ABSTRACT
Inside Bangladesh, ghosts haunt; a multitude of small and often unkempt shrines and monuments to killing fields feature in almost every town and many villages. To transfer from Christianity the language of 'original sin' to label the burden Bangladesh carries from a failure to deal with its past, and in particular the events of 1971, itself displays the difficulty of finding a concept and vocabulary for a very real existential legacy. Bangladesh was created in a nomos dominated by Cold War politics and Westphalian sovereignty and was called a basket case by Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State. The Economist called the war crimes trials 'the trial of the birth of the nation'. Militant democracy is, in a sense, the concept that solves the paradox that confronts one when a democracy acts as if to undercut itself but claims to do so to preserve democracy.
