In the vociferous discussions surrounding wars and violent conflicts in contemporary society, what we often hear are discussions of numbers and geopolitical calculations.

Questions of empathy, meanwhile, are increasingly pushed to the margins, not only within the field of war studies but also in everyday public discourse. Nations remain all too willing to identify 'enemies' and imagine 'others' as fundamentally different from the 'self'. Technocratic conversations on the legality and efficacy of warfare reduce human life to statistical figures.

Amidst this, do literature and art offer an alternative viewpoint through which we can recognise the vulnerability of human life, the futility of warfare, and the human cost associated with conflicts? In a world where even the most intellectually cultivated minds around us reveal themselves as capable of the most horrid kinds of cruelty and complicity, does such optimism seem untenable?

These are some of the questions that animate my current research project, which examines narratives inspired by the 1971 Bangladesh War, searching for the undercurrents that lie in the shadows of nationalist glory.