War, Violence and Memory was a conference many looked forward to. It seemed only fitting that we reflect upon the 1971 War and the events that led up to it in the year Bangladesh celebrates its 50th year since independence. What wasn’t fitting was how the event had to be canceled due to “unavoidable circumstances”, as Dr. Ali Khan put it. The purpose of this article, so to say, is to assess what exactly these unavoidable circumstances were, and to talk about the problems they pose.
Many individuals and groups took to Twitter and other public platforms to voice out their concerns against the conference and its organizers. Often enough, the reasons they cited for their disapproval and admonishment were borderline laughable. Journalist Ejaz Haider, for instance, was of the opinion that LUMS should be focused more on talking about the Indian treatment of minorities and Indian-Occupied Kashmir. He falls under the oft misguided group of people that feel this constant need to divert attention from our own nation’s flaws and history. Instead, to say that “we are much better than India!” becomes their mantra, and that in itself is problematic for a slew of reasons.
Another concern raised was that of the day this conference was supposed to commence. The 23rd of March, Pakistan Day, the day the Lahore Resolution was passed. A fairly important day for us, where we remember the struggles that led to the creation of our great nation. Somehow, however, remembering and assessing our failures on the same day is seen as a travesty. Therefore, many took to Twitter with their nationalist sentiments, condemning LUMS and its organizers for violating the sanctity of Pakistan Day. The five-day event had an expansive range of talks that included concerns of gender, religion, the politics of forgetting, resettlement of Biharis in Punjab, the politics of evidence, and so on, with Dr. Usman Ali Qasmi reaffirming the academic nature of the event. And yet, we found ourselves in a situation that stifled our academic thought and freedom of speech to preserve a façade of Pakistan’s perfect image. Public pressure and alleged threats of violent protests made it so that what may have been a pertinent and fruitful discourse had to be put to rest.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time we’ve seen this happen, both at LUMS and elsewhere. The inability to reconcile with our shortcomings as a nation and to allow minorities to have a voice are phenomenon that continue to stifle academic thought. The Unsilencing Balochistan event which was supposed to be hosted by LUMS in 2015, aiming to “learn about the history, complications, human rights abuses, and the struggle for justice that has been going on in Balochistan” was abruptly canceled for the same reasons. Balochistan, and the treatment of its people, has been a longstanding subject of controversy, and yet we find this deep-seated reluctance to bring this topic under discussion, or to allow discourse on the matter in an academic setting. The case of Atif Mian, who was first removed from the Economic Advisory Council and then had his lecture at IBA on Pakistan’s economic crisis canceled, also comes to mind here. Yet again there were alleged threats of violent protests, first on the basis of his Ahmaddiya faith and then, quite possibly, because of the subject matter of the lecture itself.
Suffice to say that if we, as a people, continue to stifle discourse over these so-called controversial topics and cave in to public pressure and threats, we won’t be able to progress as a nation. Not allowing ourselves to question our shortcomings as a people, both in how we treat our minorities and how quick we are to suggest that we are any better than India, will inevitably trap us in an illusion of misguided perfection. How long, dear reader, can we hold out like this?