Against Silence: Reclaiming Narratives through Oral Stories.
The Oral History section of The BRAIN is envisioned as a transformative platform—one that will house at least 1,000 oral stories spoken and preserved in the real voices of real people who lived through real life situations. These are not second hand, abstract accounts—each story is a personal record of truth deeply rooted in their lived personal experiences. These are individuals who survived rape, torture, arbitrary arrests and unlawful detention, forced disappearances and people who witnessed extra-judicial killings in detention centers.
Every story that has been captured and added to the Oral History Project has been gathered through direct, in-person interviews, conducted by responsible interviewers of the BRAIN. The interview process itself has been designed to empower the storyteller. Throughout this process, highest standards of oral history collection ethics, best practices, respect for the ownership of stories, and confidentiality have been maintained. The BRAIN has signed a deed with the interviewees ensuring that they retain full ownership of their stories, and that no story will be made public without the story teller’s explicit written consent.
Very few books and public literature published on Bhutan have even attempted to offer any honest touch to the realities on ground. For too long, the voices of Bhutan’s minorities have been silenced, overlooked, or left at the margins of history—undocumented and unwritten. In contrast, at the same time, the state has been carefully crafting laws and narratives which could erase minority identities and their rights. By invoking the concepts of active ‘memorialization', ‘remembrance’ and ‘storytelling’ the Oral History Project effectively seeks to reverse this, while ensuring that truth can never be fully erased nor buried forever.
One thousand oral stories—are real, they are lived, and they belong to us. They are our evidence, our history, our legacy, and our truth. One thousand stories—against injustices, persecution, displacement, and state sanctioned violence is a symbol of true resistance and resilience. It will dismantle the illusions about Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness rhetoric, and the state of Bhutan’s human rights conditions. For far too long, the Bhutanese state defined its people. Time has now arrived when the people should define themselves boldly, truthfully, and unapologetically. And, for that, they need to write their own stories. Follow Chinua Achebe’s powerful advice—‘until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter’—and write your own glorious history.
