Pearson Edexcel GCSE History - Early Elizabethan England 1558-1588 - Challenges at Home and Abroad, 1569-1588

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How did this book begin? Great. So in terms of what this book is coming from, I'd go back to the years almost like a decade or so ago when I was a student at the University of Dhaka, and you can feel, I mean, the political energy and the political, not only the political energy, but also the kind of almost like the conflicting nationalism that kind of permeate. Not only the national discourse, but the political light at the university, and I guess that's what I would like to see this book to be emerging from. But however, from a scholarly standpoint, I mean, I, you know, that was kind of a general where I'm coming from, but from a scholarly standpoint, I guess the book is emerging from the conversations on the war. In 1971, that I'm talking about between, you know, either even see a war between Indian Pakistan, but also involving the Mukti Bahini or the liberation fighters. And the kind of scholarship that was emerging around 2010, 2010 to 2015, I can think of Shermila Boses dead reckoning and the books that followed and the kind of controversy that, and the controversy as well as curiosity that was that were there in terms of these scholarships that were emerging. When I started my graduates, sort of study in English, in my PhD in English at Michigan State University, I realized that there is no, no such book on literature as such as far as understanding the liberation was concerned. But I did in the process of engaging in this, not only in this book, but the kind of dissertation that I did is I brought back the questions of the partition and the, and the Pakistan era, which is from the 1947 to 1970 and 1971 is the year when like the two Pakistan separated right into this project. And eventually this project could become a book because the, the, the Asian studies series saw the potential of this becoming a book. So that's where eventually this book kind of came about the thing about this book is it is looking at works of fiction, but English and in translation to kind of study these three distinct what I call the historical junctures. And also the fact that literature allow you to see certain aspects of these conflicts and convertions is that I have been talking about that do not necessarily translate into like the world of politics sometimes the world of like you know like geopolitics whatever you want to call it. So that's where the book is coming from. Okay, great, thank you for laying out those very many themes let's, let's pars them out. So the first question I have, I think that the listeners might be interested in clarifying is what you're looking at what is your data, you know, what whereby do you consider arguing? Let's start there. Sure, my primary data in terms of what I look at are novels both, anglophone novels from the subcontinent encapsulating Indian Pakistanian Bangladeshi novels mostly very recent, you know, 20th century and 21st century novels, but also Bengali novels that are. Right, you know, that are somewhat neglected in world literary studies, especially Bengali novels from Bangladesh. So if these novels I read in each of the chapters I have six chapters in the book so in each of the chapters I bring into conversation two novels two novels for each of the chapters. So I have kind of 12 novels that I'm studying here, but in the process of studying this novels I also engage with other forms of outse media and historical documents, for example films, but also like you, you know, oral narratives, for example, especially narratives around the war, some of them are oral and some, you know, some are available like in digital format. So these are all my primary data around which I kind of bring in this argument that understanding Bangladesh requires us to kind of look into the complexities that emerge from these different historical notes. So that's how this data is kind of informing this idea that Bangladesh is not is not a monolithic concept, but is it is very much ingrained within their history to the 20th century history of the Indian subcontinent, but also the histories of, you know, of kind of the local histories that the book is investing in detail, investigating in detail. Okay, let's tease this out a little bit at a high level. So you have the textual world, the world within these these Anglophone pieces of literature you're studying, and then you have the world beyond the text you're studying these three historical junctures. So then how do they construe are you looking to the world within the text as eventing something about world beyond the text or vice versa, just say a bit more about that. So it's clear. So it's clear the extent to which your argument is about the literature or about the world beyond the literature or how they can through. Sure. What is what I do in all, you know, each of these chapters by engaging these works of fiction is I look at distinct historical real life events, for example, the first chapter is dealing with the 1947 partition as a concept. But then if we look at East Bengal, the question of partition is complex, one is partition is is in process, but then there are other questions that are around, for example, the questions of London labor, the question of a gradian struggle, but also this question of how Muslim nationalists would would convince the last part of rural, the gradient Bengali Muslims into this Pakistan project. So what I what the novels that I engage with, which is a carusamani lia says quab nama and shait lala kaisa shamshap tak, both the novels are now available in translation is to go into these novels and how they are kind of engaging with these real life events. And so in a sense, there is this conversation between reality, politics, life, life walls and so on and so forth, but also the fictionalization of those real life events in these novels. So I give this as an example of how this book proceeds and each of these chapters in the book are doing the same thing for and again, like I can, you know, the second chapter is dealing with like minoritization of the Hindus in East Pakistan, East Bengal, the third chapter is dealing with the 1960s where you know, we see politics being very explosive. The fourth chapter is kind of dealing with gender violence, the fifth chapter is dealing with. like the Indian conceptualization or perceptions around the war. And the last chapter is dealing with this conflict that kind of brings the distinct Bangladesh and Pakistan narratives around the world on the table. Yeah, so thank you for also touching on the chapters and some of the content. We'll circle back in a moment to the main argument. What I think is certainly worth noting and underlining it even before we get to the findings is this intriguing stance that looks at the interplay between the two-trinity ideology. And rather than I think it's fascinating, right? We're looking at imagine the story world. We're looking at a narrative story world to to illumine the world's behind the text. And often it might be the other way around. I mean, I'm not at all critiqued. My role on this podcast is not to critique. I'm not doing so at all. But I'm saying is the very stance is intriguing that we are looking to imagine works of literature. And we are sort of cracking the coconut and deriving sort of historical reality in printable within the text. I think that very method is intriguing. It's novel. I'm not sure if you'd consider typical or atypical in your particular niche, but I find it quite fascinating as a method. Awesome. I can talk a little bit about the method which I am calling culturally imaginary, which is the concept around which these texts are talking to one another again. I kind of talked about the chapters and how each of the chapters are engaging with two novels each. But then there is this broader story being told. Like I said, I mean, the Bangladesh story is such that it cannot be encapsulated or it cannot be contained very easily. There is this fluidity to this concept. And therefore, what the method is doing is that it is showing that all these literary figures whether it is the Bengali writers writing in the vernacular or it is the anglophone writers, people like Salman, Rojdi, Rohinton, Mystery, but also like emerging Bangladeshy writers like Ziahadra Man, they are all looking at this fluidity from different perspectives. So in a sense, while like I said like the chapter one deals with the partition and chapter six deals with the Bangladeshian Pakistani reactions, sort of the aftermath of the war, there are connections to all of these chapters. So what culturally imaginary as a method is doing is it is bringing all these stories, letting these stories talk to each other, being maybe in conflict with each other as well as they kind of try to tell the Bangladesh story because as Nayanika Mukherjee in her book has said that Bangladesh story is like the word that she uses is a Bengali word Malay, itihash means so many different histories. So histories basically jossal. So in that sense, these writers are letting this histories kind of talk to each other, jossal put them into conflict with one another as at times as well so that we can kind of try to figure out what this Bangladesh thing is all about because eventually it is not about the nation as such but it is also about the Indian continent and it's kind of its place in the world. So narrative not quite quite sort of historical archive but narrative as an archive of the imaginary of the cultural movement of the experience of certain minority or subaltern groups. Yeah, I find that really fascinating and then I start thinking about what elements of that apply or don't apply to, to sort of classical texts that are obviously works of extra, for example, the epics, works of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, rate of genius, but also, very much, probably encoding, culturally imaginaries that can be excavated. So that's sort of a teeny bit of a nerdy aside to sort of where my mind goes. But anyways, now that we've sort of ironed out, you know, what you're looking at and how you're looking at the approach, you've mentioned in passing the various themes in the chapters, perhaps we can light on what would you view as the crime intervention of the book. What do you call the book accomplishers, sort of for, for this, for this field? The books, the way I see the book's prime intervention to be is to sort of bring alive the NTT East Pakistan. So what in the process, what I do in terms of my field, which is literary studies, you know, in post, or, you know, postcolonial literary studies, people have not actually looked into this idea or this phenomenon or this NTT East Pakistan in much detail as this book does. But what it does in the process is, you know, looking at East Pakistan from a literary angle, in particular, is it allows me to kind of be in conversation with scholars from other disciplines, whether it be political science, history, degeneracy, and so on and so forth. So in the process, it kind of lets sort of literary studies, allows literary studies to know more about East Pakistan as an entity and how that helps us understand these junctions between 1947 partition around which the scholarship is plenty, but then the perspectives are mostly Indian and Pakistani perspective. So you get a different perspective to what happens in this part, you know, the Eastern wing of Pakistan or in East Bengal, as the book does so, it also can do brings East Pakistan to life and allows us to see the entity beyond like, you know, like I said, in political science, they probably would be more interested in looking at, you know, the conflict between the East Pakistan politicians, Bengal in nationalism and the West Pakistan establishment, but the book does deeper beyond that kind of general understanding of, you know, a conflict and looks at like how people's lives are formed around different kind of ideas and concepts and even cultural notions. For example, in chapter two, I have a character named Shanto from Dilrubazadara's novel blame where, you know, he is from the Hindu minority, but then he, you know, through the process of this, you know, political kind of awakening, Shanto rediscoveres his cultural significance in East Pakistan and kind of sort of real lines his minority status to kind of Bengali nationalism's ability to then voice Shanto's concern into a broader political project. So in a sense, it kind of goes beyond those, you know, those broader political kind of understanding of East Pakistan's kind of dismemberment and looks at people's lives and so that I would say is what, you know, all of these chapters that I'm taking to do. What and it may be impossible to choose, but what might be your favorite or some of your favorite or pieces of literature or pieces that you find the most remarkable in so far as being compelling towards your artis. Sure. I guess in terms of the words of fiction that I have engaged in or engaged with in this book, I'd say like in the two novels in the first chapter, "Quaab Nama" and "Shang Shab Tav" both are very interesting because these are vernacular novels in translation and not very well known to the sort of world, sort of readers of world literature, but then they're doing so much at the same time, they're bringing in this broader saga onto the table. But then there is also "Jahadar Amans novel" in the light of what we know and Salman was this Midnight Shroudan because my engagement with Midnight Shroudan was fascinating because Midnight Shroudan can be or has generally been seen as a story of Indian kind of emergence into nationhood, India's kind of maturity into kind of this nation that is not only an economic power but also cultural power in the subcontinent, but what Midnight Shroudan does is it's engagement with the ban of this war. or it has allowed me to kind of look into the Indian problems that the novel deals with, but how that then situates the war and the Bangladesh problem within that story of the Indian nationality, I'll let you know, we say. So you know, all these works, I mean that I've worked for a very sustained period of time on all these literary works that I engaged with in this book. But then I mentioned a few of these texts, but you know, all in all, all these texts I felt were letting me to kind of explore a very compelling story of Bangladesh's emergence. You look at both English works as well as sorry, you've been going in the English novels in tandem. And you perhaps generalize on what, I mean, do you see sort of, are there certain things you might see in one or not the other vice versa, or is it just a question of language medium and language medium alone? Look, that's a very important question in terms of what differences that are evade sort of around in terms of what an English novel is doing and what a ping-pong on a novel is doing. In terms of the English novels, they, while they're very interesting, they are not actually addressing some of the very nuanced local events that the Bengali novels or the Bengali texts are bringing on the table. For example, I talked about the Egrarian movement. So in the first chapter, I discussed and detailed the present movement called the Tevada movement that Ilias' Quabnama discusses in BKL. So in an English novel, for example, those very particular local events, do they have immense historical significance? Are not addressed because the English novels have to travel, like, you know, in the process of their traveling to the metropolitan leadership, they highlight certain stories that are not necessarily relevant to the Bengali novels, for example. So that I see to be very interesting. And so putting them in conversation with one another helps me to kind of bring all the stories that I feel, help me to tell the story that I'm trying to tell onto the table. So it seems to be the case that the Bangladesh is very much at the center of much that the field cares about whether it's partition language, you know, secularism, liberation. You know, it seems to be a significant nexus. So then why would you say it's been somewhat invisible in both colonial and literary studies? Clearly, one of the key aims of not the primary aim of your book is visibility. It's a strong attention to something that has been either too relatively a noticed in scholarship. So to what would you attribute that on the site? So the reason I am saying that the story of Bangladesh is invisible in post-colonial literary studies is simply because in terms of the complexities that it offers perhaps to better understand not only contemporary South Asia, but the South Asian history in the 20th century and 21st century is the fractures and the kind of convergences that the Bangladesh even brings onto the table. I mean, take for example, the big ol' muslim support for Pakistan. This is something that, you know, in partition scholarship in general has not been seen in its complexity in terms of why that happened, why did they support the Pakistan movement, but also how did they kind of sort of, you know, created a new form of nationalism that was not necessarily built around muslim nationalism that was the premise around which East Bengal became part of Pakistan. So that complexity is something that I bring in, which I think literary studies have, you know, post-colonial literary studies have not studied in much more detail. So this is just one example, but again, the war itself, the 1971 war has so many different narratives around it. From the Indian perspective, it is India's sort of triumphs over its arch enemy, Pakistan. For Pakistan, it's a loss, but then it's a betrayal of the Bengalis, right? Because did not see it as like the Bengalis do, like it's a triumphant story for the Bengalis. So all these different stories when they are put together as this book does, that brings additional complexity in terms of how literature has generally understood an event such as these, like the Banaleshwar. I mean, I give the example of Salman Ruhti's Midnight Shrutan. In Midnight Shrutan, the war is invoked, but it's still marginal in comparison to the broader Indian story that kind of is pushed till the emergency, 1975 emergency in India. So again, so in a sense, the story allows post-colonial literary studies to see the many complexities that the Indians have continent kind of has to offer to the field, to the discipline. Thank you. I just want to bring one of these core ideas into maybe a bit more sharper focus. So you mentioned the 1971 war, the study in your book. What can a novel tell us about that the actual historical archive cannot? So in terms of novels engaging with the events such as the 1971 war, what I see it do sort of it offering as opposed to a historical archive is the complexity that it brings in to any particular event that it is covering. It could, for example, like the very story of Bengali nationalism, for example. So within the sort of, you know, in a historical archive, I mean, the historian has to either sort of contend with one version of the story or the other because there are, like I said, competing stories around an event such as Bengali nationalism's contribution to the liberation war. I mean, how that kind of precipitated the crises and how that kind of, you know, has a role to play in the outcome of the war as well. So what Littri text does is that it allows us to see the different fives of a single story. I will give the example of chapter four where I engage this novel called the Lash, the search by Bengali feminist writer Shahinakta. So the novel is dealing with gendered violence in the war and like I said, you know, gender studies, scholars have discussed this in detail. So while the novel is engaging with the spectra of gendered violence, it is also taking Bengali nationalism as much as it can or it could because it is showing that while Bengali nationalism has been very significant in the outcome of the war, it had its kind of, you know, it's dark elements. So to speak, because if we talk about the contemporary kind of, you know, we bring us to, I shouldn't see that the inheritors of Bengali nationalism had a sort of a political fall in Bangladesh in 2024. So what does that, what does the novel suggest is that while nationalism played a big role in the outcome, in the sense of how Bhai Bhai Sankh's dismemberment has had to play a big role in it, it kind of suppressed other stories. For example, the leftist struggle and past participation in the agitation. So literature allows those stories to be, as opposed to say, like I said, in a historical archive, one might be tempted to tell one version of the story more prominently, but then there are other versions that literary texts did allow me to kind of engage with. But having said that, I mean, then I have to bring that literature in conversation with historical texts, with scholarships in history so that I can, I can build a narrative, I can kind of create, I can sort of evaluate the two in tandem. What do you hope that the future of this would be, or maybe more concrete really, what next? What's the next project? So for me, like what I, the book, I think, is going to be, I think, a little bit more. allowed me to kind of broadly look into this, not only to this kind of literary kind of text that you know that tells a very complex story but it also allowed me to kind of think through other events that I needed to look into. For example right now I have started to work on the 19th century because what I see 19th century has to offer is that the story of 19th century Bengal has largely been told from the lens of the Bengal Renaissance but then the story gets very complex in as we move to the 20th century because I you know I talked about the Bengal in muslim support for the Pakistan movement and so on and so forth but then late into the 19th century we see the emergence of the gradual emergence of the Bengal muslim middle class literature around it in particular and so that's where I am putting my effort into to kind of study that you know you know I'd say like a couple of decades into the 1980s to you know early 20th century to look into how what happened in the 20th century that the story that this book is telling some of its mysteries might be you know might might become much more clearer to us if we look back into the 19th century where there are identity be identities being formed beyond the Bengal Renaissance what they had to bring in on the table in terms of this larger question of Bengal's partition and it's afterwards. Is there anything else about the book in particular the project in general that you like to touch on? Yeah sure I mean I would love to talk about I think in terms of what I in terms of doing this book or writing this book what I haven't been able to perhaps address for example while I kind of mentioned that the literature are telling a particular story around the you know this this many stories that are available and one has to kind of contend with the certain you know you know certain stories that make made this book happen to kind of bring alive the historical junctures but you know one could have I could have kind of engaged with the filmic narratives which would perhaps give us a much more a detail into the kind of the violence that occurred in 1971 because while I have two complete chapters chapter five and chapter chapter six dealing with you know the dealing with this conflict in 1971 I believe there this this story is so vast that I could have engaged other text as well for example life writing as well like people people's memoirs I mean that could have given kind of a different sense to what liberation will meant to many different people so there is something that I thought did you know this line beyond the book as well great well thank you very much for being on the podcast today awesome thank you for those of us think we've been speaking a doctor or civic ball on Bangladesh and Anglophone and vernacular literature until next time keep well keep reading and keep contemplating the ways in which works of imagination might actually eluminate the real world by now