ABSTRACT

The article looks at British India’s Burma campaign of 1941–45 and asks why the decisive battles of Imphal and Kohima appear to be virtually invisible from India’s national imagination today. It further critiques dominant readings of the twin battles for their failure to accommodate the heterogeneity of experiences and contributions of the hill tribes of the India-Burma borderlands who fought in it. The omission appears even more intriguing given that despite being on the winning side, the border communities end up losing the memory battle. While it questions the conventional notion that memory is the postcolonial state’s prerogative, it also recognizes that counter-memories are by no means monolithic. It makes the case for acknowledging alternative constructions and communities of practice that imaginatively decenter the construction of memory in the borderlands. Without connecting with the lives, and in turn, the memories of the border communities who inhabit the physical sites of the war, the cliché of the “forgotten war” will remain an overused, and ultimately, an offensive trope.

摘要

这篇文章着眼于 1941-45 年英属印度的缅甸战役，并询问为什么今天印度的国民想象中几乎看不到英帕尔和科希马的决定性战役。它还进一步批评了对双重战斗的主流解读，因为它们未能适应在其中战斗的印缅边境山地部落的经验和贡献的异质性。考虑到尽管处于胜利的一方，边境社区最终还是输掉了记忆之战，这种遗漏似乎更加有趣。虽然它质疑记忆是后殖民国家特权的传统观念，但它也承认反记忆绝不是单一的。它为承认在边界地区以想象方式分散记忆构建的替代结构和实践社区提供了理由。如果不与生活联系起来，反过来又不与居住在战争现场的边境社区的记忆联系起来，“被遗忘的战争”的陈词滥调将仍然是一种过度使用，并最终成为一种冒犯性的比喻。