History of violence leads to awkward silence
DU VC tells workshop
Staff Correspondent
The world is full of violence, domination, internal conflict and human rights violation in this century and it is important to process and negotiate the memories of violence among the countries, said Vice- chancellor of Dhaka University (DU) Prof SMA Faiz yesterday.In some circumstances, a painful history of violence and conflict leads to awkward silences and collective amnesia and so it needs to share how different societies process traumatic memories of conflict and violence, he added. Prof Faiz was speaking at the inaugural session of a three-day workshop on 'Memory and Amnesia in the South: How Societies Process traumatic Memories of Violence and Conflict' at Brac Centre in the city. Department of International Relations of Dhaka University and the South-South Exchange Programme for Research on the History of Development (SEPHIS) have jointly organised the workshop. The main purpose of the international workshop is to share how different societies experience violence, how they learn from it and how representations of the past influence current behaviour and policies. In the first working session presided over by Prof Van Schendel, Florencia Paula Levin of Buenos Aires University and Amrapali Basumatary of Delhi University presented two papers. In her paper, Paula observed how the history of violence that Argentina experienced in recent past has been interpreted in a hegemonic way while Basumatary presented a feminist interpretation of history of Bodo movement in North East India showing the process of marginalisation of women's experience in the interpretation of history of Bodo movement. In the second session, Dr Imtiaz Ahmed of Dhaka University presented a paper focusing on historicising of the 1971 genocide in the country while Farooq Sobhan Dar of Quaid-I-Azam University of Pakistan presented a paper titled ' Impact of Communal Riots in the Punjab on the Memories of the People of the Province'. In the last session of the day, Sean Field of Cape Town University in his paper discussed the memories of Rwandan refugees in post-apartheid Cape Town while Mahbubur Rahman of Rajshahi University narrated in his paper the difficulties and challenges of reconstructing memories of the liberation war at the local level by taking the case of Gaibandha district as an example. Chairperson of Department of International Relations Dr Amena Mohsin and Prof Akmal Hossain also addressed the workshop. Dr Hamida Hossain, Dr Niaz Zaman, Dr Harun- or- Rashid and Prof BK Jahangir were present on the occasion.
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