While reading the Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, you understand that it is the story about different Indian couples and their relationship. The part that stood out to me the most is the relation that was viewed by the eyes of a young child. Her family often invited their friend over to their house, Mr. Pirzada, to have dinner and to watch the news and to have someone to talk with. He was separated from his wife and 7 daughters at the time because he was given a grant to work on something. Often he would come over for dinner and watch the news to see what was happening with the war with his home country, Bangladesh.
There was a lot of things that lead up to the war. Pakistan first gain independence as a country with two different areas according to Anam Zakaria. The East part of Pakistani is now just Pakistani and the East part of Pakistani is Bangladesh today. Bengali rights were not being respected nor was it being made important and many Bangladesh people were upset.
“The refusal to accept Bengali as a state language of Pakistan in the early years after Partition, economic disparity between the two parts, the hegemony of the West Pakistani ruling elite over Pakistan, martial laws, and a demeaning attitude towards Bengali culture and the Bengali population soured relations between the two parts” (Zakaria).
The country at the time was also divided by religion. The war in 1971 started because Bangladesh, which is the East part of Pakistan, wanted to separate themselves from the West part of Pakistan. The East part of Pakistani is now just Pakistani and the East part of Pakistani is Bangladesh today. It lead to many innocent Bengali people being murdered by the Pakistani Army. It was a short war that did not even last 2 weeks. The war was won on December 16, 1971.
Before the war was over, people left the country because they felt unsafe with all of the violence happening in the area. There was around 10 million people leaving and going to India. People who leave their home country for safety reasons and wars are considered refugees. Bangladesh had to give up and fight hard for their independence from Pakistan. At the end of the war, about 300,000 to 3 million people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands of women were raped according to Anam Zakaria. On December 16, 1971 Pakistani army surrender ending the war.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/12/16/remembering-the-war-of-1971-in-east-pakistan
I enjoyed reading your Context-Research Presentation this week! Prior to reading this context-research presentation, I was unaware of much of the conflict that had taken place in Pakistan, especially regarding specific events. I also realized that I had never taken the time to recognize how the environment in Pakistan could affect each and every individual to a large extent. In Lahiri’s short stories, we were introduced to Mr. Pirzada, an immigrant from Pakistan. Your context-research presentation allowed me to better contextualize the short story and create a deeper connection with Mr. Pirzada’s character.