexual violence.
11:18And again, you know, this is not unique to the context of Bangladesh, but also, you know, the stigmatization of
11:33rape victims, survivors. This also preceded the war, of course, in South Asia and globally, you know, right?
11:42So I do want to emphasize that there, that it was quite unprecedented that women were recognized through
11:52dishonor. However, the prevailing gender ideologies and also, you know, the ways in which that women
12:02could be integrated into various kinds of rehabilitation programs could be integrated into various kinds of
12:07rehabilitation programs. They were not, you know, they were not the same for men and women, right?
12:15So whereas freedom fighters, men were recognized as heroes, right? And also received various kinds of
12:26compensations and wages for their role in the war. That was not so for women. And, you know, women were
12:39only
12:39recognized as freedom fighters much later. That happened in 2014. And, you know, the kinds of sort of
12:53compensations that are available in society through the government, those were uneven before
13:072014. So I think, you know, it also brings up the question of advocacy of women's organizations in
13:19Bangladesh that, you know, I do want to mention that there is a very long and strong women's movement in
13:29Bangladesh that has been consistently advocating for the rehabilitation, the recognition, the rights of
13:41survivors, of women survivors in 1971.
13:48So, like in your own work, you explore cinema's potential to act as a disruptive archive. What
13:55becomes visible or remains invisible when women's experiences are incorporated into national memories
14:02of events such as Partition and the 1971 Liberation War? So what do you mean by this disruptive archive
14:09exactly?
14:10Sure. No, thank you for that question. So, I mean, you know, I have a particular interest in women's cinema
14:19in
14:20South Asia and particularly women's cinema in Bangladesh and women's cinema in the war cinematic genre too.
14:32So, you know, if you look at the numbers, I would say that, you know, women filmmakers, directors are few
14:43in the mix.
14:46But the filmography that we have from these filmmakers, they're really fascinating in the way that they disrupt the dominant
15:00ways that we have come to know the history of the birth of the nation, right?
15:08So I can give you examples from the films of Rubaiyat Hossein, Shami Maktar in particular.
15:20So, you know, one of the films that I have written about in my book is Rubaiyat Hossein's first feature
15:33film, Meherjaan, which was released in 2011.
15:40And it's a really important film in the sense that it, you know, it is made as a, with kind
15:56of like a reconciliatory lens.
16:00And so we see that, you know, it brings together actors across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the music of the film
16:14also are from musicians across the region.
16:21Also, the story that it tells, it shows sort of some of the connectivities and histories about South Asia in
16:35pre-partition times and sort of their legacies and how that inflects the stories of fighters and ordinary citizens during
16:501971.
16:51The film choosing to center the story of a war child who returns and questions her belonging in the independent
17:06nation of Bangladesh in search of her mother, who had been a freedom fighter, also a survivor of sexual violence.
17:18And that opens up a way to engage with these kinds of marginal stories that are often not told or
17:29recognized within the dominant history of nation making and the war.
17:37And overall, I would, you know, I would, you know, I would, you know, I would, you know, I call
17:39it like the aesthetic of the cinema and the filmmaker herself, you know, calls it sort of a feminine aesthetic
17:47where, you know, this sentiment of healing and reconciliation is central, rather than focusing only on war and violence.
18:02So I think that, you know, it is an example of how women's cinematic interventions have disrupted, you know, dominant
18:17ways of knowledge making about the history of the war.
18:24The atrocities of 1971 cannot simply be erased in the name of reconciliation.
18:29How can, how do you think societies can preserve these historical memories and remain accountable to survivors as well?
18:38Because while also questioning inherited images of people across national borders, because I think cinema can play a big role
18:47in negotiating this tension about the certain images of people we have across borders.
18:53And if you want, you can share an example or two from, from your, from your own experiences.
18:59You know, I mean, sure, I'll actually, you know, one of the book projects that I have worked on, it's
19:09actually about cross border films.
19:13So South Asian film industry and filmographies across, you know, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and my co-author Asia Day and
19:27I, we organized a number of workshops that we were meant to be hosted in India and Pakistan and Bangladesh.
19:40And bringing together scholarly and filmic dialogue and exchange in the spirit of, you know, sort of thinking about the
19:52connectivities as opposed to the fraught borders and the divisions.
19:59And, you know, I mean, I mean, a simple answer to your question, of course, is we need more dialogue,
20:07we need more exchange.
20:08And as we know, even travel across these countries are very, very difficult, right?
20:16So the inaugural workshop that we had planned, this was in 2016, was meant to be hosted in Dhaka, in
20:28Dhaka University.
20:30And, you know, we were really set with the program, there were about 30 scholars and filmmakers who were coming
20:41together in a, in a three day workshop, it really sort of, you know, first of its kind, in a
20:48way.
20:48And, you know, also at the same time, as we were planning to host the workshop, there was also, you
20:56know, the, what in Bangladesh was happening at that time, the, the war crimes tribunals.
21:04So the government was also trying war, the, the collaborators in Bangladesh who had worked actively with the Pakistani army
21:22and the government in 1971 in the genocidal violence.
21:29So, you know, there were also these trials happening at that time, you know, bringing, seeking justice for war crimes.
21:40So I think, you know, the Dhaka University administration actually canceled the workshop just two weeks before it was set
21:53to take place.
21:55And naming the silence of the Pakistani government of not acknowledging the genocide and not issuing a meaningful apology.
22:11And therefore, that, you know, the, they banned Pakistani citizens from attending the workshop.
22:24You know, you know, also when we hosted the workshop subsequently in, in Pakistan at, in Lahore, at LAMS, also
22:35in India at Jadavpur University, you know, various Pakistani scholars could not come to India.
22:44Indian scholars could not travel to Pakistan.
22:49Pakistan, I myself had tremendous difficulty getting a visa to go to Pakistan.
22:55And so, you know, there are like these kind of real consequences of the, you know, legacy of, of a
23:07partition that we live with until, to this day, that, that make dialogue and interaction and exchange very difficult.
23:17And that also obscures the, the history of, of the connectivity, right?
23:23Because we have directors, film directors who were, you know, born in India, moving to Pakistan, making films about East
23:38Bengal, East Pakistan.
23:41And there, you know, there, you know, there are actors and, and, you know, industry workers who also have this
23:49sort of shared experience in working across regions.
23:53And that also becomes obscured, you know, often intentionally, you know, and I, I just, you know, want to refer
24:02our viewers to the, the work of Lotte Hoyek, who's done this amazing archival, historical accounts of, you know, what
24:14she calls like the missing archive, right?
24:17So films that were made in Urdu language in pre-1971 East Bengal, East Pakistan, they are erased from the
24:32history of filmmaking.
24:32So if you look at like the filmography, all the lists that are available in the Bangladesh Film Archive, these
24:43films have, have been erased.
24:46And, and, and likewise in, in Pakistan, right?
24:50The, the films that were made in Bengali language in East Bengal, there is, you know, sort of an archival
24:59silence about, about that.
25:02I think it's important to take into account this because cultural exchange does not take place outside of politics.
25:10It is very heavily embodied in it because film production and distribution, collaboration, everything, it all depends on the institutional
25:17arrangements and the diplomatic practices between two countries, because there are so many market access and product permissions involved.
25:25Thank you for, thank you for, thank you for, for so much of information, especially the geopolitical angle at the
25:30end as well, because borders and political tensions have to be taken into account.
25:36If there is one assumption about Bangladesh, its neighbors or South Asia that you would like audience to reconsider to
25:43cinema, what would it be?
25:45Because I think that is something that you should let our audience know as well.
25:50And if there is a particular film that you would also recommend again.
25:54Yes, you know, I, I think, you know, just going back to this question of the sort of regional way
26:05of focus, right?
26:07And, and, and how does Bangladesh enter that discussion?
26:12So, you know, I'm, I'm thinking of various Indian cinema that have been made about the 1971 war.
26:26And, you know, if you, you know, if you, you know, if you, you know, if you, you know, I'm
26:28thinking of films like Border that was released in 1919, 1997, JP Duttas, you know, it was kind of the
26:38highest grossing film in that year.
26:41I think, you know, I think, you know, it, you know, it named the war as the Indo-Pak war.
26:48There was no mention of East Pakistan or, you know, that this was also a liberation war for Bangladesh.
26:56Right.
26:56And also, you know, if you look at the film, 2018 film, Razi, which is directed by a woman, a
27:09filmmaker, right?
27:10That sort of showcases the story of this Indian woman who is a spy and marries into a Pakistani family
27:25and, you know, also, you know, provides important information intelligence.
27:32And that leads to sort of, you know, like the Indian army being able to intervene and stop one of
27:40the plots to sort of, you know, like one of the attacks by, by the Pakistani army at that time.
27:52So I think even in that story, it is happening in the Indo-India-Pakistan border area.
28:01And so, I mean, you know, there is much to be learned about the history of the region, the history
28:09of partition and its legacies from the point of view of the Bangladesh war of liberation, right?
28:20That it's not only about East Bengal, East Pakistan, Bangladesh.
28:25It has connectivities, histories to the wider region, if not the world.
28:30So, you know, that that is something that I think, you know, needs to be emphasized.
28:38Because I think it brings us to the bring us back to the most important question.
28:43Like, what does it mean to understand a region like South Asia?
28:46And cinema allows us to look at these histories from another angle as well, through the memories that people carry,
28:54the silences that remain, and the lies that don't always fit neatly into that nationalist narrative.
29:00I think what I find particularly compelling is that cinema doesn't necessarily offer us easy answers or reconciliation every single
29:10time over every difference.
29:11But sometimes it makes us sit with some uncomfortable histories and questions.
29:15And we unlearn what we have been taught to remember and understand.
29:20And we recognize experiences that dominant narratives have pushed to the margin.
29:25So, thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your insights and for taking out time.
29:31And I'm really sorry for all the technical glitches.
29:33But it has been a real pleasure speaking with you.
29:36And I hope you find this conversation fruitful as well.
29:40And you think it helps a bigger audience as well.
29:44Oh, thank you.
29:45Thank you for having me.
29:46And yes, I really appreciate this opportunity to engage with you and, you know, share some of my work.
29:55Yeah, thank you so much, Professor.