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MEMORY. ISSUE 28 . DECEMBER 2022. ₹500
RNI NO.DELENG/2015/60525
Nubras Samayeen is a Ph.D.
candidate in the joint program
of Landscape Architecture and
Architecture at the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Her dissertation investigates the
construction of national identity
through built-forms. After her
undergraduate degree, she
completed dual master’s degrees
in Architecture and Urban Design
at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor with distinction. Among her
publications, “Re-Constructing
’71: The Visual Landscape
of Bangladeshi Nationalism
Today”, “Post-71: Photographic
Ambivalences, Archives, and the
Construction of a National Identity
of Bangladesh”, “Space to Breathe:
George Floyd, BLM plaza and the
Monumentalization of Divided
American Urban landscapes” and “A
Tale of Tw o Ci ti es : Dh ak a’ s Ur ba n
Imaginary in 21st Century,” are the
most recent ones.
Nubras Samayeen
The Landscape of 1971:
Museums, Memories, and the
Aesthetics of Bangladeshi
Nationalism
074 MEMORY
What creates Bangladeshi nationalism today? How does
a country, after fifty years of its independence, coalesce
together and hold on to a nationalist sentiment that was
claimed long back? To Benedict Anderson, nationalism is
constructed upon imaginary homogenous nationhood where
the community is heterogeneous.1 Ernest Gellner contends
that nationalism is a fabrication or invention.2 Focusing on
Bangladesh’s fixation on its 1971 civil war between West
Pakistan and Bangladesh (previous East Pakistan) and rousing
nationalism, this essay argues that its rampant history and
recreated memory landscape play a vehement role in the
aesthetic of its nationalist landscape. It explores the power of
landscape in producing a collective memory and a nationalist
fervour in Bangladesh of the current day.
Ever since the bloody war of independence in 1971,
Bengalese vis-à-vis Bangladeshis, like any other nation, have
been riveted in their newly gained national pride. The civil
war between East and West Pakistan was ingrained primarily
in linguistic dierences and sparked with the 1952 Bangla-
language movement. This relatively newfangled nation was
striving on creating a nationalism based on the language:
Bangaliana — the quintessential essence of any Bengali’s life
and parole of people’s sentiments. Today, in the post-war era,
the nationalist fervour is formed distinctly on the association
with wartime defiance, brutality, and rage, as well as its
Bengali rootedness. There is a robust yet implicit force that
perpetually tries to unite the country beyond common cultural
ties that Anderson argued.
Now, the process of memorialization has become central
to Bangladesh’s nationalism and the construction of its
identity. Its nationalism, if not solely, is primarily reliant on
the robust memories of 1971 which are collected, recollected,
recorded, preserved, reproduced and displayed and therefore,
perpetuated amongst fellow Bangladeshis. The monuments,
such as the museums and archives, and memorials cling to
the aestheticization of a scarred past through preservation
and veneration processes. These synthetic processes are
intrinsically implanted in the exhibitions and the built
museums and galleries themselves, which perpetuate
neo-nationalist sentiments to immediate and following
generations. These generations had no experience of the
gruesome war. Consequently, there has been a drive for
making museums and archives, as the custodians of 1971 war
memoirs. They disperse the gruesomeness of the conflict
through imagery with an agenda of monumentalizing the
images and stories in a very specific framework that expands
Left: An academic proposal of a museum
design for Chukanagar, a genocide site.
Image Credit: Nishat Tasnim Oyshee.
1 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso. 1983.
2 Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell. University Press. 1983.
075 ESSAY
TAKE ON ART . ISSUE 28 . DECEMBER 2022
3 Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical reproduction”. In: Benjamin, Illuminations,
ed.
Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, pp. 217-52. 1935.
4Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.1983.
selected ones and compresses others. With
this, the core role of museums and archives is
communicated mostly through represented
and accessible photographs that explicitly and
implicitly spur nationalist feelings.
In the course of memorialization, the
museums become artefacts and places of
spectacle. Thus, as a constructed “landscape
of 1971,” they incorporate architectural forms,
images, and figural images that are manifested
via societal and spatial engagements and
participation. It is instrumentalized to sway
the masses towards a new nationalist impulse.
They construct collective memories based
on the past. In Pierre Nora’s words, these
monuments are spatial moments that we can
designate as lieux de memoire or ‘places of
memory,’ where he mentioned that “memory
crystallises and secretes itself has occurred
at a particular historical moment, a turning
point where consciousness of a break with the
past is bound up with the sense that memory
has been torn— but torn in such a way as to
pose the problem of the embodiment of memory
in certain sites where a sense of historical
continuity persists.”3 Though this essay explores
Bangladesh’s nationalist force and focuses on
its local issues, it is also a global phenomenon —
an essential catalytic force of shifting nationalist
landscapes. So, what is 1971 for Bangladesh?
On the 16th of December 1971, Bangladesh
was born after an excruciating nine-month-long
Civil War between West and East Pakistan (then
Bangladesh) that started in March of 1971, after
an igniting speech from Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,
known as Shathi March speech or the speech of
7th March. This speech took place in the Race
Course Maidan, which implanted a new historic
moment and meaning to the site. Hence with the
historical continuum, the landscape’s values and
meanings are also transformed. With time and
victory, Mujib also turned out to be a significant
figure who became synonymous with Bengali
nationalism; he is respectfully called “Bongo-
Bondhu (meaning friend of Bengal in Bengali)” as
well as the Father of the Nation Sheik Mujib.
During the civil war, the Pakistani
Army and local collaborators (Razakaars)
many non-combatants including women
and children were slain. Millions of women
were also violated, resulting in nearly four
hundred thousand abortions in the end.4
The number of mass murders is unknown
and estimated to be anywhere from three
to nine million. Hence, the country’s
nationalism is constructed on the perpetual
formation of collective memories of violence,
indignation, and cultural rootedness.
Subsequently, the reminiscence of this
traumatic past is passed on to the citizens
through photographs and stories through
the processes of recreating collective
memory. The sentiments are carried through
palpable built environments of monuments
and museums. Consequently, the landscape
becomes a cultural artefact of a particular
kind, which I call “a landscape of 1971.” After
fifty years of independence, the new nation
is increasingly recognized by its imagined
homogeneity disregarding contested past
and religio-cultural diversity. So, who are the
spatial authors? Who defines the nationalist
landscape today?
Top: 1971 was in Bangladesh. Photo
by Rashid Talukder, collected from DRIK
Photo Gallery, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
076 ESSAY
After fifty years of liberation, a huge
number of museums are growing, consisting
of three distinct generative processes
and associated stakeholders.5 Both the
political authorities in power and citizens
have been the main participants, vis-a-
vis contributors, to these place-making
and landscape shifts. Hence the resultant
spaces are also of different kinds. The first
process includes the government-initiated
galleries. Examples of such museums are
Swadhinata Sthambha (Sthambha means
pillar and Swadhinata means freedom,
and the Museum of Independence (2012),
Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh
Police (2013), the Shaheed Janani Jahanara
Imam Memorial Museum (2007), the
Bijoyketon Cantonment Liberation War
Museum (2019), Sheikh Mujib—Agartala
Case Memorial Museum (2017), the Mukti
Sangram Museum (2007) and the more
recent Bangabandhu Military Museum
and Sheikh Mujib (2022). In that regard,
in 1994, Mujib’s residence, where he was
assassinated along with his family, had
also turned into “Bangabandhu Memorial
Museum.” These listed museums are
within a 5-mile radius or less and there
are more than twelve museums on the War
of Independence in Dhaka, the capital of
Bangladesh. Among these, the Swadhinata
Sthambha and Museum of Independence
Liberation are placed exactly where the
famous March 7 speech took place.
Following the urban-focused nationalist
landscapes, it is the small town and rural
landscapes that also embraced the nationalist
spirit. Such is the Museum and Mausoleum
of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Tungipara in
Gopalganj District. About Tungipara, there lies
a myth. Several saints started living in this area,
which was once in the floodplain, by making
canopied dwellings. Such houses are called
“Tong” in Bengali hence the name of the place
is Tungipara (Tungi/Tong + para - a Bengali
word for neighbourhood). This pre-existing saga
bolstered the concept of Mujib’s mausoleum/
museum, where the patriotic spirit aligned
with the religious ones- a tomb. Thus, taking a
political figure to religio-spiritual status. There
is also the Jalladkhana Killing Field Memorial,
which was founded in 1999 after excavation and
turned into a museum in 2009. These exhumed
genocide spots create a necro-landscape or
mnemonic landscape throughout.
There is a second process of memorial
making, which relies on the private initiations,
freedom fighters, and families of martyrs. One
such museum is the Muktijudho Jadughar or
the Liberation War Museum. Shortly known
as LWM, though controversial in its design
in the international arena, the museum has
been widely popular due to its contemporary
architectural aesthetics, multifarious events,
learning opportunities, functions, and the
detailed and more connective materials and
artefacts bringing a historical tie.
Thirdly, there are spatial or locally
demanded spaces, where the particular
memory spots and places have a history. Such
examples include the Torture Cell and Burial
Ground Barisal, and the Genocide Museum in
Khulna. These two, like many others around
Bangladesh, came as an urge from the local
people of small towns outside Dhaka, close
to the rural parts. For these museums, the
Bangladesh Government unequivocally
oered financial support and at times handed
Top: Museum of Independence in Dhaka,
Bangladesh.
Image Credit: Nubras Samayeen. 5 Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and history: Les Lieux De Mémoire”. Representations,26 (7), pp. 7–24. 1989.
077 ESSAY
7 Taylor, Chloë.”Biopower.” In Michel Foucault, pp. 49-62. London: Routledge. 2014.
Note: This essay is founded and expanded on the idea of “Re-Constructing’71: The Visual Landscape of
Bangladeshi Nationalism Now,” a previously written piece by the author for South Asia Chronicle 10/2020,
Humboldt University of Berlin. 2021
over lands. In some cases,
such as in the case of Barisal,
the land was already a torture
cell, where the Pakistani army
brutally killed and violated
many human rights. All these
three categories of spatializing
memories materialised
recently within the last twenty
to twenty-five years. This is
regardless of the process each
museum followed, they have
become the sites of memory.
They contribute to the
aestheticization of the visual
landscape, creating a tangible
and intangible connection to the past.
Today, these museums, galleries, and
archives are emblematic spaces and active
places. Through active participation, spatial
engagements, and collaborations of younger
generations, these memory spots became
alive; they grew into subsisting memory
conduits. These live landscapes tend to
become more iterative and interactive, rather
than being passive walled spaces displaying
sterile objects. They provide a physical space
or a corporeal entity to memories, which
otherwise are indefinable and unseen; in this
case, these are the memories of 1971. These
memories are created by the same and similar
images and in many cases reproduced ones,
recreating an aura and often augmented
reality, virtual sensations, and thus far from
the original. As Walter Benjamin argued, a
work of art has always been reproducible;
artefacts could always be imitated by men,
replicas were made by pupils in practice
diusing their works, and, finally, by third
parties in the pursuit of gain.6 But they are all,
as he pointed out, absent in their presence in
time and space.
Sometimes, in these museums, the
placement, composition and dierent formats
and sizes are used to create emphasis. For
example, the Liberation War Museum has
a frieze of Sheikh Mujib, in the entry that
is emulated from his historic race-course
maidan speech that ignited and started the
war against Pakistan; it is large and colourful
and not to be missed. The same, perhaps in a
bit smaller size, is also placed in the courtyard
of the “Bangabandhu Memorial Museum.”
The Museum of Independence War also has a
reproduction of Mujib’s photo of the same event,
much more enlarged and on the back wall. One
is compelled to experience it while walking
down the entry ramp. Therefore, these archives
work ‘by use’ and ‘by perception’, where one is
visceral and the other is spiritual. In other words,
these museums as organised enterprises bring
the tangible or corporeal and the intangible
together to create an impact on the mass and to
construct collective memory.
By these design instrumentalities, the
political and historic images become the
prime memento as well as the core that
coerces a feeling for 1971. So, the abstract
memories of 1971 are aestheticized,
solidified, and shaped by architecture, art,
landscape, and the materials contained
and exhibited within. The strength of
such aestheticization relies on size and
recurrence over the urban spaces in the
entire country.This also appears in popular
culture and everyday lives and hammers a
nationalist impulse into the hearts of the
Top: An academic proposal of a museum
Image credit: Nishat Tasnim Oyshee.
6 Samayeen, Nubras. ”Re-Constructing’71: The Visual Landscape of Bangladeshi Nationalism Now.” South Asia
Chronicle 10/2020, Humboldt University of Berlin. 2021
078 ESSAY
citizens and the landscape. There have been
several new currency notes in Bangladesh
that have Mujib’s image on them. But also,
the spaces, with their events, programs, and
use, create new meanings as they propagate
1971 ideologies to a more intercellular
level in infective ways that Michel
Foucault alludes to in his “Biopower.”7 This
institutionalisation of museums as active
places of 1971 memories and systemization
of nationalist feeling confirm his definition
of archives and also his idea of biopolitics
where nationalism is an element that is
processed through the landscape. An
invisible disciplinary force, it is embedded
in the constructed landscape, creating
the rubric of a homogenous category of
collective memory.
With festoons, lighting, colours, deshi
music, and on-site parades Bangladesh’s
Victory Day (December 16) celebration
and Independence Day (March 26) make
these landscapes of memory even more
memorable and participatory. These
museum premises with events become
theatrical arenas. Many of these museums
such as the Liberation War Museum
and Museum of Independence War
hold children’s cultural events and art
competitions on the 1971 idea. Through
these participatory events, the nationalist
ethos become more grounded. Some of
those who experienced such occasions
in their childhood are now adults with
nationalist passions, inoculated in them.
Some of them later veering to the design
field have started designing or proposing
more museums, where it demands. In
2019, amongst the 28 top hypothetical
architectural designs, 10 were museums
or memorials related to the 71-war,
contributing to almost 60 percent of
institutional projects. These design projects
and aesthetic interventions were targeted at
massacre sites or spots, like the third genre,
that have the potency to restore memories
of the war. Consequently, devising museums,
monuments and archives has become a
prescriptive norm and aesthetic tool in
design schools, which was not so fifteen or
twenty years back.
Today, the frenetic reproduction of
visuals from 1971 defines the fluid landscape
of memory in the direction of the new
nationalist landscapes of Bangladesh. These
contested spaces of memories are a bridge
between the not-so-distant past, the present
and perhaps the future of the country. It
only shows that while a nation’s boundary
is a static component, nationalism, the
core of the nation-building is dynamic and
vulnerable to changes and depends much on
political reigns. These reformed nationalist
ideologies become normative for us and
future generations to come.
Bibliography:
Ahmed, Abu Sayeed M. Interview with the author. July 29. 2020.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso, (1983)
2006.
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
reproduction. In: Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans.
Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, pp. 217-52, 1935.
Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1983.
Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and history: Les Lieux De Mémoire.”
Representations, 26 (7), pp. 7–24, 1989.
Samayeen, Nubras. “Re-Constructing’71: The Visual Landscape
of Bangladeshi Nationalism Now.” South Asia Chronicle 10/2020,
Humboldt University of Berlin, 2021.
Taylor, Chloë. ”Biopower.” In Michel Foucault, pp. 49-62. London:
Routledge, 2014.
079 ESSAY