Global Memoryscapes: Contesting Remembrance in a Transnational Age / Edition 1

by Kendall R. Phillips, G. Mitchell Reyes, Christine Lavrence, Ekaterina V. Haskins, Cynthia D. Cervantes

Overview

The transnational movement of people and ideas has led scholars throughout the humanities to reconsider many core concepts. Among them is the notion of public memory and how it changes when collective memories are no longer grounded within the confines of the traditional nation-state. An introduction by coeditors Kendall Phillips and Mitchell Reyes provides a context for examining the challenges of remembrance in a globalized world. In their essay they posit the idea of the “global memoryscape,” a sphere in which memories circulate among increasingly complex and diffused networks of remembrance.

The essays contained within the volume—by scholars from a wide range of disciplines including American studies, art history, political science, psychology, and sociology—each engage a particular instance of the practices of memory as they are complicated by globalization.

Subjects include the place of nostalgia in post-Yugoslavia Serbian national memory, Russian identity after the collapse of the Soviet Union, political remembrance in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, the role of Chilean mass media in forging national identity following the arrest of Augusto Pinochet, American debates over memorializing Japanese internment camps, and how the debate over the Iraq war is framed by memories of opposition to the Vietnam War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817356767
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	09/07/2011
Series:	Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique
Edition description:	First Edition, First Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kendall R. Phillips is Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies for the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. He is the author of Framing Public Memory, Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Cultureand Testing Controversy: A Rhetoric of Educational Reform.
 
G. Mitchell Reyes is the author of articles and reviews that have appeared in Rhetoric Review, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Women’s Studies in Communication, and Southern Communication Journal.

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Global Memoryscapes

Contesting Remembrance in a Transnational Age

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THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Copyright © 2011 The University of Alabama Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-5676-7

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Chapter One

The Persistence of Memory

Urvashi Butalia

On March 11, 1947, Sant Raja Singh of Thoa Khalsa village in Rawalpindi district picked up his sword, said a short prayer to Guru Nanak, and then, with one swift stroke, tried to bring it down on the neck of his young daughter, Maan Kaur. As the story is told, at first he didn't succeed: the blow wasn't strong enough, or something got in the way. Then his daughter, aged sixteen, knelt before him, removed her thick plait, and offered him her neck. This time, his sword found its mark. Bir Bahadur Singh, his son of eleven, stood by his side and watched. Years later, he recounted this story to me: "I stood there, right next to him, clutching on to his kurta as children do.... I was clinging to him, sobbing, and her head rolled off and fell ... there ... far away."

Shortly after this incident, Bir Bahadur's family fled Thoa Khalsa, heading toward the Indian border where they hoped to find safety. India was being partitioned, and large-scale carnage, arson, rape, and looting among Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs had become the order of the day. In many families, like Bir Bahadur's, the men decided to kill women and children, fearing that they would be abducted, raped, converted, impregnated, or otherwise polluted by men of the other religion—in this case Muslims. They called these killings the "martyrdom of women."

It was only two years earlier, in 1945, that Bir Bahadur's family had moved to Thoa Khalsa. Talk of a possible partition was in the air and they were worried about their safety. Saintha, the village in which they had lived for many years, was a Muslim majority village and theirs was the only non-Muslim family there. It was this that made Bir Bahadur's father, Sant Raja Singh, decide to move to Thoa Khalsa, where there were many more Sikhs than Muslims. Everywhere, at this time, people banded together with their own kind, believing that safety lay in numbers. Ironically and tragically, it was in Thoa Khalsa that the real violence took place. In retaliation for attacks by Hindus and Sikhs on Muslims elsewhere in India, villages in this part of Rawalpindi— inhabited mainly by Sikhs—came under concerted attack for several days. Shortly after Sant Raja Singh killed his daughter and several others, he asked a relative to take his life—perhaps the burden of the knowledge of what he had done was too heavy to bear. A single shot from a gun ensured that he joined the ranks of the martyrs.

* * *

Forty years later, Bir Bahadur told me these stories. I had met him while researching a book on oral histories of the Partition of India. In the lower-middle-class area of Delhi where he lived, Bir Bahadur was someone people looked up to—he came from a family of martyrs. Not only his sister but several other women had been killed on that day. Bir Bahadur had been a young boy at the time, but his memories of the time were crystal clear and sharp. He remembered the fear and the violence; he also remembered that when the attacks had begun to seem imminent, people from his home village of Saintha had come to Thoa in a delegation to offer his family protection in Saintha. They were led by Sajawal Khan, the village headman. But his father had turned them away. They were Muslims and, although he had lived among them in safety and peace for many years, he no longer trusted them. Bir Bahadur has never forgotten this rejection.

Stories of such violence—and more—are routine when Muslims and Hindus speak of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The British decision to partition the country into two, India and Pakistan, led to the displacement of millions of people, a million deaths, and nearly a hundred thousand incidents of rape and abduction. Many other forms of violence became commonplace. Women were particularly vulnerable: not only was there mass rape and abduction but hundreds were killed by their own families, ostensibly as a form of "protection," some had their breasts cut off, and still others had symbols of the "other" religion tattooed on their bodies. But while stories of violence are routine, what is less known are the stories of friendship that cut across the rigid borders drawn by the Indian and Pakistani states. In the year 2000 Bir Bahadur and I embarked on one such journey of friendship and reconciliation across what had till then seemed like a somewhat intractable border.

It all began with a phone call from Chihiro, a Japanese journalist. She was keen to film a television program featuring an Indian traveling to Pakistan on the India-Pakistan bus, visiting his/her relatives. She and a crew would travel along with this person and film the journey as well as the "homecoming." She asked for suggestions and I offered Bir Bahadur's name. For years he had wanted to go back to his home village in Pakistan but had never had the opportunity. Now it had presented itself.

In his seventies, Bir Bahadur Singh is a tall, statuesque Sikh with a white flowing beard. Always dressed in white, with a black turban and a saffron head cloth showing through, he makes an arresting figure and stands out in a crowd. Bir Bahadur's family was only one among the millions of refugees who fled from Pakistan to India. They carried nothing with them; Bir Bahadur's key memories of that time are of hunger, fear, and cold. Once in India, Bir Bahadur and his family struggled to keep body and soul together. He tried his hand at different things and then, at eighteen, he managed to put together enough money to set up a small provision store. Later, his family arranged for him to marry a woman from a village close to his home in Rawalpindi, and together they brought up a large family. Bir Bahadur has never been rich, and he has worked hard all his life for the sake of his children. A might-have-been politician (he stood for municipal elections on a Bharatiya Janata Party ticket some years ago and lost), Bir Bahadur now divides his time among his farmhouse close to Delhi, his extended family of children and grandchildren, and his ninety-year-old mother who lives close by. He was beside himself with excitement at the news that he might get permission to travel to Pakistan and visit his home village.

Japanese intervention visas were swiftly arranged and a few days later we left for Pakistan. Bir Bahadur had arrived at my house with a small bag and a sackful of hard, dry coconuts. These were to be his offerings to the people of his village. "There are no coconuts there," he explained, "and people love to have them." He had also written two letters, one to the people of his village and one to his school friend Sadq Khan, son of Sajawal Khan. "We were good friends in school," he said. "I am sure he will remember me." These he carried with him, in the event that we did not make it to the village. He was convinced we would find someone, somewhere, who would carry his letters to the village and that people from the village would come to see him immediately. For days he'd been like a child, excited and nervous. He'd rung me every day—sometimes twice or three times a day—to check on this or that detail. Would we be staying in a hotel? How much money should he bring? Would I be with them the whole time? Could we not persuade Chihiro to do a radio program instead of one for television? (We did do a radio program as well.) And now that we were actually on our way, he could not believe his luck.

Heavy rain and bad monsoon weather had delayed the flight. We spent a long and tiring night waiting at Lahore airport, uncomfortable in plastic seats. Occasionally, Chihiro and I would doze off out of sheer exhaustion. But not Bir Bahadur. Every time I opened my eyes, I found him wide awake, sitting on his haunches in the airport chairs, recounting his story to someone—a family on their way to Karachi (also delayed), two helpful employees of the airline (with whom he was quickly exchanging photographs and addresses), the toyshop owner, the man selling tea. Hazy with sleep, I wondered wearily whether there was anyone at the airport he'd left out of this storytelling.

* * *

Islamabad is a city of wide boulevards and tree-lined roads. At night, speeding through the deserted streets, there was little to see. We arrived, exhausted, at our hotel at 3:00 in the morning after a twelve-hour flight delay. But this did not seem to have affected Bir Bahadur. Why did we want to wait till 10:00 in the morning to set off, he asked plaintively. "I won't be able to sleep. Let's go at 6!" But this proposal was shot down firmly by our Japanese friend, and the time of our departure was fixed for 10:00 A.M.

The morning rose clean and washed. Heavy rain had cooled things down and the sun seemed almost mild, the air clear of the oppressive humidity of the monsoon, the trees and plants a rich, freshly washed green. Armed with some water and our passports and visa papers, we set off for Thoa Khalsa. A wide, straight road led through fairly flat terrain to the outskirts of Islamabad. We'd been driving for an hour or so when we arrived at a major turnoff. Clearly some sort of junction, the wide road was bordered on one side with small shops selling fruit, juices, cigarettes, food, and snacks and all the small knickknacks that travelers buy when they make stopovers. On the other side was a bus and tempo terminal, with scooter and tempo taxis shouting out their locations, picking up point-to-point passengers, and quickly shuffling men into separate seats the moment they saw prospective women passengers: one of the unwritten rules of tempo traveling in Pakistan (and indeed often in India) is that men and women do not occupy the same seat lest they inadvertently touch each other. We stopped to ask directions and then turned off onto a narrower road to the left. A gate across the road proclaimed a level crossing, and a small signpost gave the name of the station. "This used to be our station," Bir Bahadur told me excitedly. "The train stopped here, and we'd have to take buses from our village to get here!" We stopped in the marketplace to get a better look at the station. Immediately the car was surrounded by a crowd of people—tall, hefty men in shalvar kameezes. They were everywhere: at the doors, in front of the car, virtually inside the driver's door. We couldn't move, and I began to panic a bit. In such situations the enmity and rhetoric of hatred that India and Pakistan constantly rehearse comes back to haunt us, and, although the situation is harmless enough, it suddenly acquires overtones of fear. But Bir Bahadur was unfazed: "Stop, stop the car," he told the driver unnecessarily, and wound his window down. He leaned out, trained his gaze on the tea stall across the road, and said, to no one in particular, "Bhai sahib, bhai sahib, excuse me, can you help?" A cyclist stopped by to see what it was he wanted, and the crowd of men surrounding the car suddenly transformed themselves from a threatening bunch to a group of curious and helpful onlookers peering into the car at two strange women and an odd man, clearly from over the border for he had on a turban and there were no Sikhs in the area. "Welcome, welcome, sardarji," they said. "Where have you come from? India? What are you looking for here? Can we help you to find it?" Bir Bahadur immediately launched into his story while Chihiro and I sat nervously wondering if it was wise, in an unknown place in Pakistan, to recall stories of the violence of Partition.

"I'm from this area," he told them. "My father used to run a shop in Saintha, and I am looking for the road to Saintha. Do you know Sajawal Khan from Saintha?"

"Not Saintha," I whispered to him. "We need to know how to get to Thoa Khalsa."

"Yes, yes," he said, turning to the man, "and we need to get to Thoa Khalsa as well. But first, I want to find Saintha."

At this point it became clear to me that Bir Bahadur had already decided on the itinerary for this trip—no matter that Chihiro wanted to capture the drama of taking him back to the place where he had seen such a bloody history, he was determined to go to Saintha, his home village. I felt a curious mixture of relief (that we might not now have to confront what could have been an unpleasant situation), elation (that he had succeeded in doing exactly what he wanted), and concern (for Chihiro and her radio program which, after all, had paid for us to be here). While these thoughts were turning around in my head and I was wondering how to break the news to Chihiro, I suddenly found that Bir Bahadur had invited one of the men outside into the car. Basheer, he told us, was a son-in-law of Saintha and had offered to ride there with us and help us find the place and the people Bir Bahadur was looking for. "Can you slide up a bit, Beta?" he said to me, and I pushed myself into as small a corner as I could to make room for a rather large and hefty Basheer. We were breaking the unwritten code here: three of us in the backseat, one woman and two men. The available space was tight, and it was up to me to ensure that our bodies remained at least an inch apart. Meanwhile, everyone on the road offered us advice and suggestions for free, one person ran off and came back with six bananas, another asked if we'd like a cold drink (we must be tired), while a third offered us mithai. Finally, they waved us off with good wishes, extracting a promise from us that we would come back this way and stop for a cup of tea and some sweets.

And so we set off down a long, straight road, past large fields, scattered homes, the occasional tractor carrying bales of straw, and groups of women drawing water at village wells, their faces partially veiled, and slowly the landscape gave way to a gentle, hilly terrain. We could have been in India: everything looked exactly as it would on the other side of the border, in Punjab: the roadside shops, the villages with their mud houses, the scene at the well, the fields covered with stalks of wheat pushing their way out of the earth. "Son," said Bir Bahadur to Basheer after a few minutes, "just keep telling me the names of the places we are passing along the way, just keep reminding me." Dutifully, Basheer did as he was told, and at one point, as we were passing a small rise on our left with stray houses scattered along its slopes, bordered by stubby bushes on the road, Basheer said, "That village is called Thamali."

"Stop, stop," Bir Bahadur said to Sain, our driver. "Please stop, Thamali is where my wife used to live, it's her village." We swung over to the side of the narrow road, and Bir Bahadur and Basheer leaped out of the car and began climbing. "I can't believe it," said Bir Bahadur excitedly. "We used to come here to play. There, there's the banyan tree we used to sit under, and over that hill was her grandfather's house, the water pump. Please," he said, turning to me, "please can you take a picture of me by the tree. I'd like to take it back to my wife." As he stood there waiting to be photographed, the tree behind him, a small knot of people—husband, wife, perhaps a brother or brother-in-law, and two children—came out of a nearby house. Bir Bahadur greeted the children, affectionately patting them on the head, and waited as the parents drew up. They came, faces open with welcome: "Where are you from, sardarji? How have you come here? Won't you come to our home and drink some sherbet with us?"

"No, no, my child," said Bir Bahadur to the young woman. "Thank you for your welcome, my daughter. This village Thamali is where my wife comes from. I used to play here as a child fifty years ago, long before you were even born. See, see that tree over there? That was the tree we sat under. My wife's family home was over that hill. There was a pond and a water pump there." The pond was still there, they told him, but of course the water pump had gone. The school, too—the building was there, but it was no longer used as a school. Thamali had been on the receiving end of the Muslim attack on Sikhs in March 1947 and large numbers of people had been killed. Looking at the small, peaceful village nestled in the July sun, it seemed hard to believe that such violence could have taken place there. I tried to picture the mobs everyone—not only Bir Bahadur—had told me about, the countryside resounding with the cries of murder and revenge, the thirst for blood. How would they have moved from village to village, I wondered inconsequentially. This thin ribbon of a road was probably not there at the time. How must people have felt to see hundreds, thousands of attackers coming over these gentle, almost sleepy slopes? What protection did their houses offer? At which points did they negotiate? What do people do when violence breaks out in this way? The people of Thamali, I remembered being told, had refused to believe initially that they could be attacked. Then, someone from another village had persuaded them to climb atop one of the higher houses and look down at the area around them, and they'd done so and seen the mobs and quickly started to evacuate the village. Thirty to forty women and girls were abducted from this village, among them two sisters of a family I had spoken to when I was working on my book. As with many Hindu and Sikh families where women were abducted and almost certainly raped, this family refused to acknowledge the existence of these sisters, for their history was one history of shame, best forgotten. And here we were, fifty years later, standing on that very same spot, in the slanting, late morning light, being welcomed by people from Thamali. "Please come," they insisted to Bir Bahadur Singh. "Please come and bless our house." Bir Bahadur took a drink of water from the young woman, touched his hand to his brow, and blessed his hostess and her children. "We don't have time to stop, daughter," he said to her, "but I would like to give you something small as a token of my love for you who live in this village now." With this, he called down to our driver and asked him to bring his bag out of the car. He pulled out two dried coconuts and held them out to the young couple. "This is a small offering I know, but I would like you to have it. I have lived here, and I know that it's not possible to get dried coconuts here. These are for you with my love, with love from your mother, my wife." And saying this, he embraced these strangers he had met only a few minutes before, touched the bent head of the young woman of the house, and turned to us and said, "Come, let us move toward Saintha."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Global Memoryscapes Copyright © 2011 by The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Introduction Surveying Global Memoryscapes: The Shifting Terrain of Public Memory Studies Kendall R. Phillips G. Mitchell Reyes 1

1 The Persistence of Memory Urvashi Butalia 27

2 Russia's Postcommunist Past: The Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the Reimagining of National Identity Ekaterina V. Haskins 46

3 Making Up for Lost Time: Yugo-Nostalgia and the Limits of Serbian Memory Christine Lavrence 80

4 The Mayrau Mining Museum: Preserving the Past as a Liminal Space in a Liminal Time Margaret A. Lindauer 94

5 Tule Lake: A Memorial to the Forgotten Cynthia D. Cervantes 118

6 Remembering Winnie: Public Memory and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Katherine Mack 133

7 Chilean Historical Memory, Media, and Discourses of Human Rights Kristin Sorensen 159

8 Material Memories of the Ottoman Empire: Armenian and Greek Objects of Legacy Zeynep Turan 173

Contributors 195

Index 197

Editorial Reviews

The empirically-grounded and theoretically-rich essays gathered in this collection emphasize the ways global debates over and encounters about memory may serve both as a viable alternative to and as a means of healing violence.”—Phaedra C. Pezzullo is an Associate Professor of Communication and Culture at Indiana University and the author of the award-winning Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Travel, Pollution, and Environmental Justice.



“This a quite timely topic, and the collection includes some excellent work that makes for compelling reading.”— J. Macgregor Wise is a professor of communication studies at Arizona State University whose most recent book is Cultural Globalization: A User’s Guide


“Global Memoryscapes enriches the scholarly resources available to fuel thinking critically, and perhaps differently, about public memory in an environment where the borders of nation-states are increasingly permeable.”
—Rhetoric Public Affairs

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