This dissertation intervenes in the fields of South Asian Masculinity Studies, Affect Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Feminist Cultural Studies, and Trauma as well as Memory Studies. The focus of this project is on the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, a nine-month long war between East Pakistan and West Pakistan, which started on 26 March 1971 and ended on 16 December 1971 with Bangladesh, former East Pakistan, emerging as an independent nation. I concentrate on East Pakistani/Bangladeshi muktijoddhas (freedom fighters) who fought in the war, and birangonas (survivors of sexual violence) who were abducted by military officials and their collaborators. Drawing on political speeches, parliamentary debates, press statements, and governmental news reports, I examine how these sources create a narrative of the manly muktijoddha who demonstrates his masculinity through exhibiting courage and disavowing his pain. I further analyze memoirs by freedom fighters who complicate this image of the courageous muktijoddha through recollecting moments of pain and fear during combat. Significant to my analysis are also survivor testimonies of gender, physical, and sexual violence of wartime women in East Pakistan/Bangladesh, which oppose a more singular nationalist rhetoric of the 1971 war that celebrates the male muktijoddha while marginalizing women’s experiences. I delve into how birangona testimonies narrate the women’s trauma of sexual violence and of witnessing their daughters’ abuse by wartime soldiers. In analyzing women’s stories, I highlight the importance of listening to the voices of birangona-mas (survivors who are also mothers), and thereby question the nationalist mythologizing of the muktijoddha’s mother who sends her son to war. In exploring the muktijoddha, the muktijoddha’s mother, and the birangona/birangona-ma, I argue that there are multiple alternative readings of the war that are suppressed by nationalist discourse, which warrant recognition within Liberation War and South Asian history. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / My dissertation focuses on the Bangladesh Liberation War that took place between East Pakistan and West Pakistan from 26 March 1971 till 16 December 1971. This war led to the independence of Bangladesh, former East Pakistan. During the war, Bangladeshi governmental documents and nationalist speeches portrayed the East Pakistani/Bangladeshi freedom fighter or muktijoddha as an ideal masculine figure who fought against West Pakistani soldiers with courage. I analyze memoirs by freedom fighters who show how they both conform to, and disrupt the nationalist portrayal of the courageous muktijoddha. I also examine personal recollections of birangonas (women survivors of sexual violence) who speak of their trauma, reveal narratives of their daughter’s abuse by soldiers and their collaborators, and provide a reading of the wartime woman that challenges the nation’s vested interest in the ideal male muktijoddha. Overall, my project encourages people to rethink the Liberation War from the perspectives of wartime men and women survivors who have witnessed violence and mutilation firsthand.

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