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AbstractThis paper introduces the concept of in‐situ displacement‐displacement without mobility‐as an analytic for understanding the place of Hindus in Muslim majority East Bengal, East Pakistan, and Bangladesh, a national formation that is best defined as one of a changing identification with Pakistan and India, and, subsequently, as a sovereign country in South Asia. Elaborating the contributions of Corrigan and Sayer on state formation and law, the paper highlights the importance of the judiciary as constitutive of the meanings that attend to belonging in the body politic. Evidence for this argument comes from court cases in the Dacca Law Review.

24 Jahre nach der Entkolonisierung wurde im damaligen Ostpakistan ein zweiter Kampf für Unabhängigkeit ausgefochten, diese Mal gegen Pakistan. Es dauerte weitere 25 Jahre, bis es einem Zusammenschluss von in der Öffentlichkeit stehenden Bürgern gelang, ein Nationalmuseum zum Gedenken des Freiheitskampfes (Muktijuddo Jadughar) zu bauen. Dieser Artikel begreift das Museum als Ort der Zurückerlangung und Aushandlung einer bestimmten Lesart der Geschichte. Hierbei steht die Anerkennung der Bedeutung der Unabhängigkeit für die (Re-)Konstruktion nationaler Zugehörigkeit im Mittelpunkt. Anhand von Debatten um Staat und Nation, Museum und Erinnerung wird gezeigt, wie Öffentlichkeiten "die Geschichte vor der Nation retten" und die Exklusionspraktiken hegemonialer nationalistischer Lesarten in Frage stellen. Die durch Militärherrschaften und fragile Demokratie hervorgerufenen Krisen verweisen dabei auf fortwährende Spannungen zwischen religiösen und säkularen Staatsformen und Forderungen, die vermeintlichen Kollaborateure zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen. Um die Herausforderungen für die aktuelle Geschichtsschreibung anhand des Wiederstands gegen die Exklusion von Ereignissen nachzuzeichnen, wird in dem Museum und seinem Archiv gesammeltes Datenmaterial verwendet.

Twenty-four years after an anti-colonial struggle against the British, the war in East Pakistan was a struggle for a second independence, this time from Pakistan. It took another twenty-five years for a constituency of public citizens to build a national war museum demanding recognition of this genocidal liberation war and its freedom fighters. Focusing on the Muktijoddha Jadughar (Liberation War Museum) as a site of recuperation and contestation, I offer a reading of Bangladeshi history that acknowledges the centrality of independence in (re)constructing national belonging. Drawing on debates on state and nationalism, and museums and memory I show how publics can "rescue history from the nation" and challenge exclusions in the hegemonic nationalist narrative. In this account, the crises of military rule and fragile democratic governments are charted to highlight ongoing tensions between secular versus religious state forms and demands for accountability from those identified as enemy collaborators. Evidence drawn from the Museum collection and archival materials provide the case material for the argument that resistance to the exclusion of events offers a critical site for examining challenges to current accounts of Bangladeshi history.

In this chapter, I interrogate the Vested Property Act (VPA) to explore one aspect of the uneven and contradictory project of democratic state formation in Bangladesh. The Act, initially sanctioned by the state of the then-East Pakistan, and continued in independent Bangladesh through various military regimes and democratically-elected governments, paved the way for the displacement of millions of Hindus from both ownership rights and their security as citizens. By drawing attention to the Act's institutionalisation and struggles over its legitimacy, I show how the promise of democracy, as well as of secularism, reveals the violences that are entailed in actually existing democratic practice, including in the construction of the Hindu citizen as unworthy and a threat to national security. This construction of the minority as "other" and the making of majoritarian rule reveal the violence that attends to a democratic politics that includes everyday inaction and omission, rather than one which focuses solely on acts of force that usually involve physical harm or injury.

The year 2015 was the most violent in Bangladesh since independence. A growing sense of fear and insecurity prevailed, along with a crisis of governance that limited social accountability. However, there were notable contributions to global climate change initiatives, and the Land Boundary Agreement with India offered enclave dwellers the rights of citizenship after almost 70 years.

International audience ; This paper examines how a legal doctrine sanctioning land appropriation from a Hindu minority in Bangladesh, the Vested Property Act, constitutes and regulates space, meanings, and subjects. Foregrounding relations of property ownership, I show how the appropriation of private property, embedded in contingent social, political, and cultural relations, shape the making of place, security, and subjectivity. I argue that relations of social inclusion mark minority identities and suggest that the marginalized are directly and indirectly targets of state action. Thus, relations of inclusion are consequential for how rights claims are enacted literally, on the ground, to shape subjects, forms of subjection, and the materiality of lived space. Two spatial scales are noteworthy: the construction of majoritarian regimes, and the contingent practices of rule and subjection. I support this argument with evidence from court records and interviews collected over the past 15 years. ; Ce papier examine comment le Vested Property Act, une doctrine légale sanctionnant l'appropriation de terre appartenant a une minorité hindoue du Bangladesh, constitue et réglemente espace, significations et sujets. Tout en mettant en avant les relations issues de la propriété privée, mon intention est de démontrer comment les régimes d'appropriation de la propriété privée, ancrés dans des relations contingentes sociales, politiques, et culturelles, affectent les conceptions de l'espace, de la sécurité et de la subjectivité. Je considère que les relations d'inclusion sociale définissent les identités des minorités et suggère que les marginalisés font directement ou indirectement l'objet de l'action de l'État. Ainsi, les modes d'inclusion affectent-ils la manière dont les revendications de droit sont formulées. Deux espaces sociaux sont importants dans ce contexte : la construction de régimes majoritaires et les pratiques contingentes de règles et de subjection. Cette communication sur l'analyse de fichiers judiciaires et ...

Despite a positive economic outlook in 2014, political tensions and income inequalities continue to challenge the country's democratic image. Power has been concentrated in the executive, state violence has increased, and there is pressure to improve working conditions and infrastructure in the garment sector. For the re-elected Awami League government, addressing employment issues is essential, given its focus on attracting foreign investment.

The contemporary Bangladesh economy is marked by sustained increases in women's paid employment, a rise that began in the 1980s with complex and contradictory effects on the lives of women and communities. Today this increase in the numbers of employed women recasts gender relations and the gender and social contract, with wage employment leading to new sources of mobility and social, economic, and political freedoms for women, but also to contestation over rights and security, and, in some cases, to declines in women's welfare. In this paper, I offer a window on the relationship between macro-economic changes in the Bangladesh political economy, the meso-institutional changes created by policy reform, and changes in women's labor market relations. I highlight emergent relations of regulation as they create, organize, and control women's social behavior and normative practice. As I will suggest, the emergent gender division of wage employment in Bangladesh unsettles the causality presumed when changes in economic and cultural organization build on an already available pool of surplus labor that can straightforwardly lead to changes in women's behavior. Three themes animate this discussion. One theme emphasizes the contradictory effects that incorporation into export production has for women; they are simultaneously emancipatory and highly exploitative. Second, I note that neoliberal reforms articulate differently in particular places making it crucial to draw attention to how specific antecedent labor force practices, ideologies, and policies contribute to constructing a female labor force. Finally, I suggest that women are increasingly viewed as disposable and redundant even as their labor is becoming central to imaginings of family maintenance and sustainability.