Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Colonel Who Would Not Repent
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.saliltripathi.com/
CITY: London, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
http://www.saliltripathi.com/About%20Salil.html * https://www.theguardian.com/profile/saliltripathi * https://www.ihrb.org/about/team/salil-tripathi * https://www.linkedin.com/in/saliltripathi/?ppe=1
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2009201049
Descriptive conventions:
rda
LC classification: PR6120.R57
Personal name heading:
Tripathi, Salil
Variant(s): Salil Tripathi
Found in: Offence, 2009: t.p. (Salil Tripathi) jkt. (a sr. visiting
fellow for business and human rights at Kennedy School,
Harvard University; also an adviser to several global
initiatives involving business and human rights)
Detours, 2015: t.p. (Salil Tripathi)
Associated language:
eng
================================================================================
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born in Bombay, India.
EDUCATION:University of Bombay, Sydenham College, bachelor’s degree, 1982; Dartmouth College, M.B.A., 1985.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Editor, reporter, and writer. Multinational Strategies, consultant, 1985-86; Indian Post, assistant editor, 1986-87; India Today, senior correspondent, 1988-91; Business Times, Singapore, correspondent, 1991-93; Asia Inc., Southeast Asia correspondent, 1993-97; Far East Economic Review, regional economics correspondent, 1997-98; English PEN, co-chair and board member, 2010-13; Mint, India, contributing editor, 2007-; Caravan, India, contributor editor, 2010-; PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee, chair, 2015-.
AWARDS:Citibank Pan Asia Journalism Awards, Hong Kong, for economic journalism, 1994; Bastiat Awards, third prize, for journalism, New York, 2011; Mumbai Press Club, Red Ink Award for human rights journalism, 2015.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Indian Post, India Today, Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, New York Times, New Republic, New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, Spectator, Prospect, Index on Censorship, Far Eastern Economic Review, Global Asia, National, and Shinchosha. Contributor of essays to anthologies, including The Birth Pangs of a Nation, edited by Shahidul Alam, Drik Picture Library, 2011.
SIDELIGHTS
Born in Bombay, India, Salil Tripathi is a journalist, editor, and human rights advocate. He writes about Hindu issues and the Bangladesh War. He is contributing editor at Mint and at Caravan in India, and previous served as assistant editor at Indian Post and was a senior correspondent at India Today. Tripathi was also a senior visiting fellow business and human rights at Kennedy School, Harvard University. In the corporate sphere, he is a policy adviser to several global initiatives involving business, the environment, and human rights. In 2015, he received Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award for human rights journalism. He holds an M.B.A. from Dartmouth College.
Offence and The Colonel Who Would Not Repent
In 2009, Tripathi published Offence: The Hindu Case, part of the “Manifestos for the 21st Century Series.” In the book, he describes how Hindu fundamentalists have high jacked the religion, censoring and banning cultural works, altering university teachings, being hostile to academics, and even rewriting ancient Hindu scriptures. He also explores how Hindu was once a religion of inclusiveness and tolerance, but the over past decade, extremists have perverted the religion for their own ends. Tripathi also discusses issues of tolerance, censorship, and dissent in India’s multicultural society.
Tripathi published The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and Its Unquiet Legacy in 2014, a U.S. edition was published in 2016. The book encompasses the 1947 Partition of India from British control and the aftermath throughout the rest of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. After 1947, East and West Pakistan, although both Muslim, began to separate, and in 1971 Bengali-speaking East Pakistan achieved liberation, forming Bangladesh. Tripathi describes coups and assassinations, short-lived dictatorships, natural disasters, starvation, and corruption, leading up to a parliamentary government wrought with political instability.
He also addresses the political and cultural ramifications of why Bangladeshis are not grateful to India for liberating their country by defeating Pakistan in 1971. Writing in Times of India, Jaideep Mazumdar explains a paradox using a photo of the surrender of Pakistani troops at Dhaka with a man captioned as either Indian general Lt. Gen. J. S. Aurora or Sheikh Mujibur Rehman as the “man who liberated Bangladesh.” In the same photo, Bangladesh’s Air Commodore A. K. Khandker is relegated to the side. It remains a sore point with many Bangladeshi.
Tripathi goes on to explain the title of the book: Farooq Rahman is the unrepentant colonel who took part in the assassination of Bangladesh’s revered independence leader Sheikh Mujibur. Surprisingly, Farooq was granted indemnity from the crime and lived freely in Dhaka. Only in 2010 did a war crimes tribunal eventually catch up with him and execute him. Writing in Choice, A. Ahmad noted that Tripathi combines the instincts of an experienced journalist with the flair of a natural raconteur, and in so doing, “the author produces a work that is engaging, shrewd, and earnest.” Ahmad added that much of Tripathi’s material includes personal interviews with powerful but also ordinary Bangladeshis, providing the narrative with immediacy and drama.
Detours
In 2015, Tripathi wrote Detours: Songs of the Open Road, a travelogue of cultural and literary identity found only off the beaten path. He collects his newspaper columns that illuminate places affected by wars and human rights violations, places favored by writers and artists, and stories about love and loss. The places he visits and writes about help define India and its people through a lens of history, culture, and art.
Dilip D’Souza commented online at Firstpost: “For every place Tripathi describes, he offers words from one or more writers. Often these are writers who belong to that place. … But too often, it seems he is forcing the words onto his experience, seeking significance in every sentence he writes to match some other writer’s thoughts.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, October, 2016, A. Ahmad, review of The Colonel Who Would Not Repent, p. 264.
Times of India, January 16, 2015, Jaideep Mazumdar, review of The Colonel Who Would Not Repent.
ONLINE
Firstpost, http://www.firstpost.com/ (February 27, 2016), Dilip D’Souza, review of Detours.
LSE Review of Books, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ (September 28, 2016), Paul Gilbert, review of The Colonel Who Would Not Repent.
Salil Tripathi Website, http://www.saliltripathi.com/ (September 1, 2017), author profile.*
Salil Tripathi was born in Bombay, India. He is a contributing editor at Mint and at Caravan in India. He is currently Chair, PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee. In the UK, he was board member of English PEN from 2009 to 2013, and with novelist Kamila Shamsie, he co-chaired English PEN’s Writers-at-Risk Committee. In 2015, he received the Red Ink Award from the Mumbai Press Club for human rights journalism. November 2011, he won the third prize at the Bastiat Awards for Journalism about free societies, in New York. In 1994 in Hong Kong, he received one of the awards at the Citibank Pan Asia Journalism Awards for economic journalism. He was a correspondent in India from 1987 to 1990 and moved to Singapore (and later Hong Kong) from 1991 to 1999. He moved to London in 1999.
Salil has written for The Wall Street Journal, The International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, and The Philadelphia Inquirer in the United States; The Guardian, The Independent, The New Statesman, The Spectator, Prospect, and Index on Censorship in the United Kingdom; Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong; Global Asia in South Korea; The National in the United Arab Emirates; Shinchosha in Japan, and a few other publications. In India, he had been assistant editor at the Indian Post and senior correspondent at India Today.
He has been a senior visiting fellow for business and human rights at the Kennedy School, Harvard University, and is also an adviser to several global initiatives involving business and human rights. He studied at the New Era School in Bombay and graduated from Sydenham College at the University of Bombay. He later obtained his Masters in Business Administration from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College in the United States.
Offence: The Hindu Case, about the rise of Hindu nationalism and its implications on free expression, is his first book. His book on the Bangladesh War of Liberation, The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy published by the Aleph Book Company in late 2014 for the Indian subcontinent, will be published worldwide by Yale University Press in Spring 2016. Detours: Songs of the Open Road, his collection of travel writing is published by Tranquebar in December 2015.
Salil Tripathi
Senior Advisor, Global Issues, IHRB
salil.tripathi@ihrb.org
Expertise
Salil is a writer and policy adviser with experience in researching corporate activities in diverse environments and applying international human rights standards to identify human rights abuses and and working with all sectors and stakeholders to build accountability and advocate positive change.
Current Work
Salil works on human rights themes such as discrimination, protection of human rights defenders, and emerging issues for business and human rights. He is also engaged in researching potential impacts of investments in countries opening up for investment after a long period of political or economic isolation. He also conducts podcasts with human rights experts and practitioners, and writes commentaries. He has also worked on issues related to land, conflict, and the information and communication technologies.
Before IHRB
Salil was at Amnesty International (1999-2005) where he conducted research missions to Nigeria and Bosnia, and developed policies and thinking on complicity, privatisation, and corruption. He represented AI in the forming of the Global Compact, the Kimberley Process, and the Voluntary Principles for Security and Human Rights. At International Alert (2006-2008) he worked on projects in Colombia and was part of the team that developed the Red Flags Initiative. He is also an award-winning journalist and author of three works of non-fiction, and chairs PEN International's Writers-in-Prison Committee. Salil graduated with Masters in Business Administration from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and holds Bachelor of Commerce degree from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics in India.
Salil Tripathi
Chair - Writers-in-Prison Committee at International PEN
London, United Kingdom
Writing and Editing
Current
International PEN, Caravan magazine, Salil Tripathi
Previous
English PEN, Far Eastern Economic Review, ASIA, INC
Education
The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
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Summary
Widely Published in Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, FEER, New Statesman, Index on Censorship, Guardian, Independent, Spectator, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Newsweek, Salon, among others.
1997-1999 - Far Eastern Economic Review (Singapore). Economics correspondent. Wrote extensively from Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines. Covered the Asian economic crisis.
1993-1997 - Asia, Inc. (Singapore). Southeast Asia correspondent. Reported extensively from Asean states and south Asia. Winner, Citibank Award for economic journalism.
1991-1993 - Business Times (Singapore). Correspondent. Reported on India, South Africa, Middle East, SE Asia.
1988-1991 -- India Today (Bombay): Senior Correspondent. Reported from all over India. Covered the build-up of the 1990-91 Gulf Crisis from Jordan and the Gulf States. Cowrote award-winning cover story on the ban on Satanic Verses.
1987 - 1988 - Indian Post (Bombay). Assistant Editor, editorial page. Wrote a weekly column and managed the op-ed page.
1986-1987 - free lance writer - published widely in newspapers and magazines in India.
1983-1985 - MBA at Dartmounth College; Rotary International Graduate Scholar. Awarded the Dickey Endowment student award for intl understanding.
1979-1982 - B Com at Univ of Bombay. Tata scholar. Won the highest award for proficiency and character.
Specialties: Economics, Business, Politics, the Arts. Published in leading newspapers around the world.
Experience
Chair - Writers-in-Prison Committee
International PEN
October 2015 – Present (1 year 11 months)London, United Kingdom
Honorary position as chair of the organisation's writers-in-prison committee.
Caravan magazine
Contributing Editor
Caravan magazine
January 2010 – Present (7 years 8 months)
Written long-form narrative non-fiction features.
Author
Salil Tripathi
2009 – Present (8 years)
Offence: The Hindu Case (Seagull Books, Calcutta, and University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Aug 2009)
The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy (Aleph Book Company, 2014; Yale University Press, 2016)
Detour: Songs of the Open Road (Tranquebar Press, 2015)
Mint
Contributing Editor
Mint
February 2007 – Present (10 years 7 months)
Columnist at India's second-largest business daily. Write a fortnightly column, "Here, There, Everywhere." Also write a monthly travel column, "Detours". Also contribute other features, including book reviews and blogs.
Freelance writer
Various
April 1999 – Present (18 years 5 months)
Write for the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, Far Eastern Economic Review, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Guardian, Newsweek, Salon, the New Republic, the Washington Post, Index on Censorship, Tehelka, Mint, among others.
Co-Chair, Writers-at-Risk Commitee
English PEN
December 2010 – November 2013 (3 years)
Worked towards protecting the right of free expression, by campaigning for the release of writers in prison, and championing writers facing threats.
Regional economics correspondent
Far Eastern Economic Review
September 1997 – December 1998 (1 year 4 months)
Regional economics correspondent at Asia's premier weekly (circ: 80,000). Wrote extensively about the Asian economic crisis, including features on the collapse of the Indonesian economy and the fall of the Suharto regime; Malaysian capital controls and the economic crisis leading up to the removal of Anwar Ibrahim as finance minister; the shrinking of the Asian middle class; and investigated the role of the Asian Development Bank. Reported on the role of the International Monetary Fund, the corporate crises in Asia, conflict of interests at investment banks, and the businesses of Indonesian armed forces, or ABRI (now TNI). Also wrote stories from Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia.
Southeast Asia Correspondent
ASIA, INC
March 1993 – June 1997 (4 years 4 months)
Southeast Asia Correspondent at the region's premier business monthly (circ: 63,000). Reported on business and economic developments in Southeast Asia. Wrote about the Malaysian dominance of the Cambodian economy, the emergence of Vietnam as an investment destination, rising costs in Singapore, Asia's aging crisis, and other economic stories from ASEAN states, Australia and Japan. Conceived and executed a study on Asia's most competitive companies with Arthur D. Little, the management consultancy firm. Developed the ranking of Asia's top business schools. Awarded the Citibank Pan Asia Economic Journalism award in 1994.
Correspondent
Business Times (Singapore)
March 1991 – March 1993 (2 years 1 month)
Correspondent at Singapore's financial daily (circ: 30,000). Reported
extensively out of Southeast Asia, India and southern Africa, including reporting on events leading to the first post
India Today
Senior Correspondent
India Today
January 1988 – February 1991 (3 years 2 months)
Senior correspondent at India's leading magazine. Was the first Indian reporter on the Jordan-Iraq border in August 1990, covering the refugee crisis in Jordan following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Wrote from the Middle East and Indian state capitals on a wide range of issues, including politics, economics, sports, and the arts. Wrote the cover story on the Indian government's decision to ban Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, which won the Asia-Pacific Magazine Journalism Award in 1989.
Assistant Editor
The Indian Post
November 1986 – December 1987 (1 year 2 months)
at a newly set-up daily newspaper (circ. 20,000). Devised, designed,
and edited the op-ed page (including assigning columnists). Wrote a weekly column.
Consultant
Multinational Strategies, Inc.
September 1985 – October 1986 (1 year 2 months)
Wrote political risk consultancy reports on Asia and Southern Africa.
Fellow
United Nations Development Programme
June 1985 – September 1985 (4 months)
As John Sloan Dickey Fellow, wrote reports on appropriate technology in Africa, land-use planning in southern Africa, and animal husbandry in Afghanistan.
Languages
English
Gujarati
Marathi
Bengali
Hindi
Skills
PoliticsEconomicsBusinessJournalismEditorialEditingNewspaperStorytellingCopy EditingMagazinesBloggingNews WritingPublishingBooksFeature ArticlesSee 7+
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Education
The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
MBA, International Business and Economics
1983 – 1985
Awarded Masters of Business Administration degree. Specialized in international economics and business. Rotary International Graduate Scholar, 1983-1984.
Activities and Societies: Amnesty International, Not for Profit Club
Sydenham College, University of Bombay
Bachelor of Commerce degree. Specialized, economics
1979 – 1982
Awarded Bachelor of Commerce degree. Specialized in economics. Sir Dorab Tata Scholar, 1979-1982.
University Award for Proficiency and Character, 1980.
S. Khan Trophy for Outstanding Contribution to Extracurricular Activities, 1981.
Activities and Societies: Edited the college magazine and ran a popular students’ magazine. Member - Public Speaking and Debating Society, Literary Circle, Quiz Team, Dramatic Society.
New Era School
SSC, HSC, High School and Higher Secondary
1964 – 1978
Secondary School Certificate
Activities and Societies: Editor, Pratyancha; Member of school quiz team. Won several merit cards.
Honors & Awards
Red Ink Award for Journalism (Print) for Human Rights
Mumbai Press Club
May 2015
Volunteer Experience & Causes
Causes Salil cares about:
Arts and Culture
Civil Rights and Social Action
Disaster and Humanitarian Relief
Human Rights
Politics
Organizations
English PEN
Former board member
Starting February 2008
Projects
saliltripathi.com/about
Team members:
Salil Tripathi
T'85
Salil Tripathi
REGION
London, England
UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION
Sydenham College, Economics, 1982
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
Institute for Human Rights and Business; International Alert Peacebuilding Issue Program; Amnesty International; Dow Jones and Company
TUCK ACTIVITIES
Asia Business Association
Senior Adviser, Institute for Human Rights and Business; Chair, Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International
It’s in companies’ interest to take human rights risks seriously, not just the risks they face, but the risks they pose to communities.
Salil Tripathi T’85 became interested in human rights as a teenager in Bombay, when the government declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution for 21 months. “I was only 14, but I could see that things like liberty, human rights, and democracy really matter,” says Tripathi, who came to Tuck in 1983.
During his second winter in Hanover, on the night of Dec. 2-3, 1984, 27 tons of methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. More than half a million people were exposed to the lethal gas. The official death toll was 2,259, though some claim 10 times that number perished.
The tragedy caused Tripathi to think more deeply about companies and their impact on society, leading him into a human rights career. He knew that those in the shanties of Bhopal had no voice to demand safer facilities, and that many in the business community were not aware of the abysmal living conditions near some of their facilities. As a student of business, he recognized that the way to prevent similar disasters in the future must include dialogue with industry.
After Tuck, Tripathi returned to India and weighed two job offers. One was in the commercial banking division of Citibank. The other was as the opinion editor at a startup newspaper, writing about economics, politics, human rights, and culture. “I took the newspaper job,” he said.
Tripathi eventually moved to Singapore, where he worked at the Far Eastern Economic Review, covering the dizzying rise of the Asian Tiger economies and the devastating economic collapse of 1997. About that time, he answered an ad in The Economist seeking an executive to develop a human rights and business program at Amnesty International in London. The job presented a challenge, and an opportunity. There, Tripathi represented the organization in critical negotiations that created multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as a regulatory mechanism to eliminate conflict diamonds from international trade, and a set of principles to govern the conduct of security forces guarding extractive industries.
Later, the former Irish President Mary Robinson, who had also been the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, helped set up the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB), for which he was tapped, and where he is now a senior adviser. The institute is something of a matchmaker for strange bedfellows, bringing together such diverse interests as corporate compliance officers, human rights activists, and government agencies. The group promotes research in an under-studied area—the relationship between human rights and corporate performance and impacts.
Tripathi has been particularly active in Colombia, the Niger Delta, and Burma, each of which has been the site of longstanding conflicts between local people and industry. In such resource-rich conflict zones, “the short-term solution is to get SAS-trained private security people to protect the facilities and its perimeter with an iron hand. But human rights violations are inevitable, and at some point that creates a cycle of violence and work stoppages” that often lead to lawsuits against companies. “So it’s in companies’ interest to take human rights risks seriously, not just the risks they face, but the risks they pose to communities.”
The challenge for Tripathi’s organization is persuading business that the more expensive option is often the best in the long-term. “Measuring the human rights impact for the bad things that did not happen is almost impossible,” he says.
Though difficult to quantify, the value is obvious to those in the field. One of IHRB’s initiatives is the Myanmar Center For Responsible Business, which offers guidance to businesses investing in Burma to operate responsibly by respecting human rights. One of their early activities was to organize a series of meetings between locals, government, and business. At one such event, Tripathi recalls, “we had a prominent Burmese minister speaking and making promises. As the session was ending, an elderly man put his hand up [to ask a question]. He began speaking very haltingly in Burmese. And he went on for a very long time.”
After a few minutes another member of the panel sent Tripathi a note, asking if the old man could be told to make his point more quickly. It was hot and late in the day. Many important people from government, business, and civil society were there, some of them restless to leave. But Tripathi let the man speak. “This is what Burmese people have waited 60 years to do—to hold their leaders to account by asking questions. I didn’t want to interrupt that process.”
Salil Tripathi studied at The New Era School and Sydenham College in Bombay and got an MBA from Amos Tuck School, Dartmouth College, in the US. He has been a correspondent in India, Singapore and Hong Kong and his work has appeared in several publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, New Yorker, Guardian, India Today and Far Eastern Economic Review. His writing has won a Bastiat Prize and the Citibank Pan Asia Journalism Award. He is a contributing editor at Mint and Caravan. He lives in London.
Salil Tripathi
Salil Tripathi
Salil Tripathi is the author of Offense: The Hindu Case (Seagull, 2009), about Hindu nationalist attacks on free expression. He is a London-based writer currently writing two books. Former correspondent for Far Eastern Economic Review in Singapore, he has written for The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New Republic in the U.S., and is a columnist at Mint and contributing editor at Caravan in India. He has an M.B.A. from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College and is the chair of the Writers-in-Prison Committee at the English PEN.
All I’ve done is to listen and tell the stories faithfully: Salil Tripathi
August 17, 2015 by Zafar Anjum Leave a comment
By Zafar Anjum
Salil Tripathi
Salil Tripathi
Salil Tripathi was born in Bombay, India, and lives in London. He is a contributing editor at Mint and at Caravan in India. In the UK, he was board member of English PEN from 2009 to 2013, and co-chaired PEN’s Writers-at-Risk Committee. In May 2015, he received the Red Ink award from the Mumbai Press Club for human rights journalism. In November 2011, he won a Bastiat Award in New York, and in 1994 in Hong Kong, he received a Citibank Pan Asia Journalism Awards for economic journalism. Salil has written for major newspapers around the world.
He studied at the New Era School and later Sydenham College at the University of Bombay. In 1985 he obtained his Masters in Business Administration from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College in the United States. His books include Offence: The Hindu Case (Seagull, 2009), The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy (Aleph Book Company, 2014, and Yale University Press, 2016), and Detours: Songs of the Open Road (Westland, 2015). He is working on a book about Gujaratis. He has written several papers in academic journals and contributed chapters in books about business and human rights.
Initially, we approached him for a Lounge Chair interview where we ask ten questions. But this interview took on a life of its own and became a longer piece. So, we decided to run it as a Kitaab interview. Here it is:
Why do you write?
I write because I like telling stories. If you ask the girls and boys who went to school with me of their oldest memories of me, they will probably tell you how I would tell stories to the class during times when a teacher was absent, when coursework was complete and there was spare–free–time, or on days when it rained outside and we weren’t able to go to the grounds to play. There was one particular story which I began in my fifth grade and completed it sometime at the end of the seventh grade. No I don’t remember much of it, except that it dealt with an androgynous James Bond who sometimes fooled villains by calling himself “Maria Rosenberg”. Alas, I don’t remember much else!
But more seriously, I want to make sense of the world around us, and write about it clearly and simply, to understand the story, and to tell the story to others. If in the process it changes people’s minds, that would be great.
Tell us about your most recent book or writing project. What were you trying to say or achieve with it?
ColonelSo I’ve had a book published already, which came out last year–The Colonel Who Would Not Repent–about the Bangladesh War of Independence of 1971, which was published in South Asia by Aleph Book Company in Nov 2014, and will be published worldwide by Yale University Press in early 2016. It is a straightforward narrative about the Bangladesh struggle and its aftermath, leading up to the current war crimes tribunals. I was a schoolboy when the war took place; I have memories of it, and wanted to capture the story. It has been read in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and in each country, it has been well-received.
Towards the end of this year, Westland will publish by collection of travel writing, called Detours: Songs of the Open Road. It has 30 essays about places from all continents, and recounts my experiences. Too often we have read travelogues where foreigners come and look at India–or Asia–and write about it. This is, in a sense, an Indian – or Asian – looking back at the world, and writing his experiences. The book is divided into three parts–the first deals with armed conflict or places with divisive politics; the second deals with places that have inspired great fiction or art; and the third is rather personal, about the places I visited with my late wife Karuna and my sons, or after her passing, when I went back to those places with my sons. That part is a personal reflection of life and loss.
I’ve now started research on my next book, which is about Gujaratis. I am one; and I want to explore the meaning of being a Gujarati. It is perhaps too early for me to spell out what it will be. But I hope to be able to talk about it more in a few months. Aleph Book Company will publish it.
What was it about the Bangladesh War that captured your attention? How has it contributed to the ongoing tension between India and Pakistan?
I have vivid memories of the 1971 War. I was a schoolboy at that time in Bombay, and I remember reading newspaper headlines that spoke of the growing tension and crisis; I remember collecting funds for refugees; and if I look back with the hindsight of an adult, there was a rather clear moral narrative which appealed to me. In the elections, in East Pakistan, the Bengali-speaking people had voted for a particular government, and they were being denied the right to form the government by the governing elite in West Pakistan – the military and politicians of the Pakistan People’s Party, which thought it should have won the elections. But in a house of 300 seats, the PPP had only 81 seats; the Awami League had 160. And the Pakistani establishment responded by unleashing a massacre which soon turned into a reign of terror, full of crimes against humanity. If you are looking for good, clean narratives of international intervention for a good cause, this was it – India was justified in intervening when it did (in December after Pakistan attacked India), although the war and its outcome indeed suited Indian strategic interests. The conflict, and particularly Pakistan’s defeat and Bangladesh’s independence have certainly contributed to tensions between India and Pakistan, with a significant part of Pakistani establishment seeking some form of revenge. Pakistani people don’t share such a view necessarily, but the ruling establishment, cutting across party lines, seems to think that way.
How was the book received in Bangladesh and Pakistan? Were the reactions different? Have the Bangladeshis forgiven the Pakistanis and have the Pakistanis showed any regrets for their misdeeds committed by their soldiers in the former East Pakistan?
It has been very well received in all three countries that are important backdrops to the story – Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. And the positive response in Pakistan has been pleasantly surprising, and it gives me reason for hope. In Bangladesh, those who have read it carefully seem delighted that the book presents an overall historical perspective, and doesn’t make the mistake that many Indians make, of seeing the nine-month war of liberation as a two-week conflict between India and Pakistan, with Bangladesh’s independence as an afterthought. Some Bangladeshi readers do have specific issues with the way pre-Partition history is dealt, but that’s fair; they’ve grown up with a different perspective, and they should see their history differently. The important thing is that I see the origin in 1905, when Bengal was divided during colonial times, and I therefore see a continuity in the great question Bangladesh continues to face – is it Bengali or Muslim, or both, and if so, how? Many readers wrote saying they were deeply affected by the fact that I wrote about issues that were usually not spoken about openly in Bangaldesh, such as sexual violence. I’m grateful for thoughtful responses and feel honoured that many Bangladeshis see the book as valuable contribution in Bangladesh’s collective memory. All I’ve done is to listen and tell the stories faithfully.
I was particularly interested in responses in Pakistan, and I had gone to the Lahore Literature Festival, where I spoke about the book, and some in the audience were unhappy; one man walked out shouting loudly; some interrupted me and other speakers, and asked questions; but many more wanted to learn more about what was being done in their name by the Pakistani armed forces and the political leadership of that time. The fact that the response wasn’t hostile and monolithic, the fact that people have since written to me and shared their thoughts gives m reasons to hope that dreaming of another world is possible. Pakistanis too have been denied their own history; if my book helps raise some questions, it would have served some purpose.
Describe your writing aesthetic.
That’s a big word – it is what critics have to define! But as with many writers, the more I’ve written, the older I’ve become, the more important it is for me to write things more simply, and in a more accessible way. I do think the language matters. Being simple does not mean being boring. Hemingway is the master of beauty in simplicity. I also try to have a conversational tone–as if I’m in a constant conversation with an engaged reader, who may not have all the information, but who is intelligent and curious. I have written some unpublished fiction, and my approach is similar. I do like writing the occasional piece of satire, where it is possible, even necessary, to be clever. But like all delightful things, it is best done in small parts.
Who are your favourite authors?
Difficult question, again! But for fiction, I’d say Milan Kundera, Virginia Woolf, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Nadine Gordimer, Amitav Ghosh, Ernest Hemingway, Kamila Shamsie, and for short fiction, V.S. Pritchett, Raymond Carver, and Jhumpa Lahiri, and the poets Wendy Cope, Carol Ann Duffy, Ann Patchett, Ann Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Dom Moraes, Arun Kolatkar, Jibanananda Das, Suresh Joshi, and Robert Frost. I’m probably leaving out too many fine writers, and I’m being unfair to some of my friends by not naming them. For non-fiction it gets slightly complicated, because you end up naming authors whose views you might sympathise or agree with, but regardless, I’d unhesitatingly say Christopher Hitchens, Tony Judt, David Remnick, Nayantara Sahgal, Shobhaa De, Ramachandra Guha, and the early works of Arun Shourie.
What’s the most challenging piece of writing you’ve attempted? Tell us why.
In The Colonel Who Would Not Repent, there is a chapter where I write about birangonas, as the women who were sexually abused during the war are now called. It has easily been the most challenging piece of writing I’ve had to deal with. First, I am a man; second, I’m not a Bangladeshi; third, I’m not a native Bengali speaker, though I can speak it and understand it; fourth, the women were predominantly rural, from orthodox backgrounds; fifth, I was going to speak to them, offering nothing in return; and sixth, I had no ready answers for them about how they could get justice. And here I was, in a room with them, asking them extremely personal questions about their lives, and trying to record it faithfully and write about it. I’d urge readers to read that chapter, where I describe in some detail the metamorphosis I underwent, and how difficult it was for me to process that sensitive, painful experience. I managed it, and the only satisfaction I have is that scholars who have worked on the issue, as well as readers, have come back to me saying it is sensitively written and some felt they were haunted by it. I only wish the chapter could have a happier ending.
Another challenging project is that I’ve been working on a novel set in Singapore for a long time. I lived in Singapore from 1991 to 1999, and was struck by the idea of how the two communities–Indian and Chinese–related to one another over the past century. There has been fiction about Singapore, but usually written by outsiders–J.G. Farrell, Paul Theroux, Anthony Burgess, and Somerset Maugham– all of which tends to take the imperial view of looking at the place as an expatriate would, where the Chinese, Indian, and Malay communities have walk-on parts. I’ve been working on a novel that looks at the situation from the other perspective.
This is not to say there haven’t been fine novels by Singaporeans themselves–Philip Jeyaretnam, Gopal Baratham, Vivyanne Loh have all written interesting fiction, and Alfian Sa’at’s plays are relevant and fascinating.
I have a clear idea of Singapore of the 90s, since I lived there, and I’ve researched at length the story of the 40s, when it was occupied. I’m still learning and figuring out Singapore of the 60s, so that I know what happens to my characters during their middle age! It will be some time before I’ve figured everything out. It remains a daunting project.
What’s your idea of bliss?
Music, a nice glass of sauvignon blanc, cold temperature, a view of the mountains, a nice book in my hands, twilight hour, and contemplating what I’d cook later that evening – for my sons, if they are at home, or a friend who may be visiting.
What makes you angry, and I mean all-out-smash-the-china raving mad?
Bigotry. I do get really, really angry reading bigoted remarks by politicians, religious leaders, and other busybodies, who say things or pass laws that restrict personal freedoms. That, and the injustice that follows, and the violence which is an inevitable consequence, and our helplessness to do anything about it.
What book/s would you take with you on a three-month retreat in the boondocks?
This is never an easy question, so let me pick some books I’ve always meant to read and haven’t yet: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru, my friend Arshia Sattar’s translation of Ramayana, Cardus on Cricket by Neville Cardus, Flannery O’Connor’s The Complete Stories, and assuming that the boondocks has electricity, I’d take my Kindle and my charger, even if there’s no wi-fi, because it is full of at least a hundred books I am yet to read!
Your house is burning down. What’s the most important thing you’d want to take with you?
Assuming my sons (and any loved ones staying with me then) are already out of the house safely, it would probably be letters and photographs of my parents and my late wife.
Describe your life philosophy. In a sentence.
Life is short – it is unfair and still very lovely; carpe diem.
India's 1971 perspective decoded
(Jan. 16, 2015): Regional News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.
Byline: Jaideep Mazumdar
KOLKATA: Do Indians wonder why Bangladeshis are not grateful to India for liberating their country by defeating Pakistan in 1971?
Author Salil Tripathi and Bangladeshi author and publisher K Anis Ahmed looked for answers at the first session of the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Meet (AKLF) 2015 held at the Oxford Bookstore on Thursday. Ahmed, who publishes the daily 'Dhaka Tribune', was in conversation with Tripathi after the release of the latter's latest book - 'The Colonel Who Would Not Repent' - by author-publisher David Davidar.
Ahmed interpreted this paradox (to Indians) with an illustrative example. "We were publishing a book by an Indian author on the liberation and there was just one sticking point: a caption of the photo of surrender of the Pakistani troops at Dhaka describing the Indian general (Lt Gen JS Aurora) as the 'man who liberated Bangladesh'. We disagreed and said that it was Sheikh Mujibur Rehman who liberated Bangladesh. So the caption was changed and the General was described as the man who defeated the Pakistan army," recalled Ahmed. Tripathi added: "In that famous photograph, one can see Bangladesh's Air Commodore AK Khandker in one corner of the frame. He was the representative of the Bangladesh armed forces at the ceremony but was relegated to one corner. That's a sore point with many in Bangladesh".
"And what if Indian troops had not marched into (then) East Pakistan to help the Mukti Joddhas?" asked Ahmed. He agreed to Tripathi's reply that the Mukti Joddhas would not have been able to make it on their own. "The war would have dragged on much longer and may not have ended the way it ended," Tripathi said, adding that Indians are wrong to expect Bangladeshis to be eternally grateful for that help. "It is time to move on," he said.
Tripathi would seem to be an unlikely author of a book on Bangladesh's liberation. That is, till one hears him speak of his 'Bangla bond': "I have a genuine passion for Bangla culture, both of 'epar' and 'opar'. My mom used to imagine herself as a character from a Sarat Chandra novel and my dad studied Rabindrasangeet. I learnt Bangla to be able to watch Ray and Ghatak," he said. "I remember the 1971 war as a child. I staged a play to raise money for refugees from East Pakistan and took home-cooked food for Indian troops departing
from Mumbai for the warfront," he said, elaborating on his reasons for writing the book.
The book gets ringing endorsement from Ahmed, who spoke about how his country is torn between the contrasting visions of 1971 (the liberation that led to the birth of a secular Bangladesh) and 1975 (when Sheikh Mujib was assassinated).
For Reprint Rights: timescontent.com
Jaideep Mazumdar
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"India's 1971 perspective decoded." Times of India, 16 Jan. 2015. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA397498421&it=r&asid=bf3709b319560b9944de1616636e4e0f. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A397498421
Tripathi, Salil. The colonel who would not repent: the Bangladesh war and its unquiet legacy
A. Ahmad
54.2 (Oct. 2016): p264.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Tripathi, Salil. The colonel who would not repent: the Bangladesh war and its unquiet legacy. Yale, 2016. 382p bibl index afp ISBN 9780300218183 cloth, $37.50; ISBN 9780300221022 ebook, contact publisher for price
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Tripathi begins with Bangladesh's bloody birth as an independent state in 1971. That success was gained through much suffering, bravery, and commitment to some noble principles. However, the aftermath of that victory was not very heroic or comforting. The high ideals that had informed and energized the struggle were somehow compromised, and the country gradually slid toward corruption, instability (demonstrated by coups, assassinations, and temporary dictatorships), confusion about identity, a culture of impunity, and the politics of pettiness and short-term gains. Although the author uses multiple sources in telling that story (newspaper accounts, literary descriptions, academic monographs, and so on), his primary material remains his many personal conversations with both powerful and ordinary Bangladeshis. They bring immediacy and drama to the narrative, and the sheer range of the book's coverage, both in terms of the extensive period it spans and the variety of topics it explores, makes it quite comprehensive. But such reliance on individual interviews robs the book of scholarly gravitas, explanatory richness, or even intellectual focus. Nonetheless, in combining the instincts of a seasoned journalist with the flair of a natural raconteur, the author produces a work that is engaging, shrewd, and earnest. Summing Up: ** Recommended. All levels/ libraries.--A. Ahmad, Black Hills State University
Ahmad, A.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ahmad, A. "Tripathi, Salil. The colonel who would not repent: the Bangladesh war and its unquiet legacy." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Oct. 2016, p. 264. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479869035&it=r&asid=0e31966ce03246fa28d415b5125d9325. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479869035
The book that could have been thoughtful, but wasn't: Salil Tripathi is forcing words into his experience
LivingDilip D'SouzaFeb, 27 2016 08:53:11 IST
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For years, I’ve read Salil Tripathi’s articles with admiration for their freshness, forthrightness and insight. This is why I asked him, a year ago, to join a panel discussing my last book. I was moved by how closely he had read it and by his incisive comments about it. I’m calling on that reservoir of goodwill now, as I write this next sentence.
I wish he hadn’t written this book.
Or actually, I wish he hadn’t listened to the editor who suggested that instead of gathering together his travel columns, he should “write fresh essays about each place, crafting each essay around a theme or a writer, an artist, or an idea, who gave meaning to the place.” Because by less than halfway through this book, it’s clear: this injunction weighs on Tripathi’s writing like an albatross.
Songs of the Open Road by Salil Tripathi. Tranquebar Press
Songs of the Open Road by Salil Tripathi. Tranquebar Press
First though, some sprinkled gems that I savoured. Tripathi’s musing about the last days of that forever tragic figure, Bahadur Shah Zafar, is reflective and moving. Tripathi quotes Zafar — “I am not the light of anyone’s eye” — and that desolate spirit comes through. In the same chapter on Burma is this pointed remark about Aung San Suu Kyi: “The Princess herself has stayed remarkably silent, saying not a word to condemn the monks or the military, as the persecution of Rohingyas goes on.” Maybe the Princess wears less clothes than we thought. And in post-apartheid South Africa, he notes that a “collective amnesia is forced on the people”. I couldn’t help wondering about the fallout of such forcing, whether there or in India.
But then, that albatross… For every place Tripathi describes, he offers words from one or more writers. Often these are writers who belong to that place. This is fine as far as it goes — it is, after all, what that the editor suggested. But too often, it seems he is forcing the words onto his experience, seeking significance in every sentence he writes to match some other writer’s thoughts.
Thus descriptions that magically fit the excerpts. In Kenya, for example, Tripathi sits with friends, “aware only of the silence surrounding us.” By then, I was not surprised when his next sentence introduces an Isak Dinesen excerpt “about the meaning of silence”.
Thus water bodies. In Central Park, one “gleamed, reflecting the skyline”; in Stockholm, one “looked like someone had sprinkled liquid silver on its shuddering surface”; in Geneva, “it looked like diamonds were scattered on the lake’s surface”; the “Mediterranean’s water has that certain luminosity, which envelopes that sea”; and in Bangladesh, “the river dazzled, as if someone had lit a fire and millions of little lamps had come alive, twinkling like stars.” Besides, in Kenya, Amsterdam, Antibes, England and Norway, light has “clarity”.
Thus head-scratching sentences. “Wind rustles through the palm fronds — it sounds romantic to those who live there; a poet listens to the moans of the mother whose child was crushed by a Humvee” — where’d that Humvee come from?
And thus, perhaps, mistakes galore. Sadly, I do mean galore: grammar, spelling, tense, lines wrongly placed, contradictions, repeated words/ideas/devices. Even “disposed off”.
All for the sake of this pursuit of a travelogue informed by the erudition of great writers.
After a Stockholm cruise, Tripathi writes: “I wondered if loneliness got more acute here because others respected your desire to be alone”. Because we know that he went there soon after losing his wife, this is a telling, poignant and utterly wrenching observation. Familiar as I am with Tripathi’s writing, it also hints at the thoughtful book this could have been. Until that albatross intervened.
Published Date: Feb 27, 2016 08:53 am
Book Review: The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy by Salil Tripathi
In The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy, journalist Salil Tripathi revisits Bangladesh’s liberation war. As a young journalist, Tripathi encountered Farooq Rahman, the unrepentant colonel who played a pivotal role in the assassination of Bangladesh’s revered independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, but who was granted indemnity in the immediate aftermath. Farooq Rahman lived freely in Dhaka, even running for president, before his eventual execution by a war crimes tribunal in 2010. How, asks Tripathi, could Bangladesh’s independence leader be revered while his killers walked free? Why did it take so long to establish a war crimes tribunal? And how might Bangladesh ‘put its blood-soaked past behind without condoning the guilty’? Review by Paul Gilbert.
If you are interested in this book review, Martin Woolacott will be in conversation with Salil Tripathi as part of a South Asia Centre book discussion at 6.30pm on Monday 7 November 2016.
The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy. Salil Tripathi. Yale University Press. 2016.
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The Colonel Who Would Not Repent coverNotwithstanding the recent publication of Gary Bass’s The Blood Telegram or Nayanika Mookherjee’s The Spectral Wound, the story of the 1971 war through which Bangladesh (previously East Pakistan) achieved its independence has, Salil Tripathi notes, ‘remained largely untold’ (vii). This, of course, is only partially true. The story of 1971 is persistently told, re-told, remembered and memorialised within Bangladesh. The shohid minar (martyrs’ memorials) to be found in towns around the country recall those killed in the Language Movement of 1952, when police opened fire on students and activists demanding that Bengali be recognised, alongside Urdu, as an official language of Pakistan. Martyred Intellectuals Day is observed on 14 December – the date on which, in 1971, dozens of academics and professionals were dragged from their homes and killed, just two days before the Pakistan army surrendered in Dhaka. On 15 August, a national day of mourning (Jotiya Shok Dibosh) is held to mark Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination in 1975. The problem, perhaps, is not so much that the story of 1971 goes untold, but that the same few stories are most frequently told.
Tripathi’s book, The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy, also revisits a number of iconic figures and moments from 1971 whose biographies long ago became public property. Indeed, a number of the figures whose stories Tripathi tells also make an appearance in Sarmila Bose’s rightly controversial book Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War (2011). There is not much else to unite Bose and Tripathi, however. For Bose, the Bengali ‘uprising’ was ‘the violent xenophobic expression of a narrow ethno-linguistic “Bengali” nationalism’ (Bose, 26). But for Tripathi, the actions of Dhirendranath Datta – the Hindu politician who chose to remain in East Pakistan after partition before campaigning for the recognition of Bengali as an official language (and who figures in both books) – can only be understood in light of ‘the elemental hold of Bengali nationalism, where the love of the language and the culture it represents is larger than spiritual values shared with people of the same faith’ (38-39).
Both authors emphasise the need for a ‘thorough, unbiased study’ (315) and ‘well-researched […] non-partisan analysis’ (Bose, 5-6) of 1971. Neither, it seems, would identify such a study in the others’ work. But they are, perhaps, after different kinds of rigour. In her research, Bose clearly found the process of extracting ‘facts’ from ethically-charged acts of remembering to be a frustrating one: ‘straight questions about a person or event often produced answers that had nothing to do with the question’ (Bose, 7). (But see here for an overview of the various criticisms of Bose’s work in light of ‘sloppy research, faulty methodology, absent framing, and partisan interviews’.) Tripathi, however, might well side with Hayden White who argues that ‘[t]he conjuring of the past requires art as well as information’. Throughout The Colonel Who Would Not Repent, interviews and archival work are interwoven with references to Bengali poetry, the Baul tradition of Lalon Fakir, the novels of Tahmima Anam and Shaheen Akhtar, the films of Satyajit Ray and the poetry of Nazrul Islam, Rabindranath Tagore and Tarfia Faizullah.
The Colonel Who Would Not Repent imageImage Credit: Jatiyo Smriti Soudho (National Martyrs’ Memorial), Bangladesh (David Stanley CC BY 2.0)
Bose’s account of the Chuknagar massacre is stripped back to the acknowledgement that while ‘there is no doubt that a major massacre, targeted to kill adult Hindu males’ took place at Chuknagar on 20 May 1971, ‘[e]very other aspect of the Chuknagar killing, however, remains shrouded in uncertainty’ (Bose, 122). But for Tripathi, the story of Chuknagar is told primarily through Ershad Ali, who recalls seeing his friends – Hindu and Muslim – among the dead, fired upon by Pakistani troops. Ali had rescued a young girl, whom he named Sundari, from the arms of her dead mother, and placed her with a Hindu neighbour. Returning to Ali and Sundari in the concluding lines of The Colonel Who Would Not Repent, Tripathi finds both hope and solace in their relationship:
One man, one woman; one Hindu, one Muslim; they trusted one another, respected each other’s identity and faith. Neither was rich financially, but in a country torn apart by vicious bloodshed, Ershad Ali gave the most precious gift – of life – to an infant who would not have survived.
More than this though, for Tripathi ‘they personified the spirit of this land, about which Nazrul and Tagore wrote poems, whose spirit Lalon captured in his songs, which Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak there, and Tareque and Catherine Masud here, had filmed, and through which rivers from the mighty Himalaya flowed, blending in the Bay of Bengal. They made this land golden Bengal’ (335).
Tripathi joins those like Naeem Mohaiemen who have long worked against the ‘hegemonic and exclusionary nationalisms’ that Bose makes her questionable foil in Dead Reckoning. He is attentive to the non-inclusion of Chakma people in the 1952 Language Movement, the ongoing appropriation of Chakma lands in the wake of the 1996 Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accords and the continued consignment to camps of Biharis who happened to ‘speak the wrong language’ in 1971 (292). He is attentive to the devastating ironies of 1971, such as Datta’s house being reclaimed after the war as ‘enemy property’ (287). Tripathi, like many among Bangladesh’s educated secular elite, also seems concerned about the influence of Wahhabi Islam on migrant workers returning from the Gulf, and the rising influence of Jamaat-e-Islami. He speculates with his interviewees that the war crimes tribunal that handed death sentences to Colonel Farooq Rahman (and several Jamaat leaders accused of collaboration with Pakistan during 1971) may well have been ‘set up as an elaborate ruse to eliminate the Jamaat as a political force’ and shore up Sheikh Hasina Wazed’s position (311).
Ultimately, though, Tripathi is sceptical of the healing power of Bangladesh’s war tribunals. Running through The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is the conviction that ‘it is by turning to the tolerant strains of Islam, the inclusive and syncretic aspects of Hinduism, through the music of the Bauls, and the enlightened poetry of Tagore and Nazrul that Bangladesh can redeem the pledge and make Bangladesh truly Sonar Bangla [Golden Bengal]’ (286). At times it appears that Tripathi shares in the view taken by Mofidul Hoque, founder of the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka, that ‘Pakistan was Ben Anderson’s imagined community but Bangladesh was always a real nation’ (303). What is missing, perhaps, is the manner in which these ‘symbols of Bangali nationalism’ are being appropriated by Jamaat and other ‘new Islamists’ in novels and television serials that allow for the ‘configuration of new cultural aspirations for Bangali Muslims’, away from Tripathi’s secular-syncretic ideal. Equally, the new social and economic distinctions that have emerged as Bangladeshis struggle for (or profit from) transnational connection are conspicuous by their absence from Tripathi’s image of a timeless and golden Bengal/Bangladesh.
As David Lewis recently observed, internationally available literature on Bangladesh has until recently been filtered through a fairly narrow ‘development’ lens. Tripathi’s lyrical history of 1971 and its legacy is thus a welcome addition to the burgeoning body of work addressing Bangladesh’s independence struggle and its consequences for contemporary politics of nationhood. In addition, the fact that The Colonel Who Would not Repent deals with so many of the same cases, narratives and individuals that appear in Dead Reckoning makes it a useful companion – and corrective – to Bose’s markedly hostile account of the Bangladesh war. But equally, Tripathi’s focus on iconic individuals whose biographies have been absorbed into the history of the nation itself means that, for many Bangladeshis, the story of 1971 and its legacy still remains largely untold.
Paul Gilbert recently completed a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex. He is a Lecturer at the University of Brighton where he works in the School of Environment & Technology and the Centre for Research in Spatial, Environmental & Cultural Politics. Read more by Paul Gilbert.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics.