The most dominating image we have is that of the 1971 intellectual as a dead body martyred by killer supporters of Pakistan. The renderings are therefore that of being killed as an act of revenge after the war was over. However, the intellectuals were targeted by the Pakistanis on March 25 as well when university halls were attacked and several were killed.

Rather than focus on what was their perceived crime in the eyes of the Pakistan army and their local followers, the intellectuals have been boxed into becoming victims of cruelty thereby limiting their persona. They have been made a part of a war and not necessarily the history they helped to birth. They are in fact no longer intellectuals in a strict sense in the imaginings of the war but primarily war victims. At one level it puts them on the same plane as all war victims. At another level it denies them the role they played in shaping history: as producer of ideas and not just as martyrs.

Between the intellectual and the soldier
At another level, we have the intellectual as the participant of the war, as thought soldiers of 1971. If one takes the Orwellian description of thought as a producer of anarchy to a point, one can extend the identity of the thinkers as thought soldiers. That is partisans whose thoughts are at the use of war. This challenges conventional descriptions of intellectuals and warriors. Are both easy to co-exist. Where does an intellectual end and a soldier begin? Does an intellectual remain one once he grabs a gun or upholds the idea ?

There were people in 1971 who were killed because people against them thought that they had “infected” the population with their thoughts and ideas. These intellectuals were no less guilty than a soldier who fires at them. Killing them was their responsibility. More than revenge it was an act of soldiering. In 1971, killing unarmed non-combatants was common. It was a form of thinking that was introduced and quickly became popular.

But the ire of the Pakistan establishment was that the intellectuals had successfully argued for a cause and made it popular. Nationalism was given a logical platform and by attacking the main sources of that nationalism, that is the intellectuals, they were attacking the idea itself.

However, the ideas are no longer in the discourse making the possibility of imagining the intellectuals as anything beyond dead patriots difficult. Perhaps once they stood for war that became the dominant identifier denying them any other role. Such is the power of war that it has only allowed soldiers to crawl into the frame. Before they become intellectuals, they have to become soldiers of sorts.

Of emotions versus intellectuality
This nationalist war is also imagined as an emotional outburst against injustices and in the end the war becomes a rallying cry of injured sentiments. This always results in a high degree of emotionally charged narratives of pain and heroism. An intellectual analysis becomes irrelevant when arguments are tested by emotions. This may be inevitable in case of various legacies of a war that has been built primarily on emotional foundations. Curiously, while the imaginations of nationalism were built by intellectuals by arguing without emotions on the narratives of injustice, the remembrances of the final production of that war is fundamentally built around non-logical perusal. Hence, 1971 has become a source of emotional outpourings rather than a description of an argumentative process.

Recently, one of the scholars of that nationalist brigade wrote a book describing the arguments of injustice but found to his great pain that it had few takers. Few were interested in an intellectual exercise where the injustices could be put in a conceptual frame. While one sympathizes and deeply regrets such a lost opportunity for the readers, one must also note that the foundation of that history was never tested with intellectual tools. 1971 has become one-dimensional where patriotism is the proof of the truth about facts. There can only be endorsement of the historical cannon. Once society also accepts this, we are left with a lack of intellectual space. That creates its own beasts and beings and history and society are both constructed with what they have to offer.

Death of dissent?
1971 has therefore become a foundationalist's dream. It has become somewhat akin to the construction of Pakistani history between 1947 and 1971 where disagreement with the mainstream was equal to treason.

Our intellectuals, whose representatives were killed in the last days of the war because the Pakistanis probably realized that it's their ideas that had brought about the end of Pakistan as we understood it then were primarily dissenters. They disagreed with the fundamental concerns, cannon and arguments of the Pakistani establishment. That was the beginning. However, in our rush to pay homage, we may have glimpsed only one part of them, the part that paid the price for choosing a side. The part that dealt with their mind seems to be forgotten because on matters concerning 1971 we are yet to reach that point from where it can be observed as part of an intellectual journey.

Afsan Chowdhury is a freelance senior journalist.