Dhaka, Dec. 22 -- December is a month of memory in South Asia, but memory, like power, is never neutral. How it is framed, what is remembered and what is omitted often reveal more than the words themselves.

This year, as Bangladesh marked Victory Day, many here noticed not only what was said across the border, but what was conspicuously left unsaid. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's message commemorating 16 December 1971 spoke at length about Indian soldiers, Indian valour and India's historic victory, yet Bangladesh, the land where that war was fought and whose independence was sealed that day, did not merit a single mention.

For a country whose birth was the very consequence of that war, the silence was not a mere oversight. It fe...