Friday, March 12, 2010

Healing invisible wounds

"The people who say - those who go away will return - tell lies." 
Waris Shah (Sufi Poet) 

Noor is a beautifully crafted political novel by Pakistani-Dutch writer Sorayya Khan. Khan paints the pictures of the horrors of 1971 civil war between East and West Pakistan, in which about three million people died. As a result of that war, Bangladesh was created, with the Indian army acting as a scalpel. In Bangladesh, almost everyone has a relative or friend who was consumed by the war. Thousands of Pakistani Bengalis were victims of the atrocities of the West Pakistani army, which included rape and horrific killings.

The reasons for the Bengali conflicts with West Pakistan were convoluted. Initially, West Pakistan treated East Pakistan as a colony and never granted it its deserved status as the second half of the Pakistan body. In addition, cultural tensions, language rights and economic and political disparities widened the mistrust. Eventually, momentum took hold of Sheikh Mujib's political Bengali separatist movement, which provoked the Pakistani army to retaliate.

Full report here Asia Times

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