To aid research on ''Independence, Memory, and Blood'

NAEEM MOHAIEMEN, then a graduate student at Columbia University, New York, New York, received funding in April 2015 to aid research on 'Independence, Memory, and Blood,' supervised by D. David Scott. Like many other countries going through decolonization, Bangladesh emerged from two independences (from British India in 1947, and then from Pakistan in 1971) with a heightened sense of possibilities for nation and citizen, much of it framed through an idea of socialism and secularism. But within three short years, foundational principles had gone terribly wrong and a dramatic reversal was underway. How the decolonization project went wrong is the subject of much official history. This project has researched the alternate, subaltern forms of unofficial history, much of it in vernacular forms, in the shadow of well-funded official publications. The Wenner-Gren funded field research focused on building up an oral history of these alternate forms of historiography.