Seventh Session Forum on Minority Issues 25-26 November, 2014 Mofidul Hogue Trustee, Liberation War Museum Bangladesh Role of Memory in Building Peace and Managing Diversity The draft recommendations on preventing and addressing violence and atrocity crimes targeted against minorities have focused on three major aspects of the problem. On the other hand, the note by Special Rapporteur and the agenda of the Minority Forum has added the issue of avoiding renewed violence — building the peace and managing diversity. We think the last section has brought a new dimension to the whole problem under discussion. Violence and atrocity crimes against minority which often turns into genocidal attacks has deep-rooted historical, social, economic and cultural roots and it is imperative that the stakeholders take due account of those. In almost every case of violence against minority there is a majority involved who can be made to play the role of instigator, abettor, planner and/or executioner of such atrocities. How to address both the minority and majority is essential part of the problem and here lies the importance of culture, education and memory in managing diversity and preventing atrocities. The efforts to ensure protection and promotion of minority rights often create a situation where the communities live together but separately. This is a problem which needs to be addressed in our effort to promote diversity. Without the understanding of otherness of other people one cannot expect the tolerance and respect for otherness to flourish in the society. It is also to be understood that communities have multiple identity and many things in common which binds and brings them together. The emphasis on separate and conflicting identity of Hindus and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent has given rise to massive partition violence of 1947 which led to the establishment of Pakistan on the basis of sole Muslim "national" identity. In 1971 in the very same state of Pakistan the brutal attack by the military junta on the Bengali civilian population of East Pakistan, majority of those were Muslims, resulted in one of the massive violence of the 20th century. The two historical events of 1947 and 1971 are inter-related and there are many studies on the subject, but most forceful ones are those of memory. We have a lesson to learn from history when Muslim-Hindu communal violence erupted deep in rural Bengal in Noakhali in 1946 which greatly disturbed Mahatma Gandhi. In communal clashes in the urban areas the contending groups do not know each other, but in rural community they are living together side by side for many many years. If one community resort to mass atrocities like killing members of other group, forcibly changing their religion, target their women for sexual violence it signals the breakdown of common and shared community life. Neighbors killing neighbors are worst kind of mass violence. To confront such reality and rebuild the community Gandhi at his old age decided to walk through the villages of Noakhali and address both the community. 73 years old Mahatma Gandhi with only few of his colleagues went from one village to another for more than two months and met the victims and perpetrators. His work in Noakhali deserves to be studied more thoroughly. He specially addressed the majority Muslim population, the perpetrators of violence and tried to