Sarmila Bose | |
---|---|
Born | 1959 (age 64–65) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Bryn Mawr College Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Science Harvard Kennedy School |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Oxford |
Sarmila Bose is an Indian-American journalist,academic and lawyer. She has served as a senior research associate at the Centre for International Studies in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. [1] She is the author of Dead Reckoning:Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War, a controversial book on the Bangladesh Liberation War. [2] [3]
Bose belongs to an ethnic Bengali family with extensive involvement in national politics in India. She is the grandniece of Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose,granddaughter of nationalist Sarat Chandra Bose,and daughter of former Trinamool Congress parliamentarian Krishna Bose and paediatrician Sisir Kumar Bose.
Bose was born in Boston in 1959,but grew up in Calcutta,India,where she attended Modern High School for Girls. [4] [5]
She returned to the US for higher studies. She obtained a bachelor's degree in history from Bryn Mawr College,a master's degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School,and a PhD in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. [1] [4]
After her doctorate,she has held teaching and research positions at Harvard University,Warwick University,George Washington University,Tata Institute of Social Sciences,and Oxford University. [4] She has also worked in journalism,writing in both Bengali and English. [4] [5]
In 2024,she advises at the Work Rights Centre in England. [6]
In her 2011 book, Dead Reckoning:Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War, Bose claims that atrocities were committed by both sides in the 1971 Bangladesh War,but that memories of the atrocities had been "dominated by the narrative of the victorious side",pointing to Indian and Bangladeshi "myths" and "exaggerations" which were not historically or statistically plausible. While the book does not exonerate the West Pakistani forces,it claims that the army officers "turned out to be fine men doing their best to fight an unconventional war within the conventions of warfare". The book was criticized by Columbia University professor Naeem Mohaiemen in BBC [2] and Economic &Political Weekly [7] for ahistorical bias in sources. She later responded to three of her critics - Naeem Mohaiemen,Urvashi Butalia,and Srinath Raghavan. [8]
She published Jyotibabu'r Pashchimbanga:ekti adhapataner adhyay the following year; [9] the book looked at the effects of 25 years of Communist authority on education,health and industry in West Bengal.
She has also authored Money,Energy,and Welfare:the state and the household in India's rural electrification policy,published by Oxford University Press in 1993. [10]
In 2021,she published a novella entitled Under Such a Sheltering Sky. [11]
Bose has trained in Indian music and has performed in Calcutta. [4] [5]
Bose's brother,Sumantra Bose,teaches at the London School of Economics. [12] [13] [14] Her brother Sugata Bose was a member of Indian parliament from 2014 to 2019. [15]
Subhas Chandra Bose was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among many Indians,but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan left a legacy vexed by authoritarianism,anti-Semitism,and military failure. The honorific 'Netaji' was first applied to Bose in Germany in early 1942—by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin. It is now used throughout India.
Emilie Schenkl was an Austrian stenographer,secretary and trunk exchange operator. She was the wife or the companion of Subhas Chandra Bose,an Indian nationalist leader.
The Bengal Renaissance,also known as the Bengali Renaissance,was a cultural,social,intellectual,and artistic movement that took place in the Bengal region of the British Raj,from the late 18th century to the early 20th century. Historians have traced the beginnings of the movement to the victory of the British East India Company at the 1757 Battle of Plassey,as well as the works of reformer Raja Rammohan Roy,considered the "Father of the Bengal Renaissance," born in 1772. Nitish Sengupta stated that the movement "can be said to have …ended with Rabindranath Tagore," Asia's first Nobel laureate.
Sugata Bose is an Indian historian and politician who has taught and worked in the United States since the mid-1980s. His fields of study are South Asian and Indian Ocean history. Bose taught at Tufts University until 2001,when he accepted the Gardiner Chair of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University. Bose is also the director of the Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata,India,a research center and archives devoted to the life and work of Bose's great uncle,the Indian nationalist,Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose is the author most recently of His Majesty's Opponent:Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle against Empire (2011) and A Hundred Horizons:The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (2006).
The Bangladesh genocide was the ethnic cleansing of Bengalis,especially Bengali Hindus,residing in East Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War,perpetrated by the Pakistan Armed Forces and the Razakars. It began on 25 March 1971,as Operation Searchlight was launched by West Pakistan to militarily subdue the Bengali population of East Pakistan;the Bengalis comprised the demographic majority and had been calling for independence from the Pakistani state. Seeking to curtail the Bengali self-determination movement,erstwhile Pakistani president Yahya Khan approved a large-scale military deployment,and in the nine-month-long conflict that ensued,Pakistani soldiers and local pro-Pakistan militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence. In their investigation of the genocide,the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists concluded that Pakistan's campaign involved the attempt to exterminate or forcibly remove a significant portion of the country's Hindu populace.
Bose is either a Bengali Kayastha surname or a name of European origin,sometimes as von Bose or Bosé.
Sarat Chandra Bose was an Indian barrister and independence activist.
Anita Bose Pfaff is an Austrian economist,who has previously been a professor at the University of Augsburg as well as a politician in the Social Democratic Party of Germany. She is the daughter of Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) and his wife Emilie Schenkl.
Barun De was an Indian historian. He served as the first professor of social and economic history of the Indian Institute of Management,Calcutta,founder-director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,Calcutta and the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies,Kolkata and as the honorary state editor for the West Bengal District Gazetteers. He was chairman of the West Bengal Heritage Commission.
Anuj Dhar is an Indian author and former journalist. He has published several books around the locus of death of Subhas Chandra Bose that propound theories about his living for several years after the purported plane crash,thus contradicting the current consensus. Dhar is also the founder-trustee of a not for profit organisation,Mission Netaji,which campaigns for the declassification of documents concerning Bose.
Chuknagar massacre was a massacre of Bengali Hindus committed by the Pakistan Army and local Razakars during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. The massacre took place on 20 May 1971 at Dumuria in Khulna and it was one of the largest massacres during the war. According to local estimates,between 10,000 and 12,000 people were killed,though the exact number of persons killed in the massacre is not known. Academic Sarmila Bose,in her controversial book. dismisses claims that 10,000 were killed as "unhelpful",and argues that the reported number of attackers could have shot no more than several hundred people before running out of ammunition. The majority of people killed in the massacre were men,although an unknown number of women and children were murdered as well.
Naeem Mohaiemen uses film,photography,installation,and essays to research South Asia's postcolonial markers. His projects on the 1970s revolutionary left explored the role of misrecognition within global solidarity.
During the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War,members of the Pakistani military and Razakar paramilitary force raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women and girls in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape. Most of the rape victims of the Pakistani Army and its allies were Hindu women. Some of these women died in captivity or committed suicide,while others moved from Bangladesh to India. Imams and Muslim religious leaders declared the women "war booty". The activists and leaders of Islamic parties are also accused to be involved in the rapes and abduction of women.
Dead Reckoning:Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War is a controversial book on the Bangladesh Liberation War written by Sarmila Bose. The book has been accused of flawed and biased methodology,historical negationism and downplaying genocide.
"Ekbar biday de Ma ghure ashi" is a Bengali patriotic song written by Pitambar Das. This song was composed in honour of Khudiram Bose. This song is still very popular in West Bengal (India),Khudiram Bose is highly revered as a hero in India.
Leonard Abraham Gordon is a historian of South Asia,especially of Bengal,whose 1990 book Brothers Against the Raj:A Biography of Indian Nationalist Leaders Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose is considered the definitive biography of Subhas Chandra Bose.
Krishna Bose was an Indian politician,educator,author and social worker. She was a Member of Parliament elected from the Jadavpur constituency in West Bengal as an All India Trinamool Congress candidate.
Prabhabati Bose was an Indian social activist and politician. She was born in 1869 into a respected Kayastha Bharadwaja clan Dutta family of Hatkhola,in Calcutta North. Her parents were Ganganarayan Dutta and Kamala Kamini Dutta of Kashinath Dutta Road,Baranagore,India. She was her parents' eldest daughter.
Purabi Roy is an Indian multi-disciplinary researcher,author,and an eminent scholar in Russian language and history. She has been visiting professor at Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University in Russian Federation from 2000 to 2006. She is acknowledged as one of the foremost and veteran researchers on Subhas Chandra Bose and a former member of Indian Council of Historical Research.
On 27 March 1971,Bengali members of the East Pakistan Rifles (EPR) and East Bengal Regiment (EBR) stationed in the Mymensingh regiment centre revolted against West Pakistani officers and soldiers stationed there,in response to the Pakistani military's crackdown in Dhaka. The Mymensingh Cantonment massacre is one of the many instances of Bengali military personnel mutinying against their West Pakistani colleagues during the opening stages of the Bangladesh Liberation War.