YOUTH’S PERCEPTION ON THE SPIRIT AND ACHIEVEMENT OF THE 1971 LIBERATION WAR OF BANGLADESH: A QUALITATIVESTUDY

Abstract

Bangladesh as a nation state is yet struggling to ensure full rights for the citizens since its independence in1971, which was achievedby the dint of killing about 3 million lives, raping2,00,000 women, and displacing 10 million people. This country hadto face severalmilitary interventions throughits democratic journey rombirth. Therefore, thedemocratic process has been hampered and did not flourish on its natural flow. In addition, the extremist Islamic political parties (who played a predominantly antagonistic role during the 1971 liberation war) also continued their backdoor politics against the sentiment of the 1971 liberation war as well as against the liberal political party such as Bangladesh Awami League. For these obstructions on the way tothesmooth development of this country, mass people to the scholarsare now in qualmabout how far to go to ensure the fruit of independence for its citizens. However, this contradiction has created the two groups broadly: one group argues that people of this free country yet to wait for enjoying the basic needs/rights, and the other group out rightly supports that people are happy on the point that they, at least, areliving in their own country which has its separate sovereignty.This paper considered tenuniversitystudents from the University of Dhaka and Noakhali Science and Technology University purposively for in-depth interviews.The study was conducted to know about how the youths perceive the spirit and achievement of the 1971 liberation warin this twenty-first century. Results show that the students are very positive about the achievement of the 1971 liberation war and they are very enthusiastic to know about this blood sacrificing war