Of Resistance and Memory: Picturing the Mukti Bahini

The Mukti Bahini (Liberation Army) was a collection of military, paramilitary and civilian forces that fought in the struggle for the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. It included members from several organisations like the Mujib Bahini, the Kader Bahini, Hemayet Bahini, the Communist Party of Bangladesh and Bengali officers from the Pakistani military establishments such as the navy and army. They were also aided by Indian civilians and armed forces in their guerilla campaigns and resistance movements against the widespread depredations unleashed by the West Pakistani establishment following an electoral victory for the overwhelmingly Bengali-centric Awami League party, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

This army—formed largely under the pressure of the sudden assault—was made up of students, professionals, men, women, politicians in exile and the ordinary masses who were provoked by the stark political climate of the day. Books like Manik Mohammad Razzak’s Katha ’71 offer first-person accounts of several Mukti Bahini fighters who recall the stages through which their political education led to an all-out conflict between intimate strangers. Such books, paired with photographs of the Mukti Bahini, seek to offer us transparent access to the raw material of this reality in the past. As memory interacts with images—that were meant to bolster the courage of the fighters and cast out into the world for solidarity (and material support)—a dialogue is created by these public acts of memorialising a national event that was equally a product of an international politics of the Cold War era. The language of romantic propaganda, martial courage and nascent solidarity acted as protective screens too—around gruesome stories of excessive brutality, abuse and dismemberment that made up the other run of images that were regularly published representing the war of liberation in 1971.

To read more about the representation of Bangladesh’s Liberation Struggle, please click here, here and here.

All images from the private collection of Kazi Anirban.

Click on the image to view the album