The Bangladesh Genocide is arguably the worst in recent history due to its high death count, state-sponsored massacres, societal treatment of the victims, and the long lasting effects. In 1971, Pakistan was one country split into two regions, the leftist East Pakistan vying for their own rights and the right-wing West fighting for their own ideals. The government of the West Pakistan passed harsh laws that conflicted with East Pakistan ideas, leading to the formation of the Awami League, which would evolve into a nationalist party. The West would eventually campaign for the genocide of the Eastern people of Pakistan which would come to be known as Operation Searchlight that would last from March 25, 1971 until its official end in December 16, …show more content…
The first night, the dormitories had been the primary targets. It was reported on March 30 that the Pakistani military lead the troops with “American supplied M-24 World War II tanks” and set up a fire base within the campus of Dhaka University to shell the dormitories in the surrounding area (Ahmed). Death squads walked the streets of Dacca and killed seven thousand people in one night. Within half a week of massacring the students, half of the population of Dacca had fled and another thirty thousand had been killed …show more content…
The land was divided by landmarks, but also by differing cultures. The officials in the Western part of the territory viewed the people of the East as “too Bengali” and said that their use of Islam was “inferior and impure’. Due to the people of the East’s inappropriate practice of Islam they were also seen as “unreliable co-religionists”. To combat this issue, the West devised a strategy to forcibly bring together the Bengalis culturally (GenocideBangladesh). The Bengali people were the majority in Pakistan, making up almost seventy-five million in East Pakistan and an estimated fifty-five million in the predominantly Punjabi-speaking West Pakistan. Islam was the majority religion in the East but there was a large number of Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian minorities. The people of the West viewed the people of the East as below them and not as good as them, and Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi, who was the the head of the Pakistani Forces in the East Pakistan in 1971, referred to the region as a “low-lying land of low, lying people”
Using specific illustrations from Maryse Conde's novel Segu, this is an essay that discusses how the coming of Islam to Bambar society affected that people's traditional, political, social and economic practices as well as challenging the Bambaras' religious beliefs.
Genocide, the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. From 1992-1995 that was happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, conflict between the three main ethnic groups, the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, resulted in genocide committed by the Serbs against the Muslims in Bosnia.
In "Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum," Finbarr Barry Flood expresses many ideas concerning Islamic iconoclasm. His focus was on the ."..iconoclastic practices of Muslims living in the eastern Islamic world, especially Afghanistan and India." Flood discusses issues with traditional patterns considering Islamic iconoclasm and the "many paradoxes" that "complicate" our understanding of Islamic iconoclasm. Throughout this essay we become familiar with "essentialist conceptions of Muslim iconoclasm" as well as "political aspects of what has largely been conceived of as a theological impulse." These points later provide a basis for analyzing the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha by the Taliban in March 2001. "It will be argued that their obliteration indexed not a timeless response to figuration but a calculated engagement with a culturally specific discourse of images at a particular historical moment."
The Cambodian Genocide took place from 1975 to 1979 in the Southeastern Asian country of Cambodia. The genocide was a brutal massacre that killed 1.4 to 2.2 million people, about 21% of Cambodia’s population. This essay, will discuss the history of the Cambodian genocide, specifically, what happened, the victims and the perpetrators and the world’s response to the genocide.
The Rwandan Genocide was a terrible event in history caused by a constantly weakening relationship between two groups of people. The country of Rwanda is located in Africa and consists of multiple groups of people. Majority of Rwanda is Hutu, while a smaller amount of people are Tutsis. The genocide started due to multiple events that really stretched the relationship between the two groups to its end. One of the starting factors was at the end of World War 1. Rwanda was a German colony but then was given to Belgium “who favored the minority Tutsis over the Hutus, exacerbated[exacerbating] the tendency of the few to oppress the many”(History.com). This created a feeling of anger towards the Tutsis, because they had much more power then Hutus.
Wouldn’t it be scary if someone suddenly decided that you should disappear because he thinks you do not have the right to live because of your race or religion? Scary yes, but definitely possible. The word genocide, which is also known as ethnic cleansing, is certainly not uncommon to anyone living in this not so perfect world, full of violence, hatred and discrimination. Throughout the decades, genocide has taken place in more than one occasion, causing wars, slaughters and mass destruction of cities and towns. I think that genocide is by far the worst crime in humanity. Hatred, superiority and personal memories are all behind genocide.
In the Islamic conquest, Muslims conquered large areas consisting of distinct religion members. Muslims believed that all religions should be treated respectably; hence Jews and Christians followed ...
India is the center of a very serious problem in the world today. It’s a very diverse place with people from many different religious backgrounds, who speak many different languages and come from many different regions. They are also separated economically. Two of the country’s religious sects, Muslims and Hindus, have been in conflict for hundreds of years. Their feelings of mistrust and hatred for each other are embedded in all those years and will not leave easily. What’s most disturbing is that there seems to be no plan for reconciliation available. There are numerous reasons for this conflict.
To answer the question posed it necessary to first consider the development of, and what constitutes the West. Once this is achieved, we are than able to discuss occidentalism. However, the concept of orientalism, and what constitutes the orient, will first be considered as, arguably, orientalism provoked occidentalism. Thereafter, the four key features of occidentalism, identified by Buruma and Margalit (2004) will be discussed. Contemporary notions of ociddentalism, more specifically Islamic extremism will also be studied; of must importance here is if, or how, Buruma’s and Margalit’s (2004) theory of occidentalism aids our understanding of the perspective of those in resistance to the west.
The concept of orientalism refers to the western perceptions of the eastern cultures and social practices. It is a specific expose of the eurocentric universalism which takes for granted both, the superiority of what is European or western and the inferiority of what is not. Salman Rushdie's Booker of the Bookers prize winning novel Midnights Children is full of remarks and incidents that show the orientalist perception of India and its people. It is Rushdie's interpretation of a period of about 70 years in India's modern history dealing with the events leading to the partition and beyond. Rushdie is a fantasist and a creator of alternate realities, the poet and prophet of a generation born at the degree zero of national history. The present paper is an attempt to study how Salman Rushdie, being himself a writer of diasporic consciousness, sometimes perceives India and its people as orientalist stereotypes and presents them in a derogatory manner.
There were growing tensions between East Pakistan and West Pakistan during 1971. After winning the 1970 elections, East Pakistan wanted to establish their own country and separate from Pakistan. West Pakistan answered this with “Operation Searchlight” which started the Bangladeshi Liberation War (Malieckal,77). Operation Searchlight’s purpose was the extermination of all Bengalis. Dinshawji comments on this genocide when he says, “Bloody butchers, slaughtering left and right” (76). 3 million Bengalis died and 10 million decided to take refuge in India (Malieckal, 75-76). To pay for all these refugees, India introduced refugee relief tax which made the lives of the people harder. India joined the war after the bombing by West Pakistan's military aircraft. In the novel, Gustad covers his windows with black paper and builds an air-raid shelter under his bed to keep his family safe during the war (347). After 13 days of fighting, the Indo-Pakistani war came to an end with Pakistan surrendering and the Bengalis establishing their own nation.
The Fatimid’s had been rumored to be tolerant, compassionate and focused on unifying Islam; however, it has been proved that this was not always the case. Orientalists have acknowledged their contribution towards the advancement of Islam and claim that the Christian and Jewish communities excelled during this time; but it did not come without its deceptions and deviations from Islamic norms and rules. This historiography will explore whether the Fatimids were actually the tolerant Muslims whose actions, belief systems and practices evidenced the growth of Islam and tolerance of other religions, or if they were merely politi...
Lawrence Auster wrote an eye-opening blog excerpt titled India and Pakistan: Why the Mass Killing Occurred. The content of this excerpt explore the fundamental issues of identity and religion that led to the violence in 1947. The author makes his point by utilizing current event such as the train massacre in 2002, in which 50 Hindu women and children were burned alive. The blog is for an audience with some prior knowledge on the topic and continues to expand upon that knowledge. The blog is a secondary source because it introduces its own unique ideas regarding the issue and was written after the time of the event. It was very helpful to my research because it simplifies the wordy information often found on scholarly sites and condenses it into something comprehensible and relatable to the reader.
In the book Train to Pakistan, author Khushwant Singh recalls the brutal and unfortunate times when Muslims were being forced out of Mano Majra. They, along with the Hindu and Sikh population, were living in relative peace. But when there had to be change, chaos ensued. There were several key individuals that shared the total responsibility of the expulsion of Muslims from Mano Majra; Even though some had purer motives than others, they all took stock in the unfortunate process.
...shown through Lenny’s point of view. Prior the partition, Lahore was a place of tolerance that enjoyed a secular state. Tension before the partition suggested the division of India was imminent, and that this would result in a religious. 1947 is a year marked by human convulsion, as 1 million people are reported dead because of the partition. Moreover, the children of Lahore elucidate the silences Butalia seeks in her novel. The silence of survivors is rooted to the nature of the partition itself; there is no clear distinction as to who were the antagonists. The distinction is ambiguous, the victims were Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims, and moreover these groups were the aggressors, the violent. The minority in this communal violence amongst these groups was the one out-numbered. This epiphany of blame is embarked in silence, and roots from the embodiment of violence.