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The war of 1971, fought between India and what was then East and West Pakistan, led to the creation of Bangladesh, where it is remembered as the War of Liberation. For India, the war represents a triumphant settling of scores with Pakistan. If the war is acknowledged in Pakistan, it is cast as an act of betrayal by the Bengalis. None of these nationalist histories conveys the human cost of the war. Pakistani and Indian soldiers and Bengali militiamen raped and ...
This book explores how, during the 1990s, socially and economically marginalized people in Assam sought to produce a past in order to create for themselves a distinctive identity recognized within contemporary India. It describes how specific groups of Assamese described themselves as Tai-Ahom - a people with a glorious past stretching back to the invasion of what is now Assam by Ahom warriors in the thirteenth century. Saikia considers the problem of ...