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1971 A PEOPLE`S HISTORY FROM BANGLADESH, PAKISTAN AND INDIA
₨ 1,140The year 1971 exists everywhere in Bangladesh-on its roads, in sculptures, in its museums and oral history projects, in its curriculum, in people’s homes and their stories, and in political discourse. It marks the birth of the nation, it’s liberation. More than 1000 miles away, in Pakistan too, 1971 marks a watershed moment, its memories sitting uncomfortably in public imagination. It is remembered as the ‘Fall of Dacca’, the dismemberment of Pakistan or the third Indo-Pak war. In India, 1971 represents something else-the story of humanitarian intervention, of triumph and valour that paved the way for India’s rise as a military power, the beginning of its journey to becoming a regional superpower. Navigating the widely varied terrain that is 1971 across Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, Anam Zakaria sifts through three distinct state narratives, and studies the institutionalization of the memory of the year and its events. Through a personal journey, she juxtaposes state narratives with people’s history on the ground, bringing forth the nuanced experiences of those who lived through the war. Using intergenerational interviews, textbook analyses, visits to schools and travels to museums and sites commemorating 1971, Zakaria explores the ways in which 1971 is remembered and forgotten across countries, generations and communities.
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REFUGEES AND THE POLITICS OF THE EVERYDAY STATE IN PAKISTANRESETTLEMENT IN PUNJAB, 1947-1962
₨ 10,880The Partition of India in 1947 involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wise Hindu or Muslim majorities. The Partition displaced between 10 and 12 million people along religious lines.
This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the resettlement and rehabilitation of Partition refugees in Pakistani Punjab between 1947 and 1962. It weaves a chronological and thematic plot into a single narrative, and focuses on the Punjabi refugee middle and upper-middle class. Emphasising the everyday experience of the state, the author challenges standard interpretations of the resettlement of Partition refugees in the region and calls for a more nuanced understanding of their rehabilitation. The book argues the universality of the so-called ‘exercise in human misery’, and the heterogeneity of the rehabilitation policies. Refugees’ stories and interactions with local institutions reveal the inability of the local bureaucracy to establish its own ‘polity’ and the viable workability of Pakistan as a state. The use of Pakistani documents, US and British records and a careful survey of both the judicial records and the Urdu and English-language dailies of the time, provides an invaluable window onto the everyday life of a state, its institutions and its citizens.
A carefully researched study of both the state and the everyday lives of refugees as they negotiated resettlement, through both personal and official channels, the book offers an important reinterpretation of the first years of Pakistani history. It will be of interest to academics working in the field of refugee resettlement ?and South Asian History and Politics.
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BUT PRIME MINISTER…
₨ 1,430An insider’s story of his association with Benazir Bhutto, the world’s first Muslim woman Prime Minister and one of Pakistan’s most enigmatic politicians.
“..a memoir that is part confessional, part creative non-fiction which is as engrossing as history can be..” – Navid Shahzad, Author of “Azlan’s Roar”
“…a most enjoyable and informative read” – Owen Bennett-Jones, author of “The Bhutto Dynasty: The Struggle for Power”
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WHAT WAS ONCE EAST PAKISTAN
₨ 770Serving at three places in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, during the critical period between 1969 and 1971, Syed Shahid Husain saw the events unfold and presents in this book an analysis of the roles that each of the principal actors-Yahya Khan, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto-. He saw history in the making, and the five decades that have passed since have not affected his conclusions. Facts are unchangeable, and it is only the opinions that differ. As Macaulay said, ‘Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them, like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value….’ The book also contains some of his personal experiences at the time including an account of thekiller cyclone that hit East Pakistan in 1970.
