The 1971 genocide in Bangladesh took place as a result of the region’s long history of colonization, the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into largely Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, and the continuation of ethnic and religious politics in Pakistan, specifically the political suppression of the Bengali people of East Pakistan. The violence endured by women during the 1971 genocide is repeated in the writing of national history. The secondary position that women occupy within nationalism is mirrored in the nationalist narratives of history. This book engages with the existing feminist scholarship on gender, nationalism and genocide to investigate the dominant representations of gender in the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh and juxtaposes the testimonies of survivors and national memory of that war to create a shift of perspective that demands a breaking of silence. The author explores and challenges how gender has operated in service of Bangladeshi nationalist ideology, in particular as it is represented at the Liberation War Museum. The archive of this museum in Bangladesh is viewed as a site of institutionalized dialogue between the 1971 genocide and the national memory of that event. An examination of the archive serves as an opening point into the ideologies that have sanctioned a particular authoring of history, which is written from a patriarchal perspective and insists on restricting women’s trauma to the time of war. To question the archive is to question the authority and power that is inscribed in the archive itself and that is the function performed by testimonies in this book. Testimonies are offered from five unique vantage points – rape survivor, war baby, freedom fighter, religious and ethnic minorities – to question the appropriation and omission of women’s stories. Furthermore, the emphasis on the multiplicity of women’s experiences in war seeks to highlight the counter-narrative that is created by acknowledging the differences in women’s experiences in war instead of transcending those differences. An innovative and nuanced approach to the subject of treatment and objectification of women in conflict and post conflict and how the continuing effects entrench ideas of gender roles and identity, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of South Asian History and Politics, Gender and genocide, Women and War, Nationalism and Diaspora and Transnational Studies.

This book explores the multiplicity of women’s experiences in the Cambodian genocide during the four-year rule of the Khmer Rouge. The dominant discourses of genocide often speak from a patriarchal and national perspective, rendering women speechless, and yet in this volume, the female survivors of the Cambodian genocide testify not only to the specific atrocities committed during the war but also to the pre-war conditions that laid the groundwork for a gender-specific victimization of women and its continuation post-war. With the help of testimonies from Khmer women who joined the Khmer Rouge, women who experienced sexual violence during the Khmer Rouge era, women who fled the country, and the Cham women who faced expulsion from home, this book explores the diversity of women’s experiences under the Khmer Rouge. Survivors’ accounts show that a Khmer woman’s experience with the Khmer Rouge was considerably different from the experience of not only a Khmer man but also a woman from a religious or ethnic minority group or a woman who chose to join the Khmer Rouge. These differences are conveniently ignored in nationalist discourses in Cambodia and by western scholars of history and gender-based violence, and they are given even less consideration in discourses about women survivors in diaspora. Instead of forcing generalization and universalization of gendered crimes of war, Gender and Genocide in Cambodia employs feminist curiosity and closely examines women’s experiences under the Khmer Rouge from multiple vantage points. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars interested in gender and cultural studies, political history, and modern history.

Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction is the most wide-ranging textbook on genocide yet published. Designed as a text for undergraduate and graduate students from a range of disciplines, it will also appeal to non-specialists and general readers. Fully updated to reflect the latest thinking in this rapidly developing field, this unique book: Provides an introduction to genocide as both a historical phenomenon and an analytical-legal concept, including the concept of genocidal intent and the dynamism and contingency of genocidal processes. Discusses the role of state-building, imperialism, war, and social revolution in fueling genocide. Supplies a wide range of full-length case studies of genocides worldwide, each with a supplementary study. Explores perspectives on genocide from the social sciences, including psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science/international relations, and gender studies. Considers the future of genocide, with attention to historical memory and genocide denial; initiatives for truth, justice, and redress; and strategies of intervention and prevention. Highlights of the new edition include: New case studies of the Uyghur genocide in the People’s Republic of China, the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar, and Muslims in India. The historical and archaeological legacy of genocide. New and vivid testimonies of survivors and witnesses to genocide. This significantly revised fourth edition will remain an indispensable text for new generations of genocide study and scholarship. An accompanying website (www.genocidetext.net) features a selection of supplementary materials, teaching aids, and Internet resources.

Volume III examines the most well-known century of genocide, the twentieth century. Opening with a discussion on the definitions of genocide and 'ethnic cleansing' and their relationships to modernity, it continues with a survey of the genocide studies field, racism and antisemitism. The four parts cover the impacts of Racism, Total War, Imperial Collapse, and Revolution; the crises of World War Two; the Cold War; and Globalization. Twenty-eight scholars with expertise in specific regions document thirty genocides from 1918 to 2021, in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The cases range from the Armenian Genocide to Maoist China, from the Holocaust to Stalin's Ukraine, from Indonesia to Guatemala, Biafra, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, and finally the contemporary fate of the Rohingyas in Myanmar and the ISIS slaughter of Yazidis in Iraq. The volume ends with a chapter on the strategies for genocide prevention moving forward.

With a focus on the liminality of justice in trauma, this collective volume probes into the complex liminal status of victim-(forced) victimizer in trauma—a new opening well deserving critical attention—and scrutinizes how novelists tackle with literary representations the relevant issues of (in)justice in trauma. The contributions in this collection present theoretical re/visions of trauma and critical studies on trauma literature, ranging from field work on Cambodia’s genocide to literary analyses of AIDS literature, contemporary American literature, contemporary Canadian literature, and Indigenous writing in Canada.

An interdisciplinary study of how notions of civility and barbarism continue to undermine the universalist underpinnings of the laws of war.

This book analyses the political thought and practice of Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866–1915), preeminent liberal leader of the Indian National Congress who was able to give a ‘global voice’ to the Indian cause. Using liberalism, nationalism, cosmopolitanism and citizenship as the four main thematic foci, the book illuminates the entanglement of Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s political ideas and action with broader social, political and cultural developments within and beyond the Indian national frame. The author analyses Gokhale’s thinking on a range of issues such as nationhood, education, citizenship, modernity, caste, social service, cosmopolitanism and the ‘women’s question,’ which historians have either overlooked or inserted in a rigid nation-bounded historical narrative. The book provides new enriching dimensions to the understanding of Gokhale, whose ideas remain relevant in contemporary India. A new biography of Gokhale that brings into consideration current questions within historiographical debates, this book is a timely and welcome addition to the fields of intellectual history, the history of political thought, Colonial history and Indian and South Asian history.

The plight and fate of female victims during the course of genocide is radically and profoundly different from their male counterparts. Like males, female victims suffer demonization, ostracism, discrimination, and deprivation of their basic human rights. They are often rounded up, deported, and killed. But, unlike most men, women are subjected to rape, gang rape, and mass rape. Such assaults and degradation can, and often do, result in horrible injuries to their reproductive systems and unwanted pregnancies. This volume takes one stride towards assessing these grievances, and argues against policies calculated to continue such indifference to great human suffering. The horror and pain suffered by females does not end with the act of rape. There is always the fear, and reality, of being infected with HIV/AIDS. Concomitantly, there is the possibility of becoming pregnant.Then, there is the birth of the babies. For some, the very sight of the babies and children reminds mothers of the horrific violations they suffered. When mothers harbor deep-seated hatred or distain for such children, it results in more misery. The hatred may be so great that children born of rape leave home early in order to fend for themselves on the street. This seventh volume in the Genocide series will provoke debate, discussion, reflection and, ultimately, action. The issues presented include ongoing mass rape of girls and women during periods of war and genocide, ostracism of female victims, terrible psychological and physical wounds, the plight of offspring resulting from rapes, and the critical need for medical and psychological services.

India’s Nonviolent Freedom Struggle focuses on the Thomas Christians, a group of Christians in South India who waged a nonviolent struggle against European colonization during the politically volatile period of 1599-1799. This book has three related objectives and unique characteristics. First, it offers a comprehensive study of primary sources that scholars have referenced but rarely studied in-depth. Second, it argues that the Thomas Christian narratives provide a unique position to challenge prevalent estimations found in canonical and postcolonial critical discourse on the nation. Third, it considers how an account of a nonviolent struggle by Thomas Christians further complicates received ideas of the postcolonial nation. It sheds light on the often-overlooked contributions of the Thomas Christians in India’s nonviolent freedom struggle and challenges readers to reimagine the complex and often contentious relationship between colonizers and colonized. A groundbreaking book that offers a fresh perspective on the Indian freedom struggle and the study of Indian history, this book is an essential read for scholars of colonialism, anticolonial movements, and the history of India.

This book explores the social and cultural histories of India, focusing on cultural encounters and representations of subaltern communities from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. Examining cultural encounters between Europeans and Indians during the precolonial and colonial periods, the book analyzes European, especially English, efforts to exoticize or investigate the social practices of the Other. It also presents the culturally conditioned Indian subject's perspective on Europe and the imperial society. The book engages with narratives of suppressed movements of tribals and dalits, of erosion of the culture and history of ancient communities, and recovers the local narratives of marginalized groups in Andaman and Malabar, which get superseded by the larger narrative of nation-building. Often relying on oral history instead of printed material and sociological fieldwork, the alternate histories are presented through unconventional, literary or semi-literary genres like travel narratives, fiction, films, and songs, thus presenting an alternative interpretation to the central narrative of the progress of mainstream India. Representing cultural history and the view from below, the book shifts its focus from the conventional historiography associated with political history and will be of interest to academics working in the field of cultural studies, the historiography of India, South Asian Studies and an interdisciplinary audience in history, sociology, literature, media, and English studies.