Of Martyrs and Marigolds: Intersection of Memoir and Fiction in Articulating Trauma and Contested History
Abstract:
The Partition of 1947 resulted in wide scale migration of Urdu-speaking Muslims
from India to East Pakistan. Although initially welcomed as muhajirs, the
hospitality for Urdu-speaking migrants was short lived in the eastern wing of
Pakistan because of their perceived closeness to the West Pakistani government.
The war of 1971 found a section of the migrants pledging support to the West
Pakistani army, which resulted in post-war hostility against the entire community.
Their predicament was such that they were denied citizenship by both Bangladesh
and Pakistan. The narrative of displacement and dispossession of the Urduspeaking
minority does not fit into the dominant discourse about the war, and the
predicament of this internally displaced population has been largely neglected in
academia.
This paper studies the gap between statist memory and individual memory
through a close reading of Aquila Ismail’s 2011 novel Of Martyrs and Marigolds.
Interrogating the dominant narrative of the 1971 war and liberation warriors, this
paper demonstrates how Ismail’s novel makes space for silenced memories of the
subaltern. It analyses how trauma is negotiated through fiction to be transformed
into a narrative memory that can be communicated with others. Raising questions
about the target audience, it also attempts to understand the impetus behind writing
such a narrative several decades after the events of the war. Drawing upon the long
and troubled relationship between Bengali and Urdu in Bangladesh, it emphasises
the intrinsic relationship between language and identity. It also argues that the
hybrid genre of the novel, incorporating characteristics of memoir with fiction, is
an apt medium for articulating traumatic memories. In addition, the paper
interrogates some of the ambiguous silences and fissures in the novel itself,
thereby opening discussions on the position taken by the author.
Readers can download the Abstract and the Article clicking following buttons: