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Museumising suffering
- WORDS & ECHOES
JUL 20 -
The fifth regional Dhaka meeting of Asian Sites of Conscience, organised by the Bangladesh Liberation War Museum from July 17-18, made me go back to our own historical performances, achievements and failings.
Several countries in Asia including, very importantly, Cambodia have created sites of conscience, and are in the process of museumising the recent and little remote past, especially those moments in history that saw colossal sufferings of the people. Two years ago, I was awestruck to see how a horrid massacre in Cambodia during the short period of Khmer Rouge rule (1975-79) was museumised in the city school where the most atrocious human tortures and killings had taken place.
When the Dhaka Liberation War Museum trustees and civil society leaders led us to see a “killing field”, a former pit where bodies were dumped in the 1971 killings, now turned into a small museum designed by a famous Bangladeshi architect, it seemed it was only the tip of the iceberg. The full stories of the three million people who lost their lives may never be known. The concept of identifying sites of conscience, I like this expression, is to locate the places of killings and create structures that enshrine both visual and narrative memorials, which could speak eloquently about the horrid events. The object is not to prepare a generation for revenge, but to educate young people and tell them how such incidents are blemishes on history and should not happen again; and very importantly, how the perpetrators can be brought to justice. Sublime of trauma enhances education.
The Bangladesh government, after 40 years of indecision, confusion between military rule and civilian government and rivalry between political parties for power has brought the history derailed by the murder of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in August 1975 back on track. It has set up an international crime tribunal to try the perpetrators. The rules of procedures for probe, prosecution and trial were published in a gazette on July 15, 2010. But does that guarantee a smooth functioning of the tribunal in the future with changes in political structures and rivalry for power? No single answer can be ventured here.
Regimes that carry out murders and create hurricanes of tragedy act with some misguided dreams. The national anthem of “Democratic Kampuchea” of the Khmer Rouge echoed in the turbulent times, “The red, red blood splatters the cities and plains!” Those dreams created a traumatised history. Bangladeshi history bears the stamp of bizarre ideas of the Pakistani ruling military. By eliminating every capable and talented Bengali, they thought they would paralyse a new Bengali nation from functioning independently. Every other country’s story of the site of conscience shows that the perpetrators justify their actions on certain moral grounds, however ludicrous and dangerous that may be.
Creating museums either in the sites of conscience or in separate spaces involves a subtle process of putting together the narratives, visuals and other historical documentations on organised display. Values and ideologies of the times directly guide the structural functions of such museums. The politics of museumisation plays a significant role in such situations. We are, therefore, talking about the museums that archive a history of death and suffering of innocent people.
Nepal has not set up such sites of conscience yet. Post-monarchical Nepal has spent much of its time in power contestation among political parties, blocking each other and blaming outer and inner agencies of power for rationalising one’s own inaction. No sites of conscience have been identified and given space for people to go and view history. The post-monarchy euphoria came with a bang by turning the erstwhile palace into a museum.
The leader of one of the most ferocious guerrilla outfits in the world (adapted from the remark made by the late leader Girija Prasad Koirala after the comprehensive peace agreement was signed on Nov. 21, 2006) Prachanda, formally opened the palace as a museum on Feb. 26, 2009. As prime minister of republican Nepal, he performed the first ambivalent act in the history of museums in this country. The museum became a metaphor of a shift in power location and the evacuation of the occupant. Narayanhiti Palace became an evacuated architectural space like any of the erstwhile Rana palaces such as Keshar Mahal and Shree Durbar that house ill-managed libraries, and Singha Durbar and other Rana palaces that house administration and banking offices.
Thoughts of creating sites of conscience either did not occur to the political leaders or they feared that their own memorialising ambivalence might be exposed to the public. None of such historical acts as people’s revolution or people’s loktantric victory did impel the people in power to create sites of conscience where the stories and records of those who were killed, have suffered, disappeared or been displaced could be enshrined for viewing and reviewing. Politicising martyrdom and tacitly agreeing with each other, even if you are rivals in political matters, to hide one’s suspect histories can occupy the minds of the major political leaders.
The incumbent prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, when he became the interim prime minister barely a year ago, said he would set up a people’s museum to memorialise history in the most scenic public space in the heart of Kathmandu near Rani Pokhari. It became clear that it was only regular political rhetoric. The Maoists immediately critiqued Nepal for trying to take over their incomplete agenda. But nothing happened.
Civil society circles of the metropolis have not been saying how important it is to create sites of conscience. The government has been showing its ire against UN organisations related to human rights and frantically signing letters asking them to go. The constitutionally constituted Nepal human rights commission appears to function only as a lame duck. The streets have become sites of conscience where victims of war parade outside the UN and government offices showing photos of the disappeared and orally narrating their stories of suffering. Theatre groups who were sent to the sites to collect stories so that we would turn them into dramas of reconciliation were blocked by political or military concerns.
There are two options in Nepal. Either independent groups should start setting up sites of conscience and creating a manageable repertoire of props, narratives and visuals, or the government, which will be formed on the basis of common consensus, if you are serious about writing the constitution of the country, should work honestly. But if sites of conscience initiated at the individual or group level are used to distort reality, that will trigger more controversies. That would be either complicating or hiding the history of people’s sufferings. The best option is either to create a commonly established museological structure and put memorials there or create museumised sites of conscience. Such places are not created to incite acts of revenge and hatred, but to educate children and adults to re-evaluate their immediate past. Such sites and documentation would help to bring the perpetrators to a process of justice, which should be open, just and responsible.
Abhi Subedi
abhi@mail.com.np
Posted on: 2010-07-21 07:44
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