“How can a woman’s body instigate so much hatred and violence? If we need to shame a family, we go after their daughters. If we need to shame a country, we go after their daughters. It’s the same mindset.”
On December 16, 1971, Bangladesh got independence after a nine-month liberation war against West Pakistan. The war cost 3 million martyrs and the dignity of over 0.4 million women. Almost 1/3rd of the Bangladeshi population was affected by the unrecorded atrocities committed by the Pakistani army and the Razakars.
In the early 1980s, Bangladesh was not only fighting a war for its liberation, but there were a number of wars that broke out within the country itself, which resulted in changing the geopolitical landscape of the South Asian region. In this blog, I have identified and mentioned four wars that took place during that period in the Bangladeshi landscape:
An internal war between the Urdu and Bengali speaking population of Pakistan, which ultimately culminated in all other wars.
The war for Bangladesh’s liberation, popularly called the Liberation War of 1971.
The international war between India and Pakistan.
Gender war.
The term “Gender War”, a war against the women of East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh), was first mentioned by Yasmin Saikia in her book “Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971”. In this period of nine months, millions of women were raped and got impregnated. Though the official figures vary, the record points that the number of rapes committed by the Pakistani army and the Razakars crosses more than 400,000.
In this struggle for freedom, various intersectional factors played a role in shaping the experiences and nature of atrocities committed against the women of Bangladesh. Through this blog, I have made an attempt to analyse the contribution of various intersectional identities, such as gender, race, ethnicity, linguistic and religious affiliations, in inflicting sexual violence against Bangladeshi women during the Liberation War of 1971.
Gender War: Horrors of 1971
On March 25, 1971, Lt Gen Tikka Khan, commander of the Pakistan Army’s Eastern Command (infamously known as the “sobriquet of Butcher of Bangladesh”) started operation “Searchlight”, a military operation aimed at killing and butchering Bengalis in the name of saving Pakistan. The operation led to infliction of massacres, mass rapes and various forms of torture on the country’s populace.
Women were abducted from various corners of Bangladesh and locked up inside the cantonments by the Pakistani army and their local Bengali collaborators. As reported, Bengali captives inside the cantonment could hear the screams of the captured women, when they were being molested and raped. The condition of these rape camps, run by Pakistani forces and the Razakars, was horrendous.
Not only were these women raped and abducted but they were starved, kept without clothes so that they couldn’t commit suicide, brutally beaten, molested and a large number of them got impregnated. After the end of the war, many corpuses and graves were found near these rape camps. Noor Jahan (14-year old survivor) was confined to one such rape camps which were spread across the entire country.
“We lay there like corpses, side by side. There were 20, maybe 30, of us confined to one room. The only time we saw daylight was when the door creaked open and the soldiers marched in. Then the raping would begin.”
Women: Custodians of National Honour
Women are imagined as reproducers of a nation and symbol of honour for both the family and the country. Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias highlighted in their book “Woman-Nation-State”, the role of women in two crucial ways:
Women as a collective symbol of national culture and honour.
Women as biological producers.
Source: Springer
These two roles also played a significant role in aiding the brutal violation against Bangladeshi women in the Liberation War of 1971. Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan gave the orders to begin a campaign of mass rape against Bengali women and girls and impregnate them with “blood from the west”.
Nayanika Mookherjee, in her paper “The absent piece of skin: Gendered, racialised and territorial inscriptions of sexual violence during the Bangladesh war” highlighted and emphasised the role played by the ethical identity of Bengalis in the commencement of the 1971 war. The interviews conducted by her shed light on the verbatim used by the Pakistani army men:
“We [they] would leave behind a Pakistani in the womb of every Bengali woman.”
Rape was seen as medium by the Pakistani army to improve the genes of Bengali population. West Pakistan’s leadership and military commanders considered the Bengali men to be impure and weak. Thus, rape and forced impregnation was a deliberate strategy of Pakistani army to manipulate image of Bengali women as reproductive transmitters.
Layers of Oppression: Intersectionality in Wartime
The sexual violence against Bangladeshi women brought together various intersectional factors, including nationality, religious identity, caste, ethnicity, sexuality and politics. Gender was seen as a trope for race and sexuality. Religion played a crucial role in the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as it was the sole principle that unified two different regions as one nation. However, both West and East Pakistan were separated by geography, language, culture, culinary and various other practices.
Moreover, Bengalis were considered as “half converts”, “Hinduised” and “impure or inferior Muslims”. Due to this reason, the political leadership in West Pakistan started a policy of “forcible cultural assimilation of Bengalis”. Rape was strategically used as a weapon to populate a new race of “Pure Muslims” in the region.
The booty of war (maal-e-gonemat) was the notion used to justify the rape of women in Bangladesh. Bengali Muslim men were considered short, lazy, dark and weak, in comparison to tall, fair and brave men of the West. Furthermore, Hindus, being a minority religion in Bangladesh, were a more vulnerable group and thus faced a larger risk of sexual violence. Linguistic identity was another major intersectional factor as Urdu was seen as a superior language, in comparison to Bengali, and was the mother tongue of the majority of the population of West Pakistan.
Thus, the saga of sexual violence against women in the Bangladeshi Liberation War lies in the differences in Islamic and Bengali identity, along with racial, religious, cultural, historical, ethnic and linguistic variations between these two different regions.
Aftermath of War: Justice Denied
“During wars there is a tendency to take opportunity in the case of an attractive woman. A man would kill a man as the man could otherwise kill him. But women cannot kill a man and above all if a man killed a woman that would be cowardice. But these men could express their masculinity by raping her and rape is like killing a woman.”
Almost 30% of Bangladeshi population has to suffer the repercussions of these mass rapes and massacres. These are just the reported cases, the actual number is much higher. Moreover, the data points that the number of spot rape cases were almost 70%, rest 12% occurred at other places and 18% in designated camps.
The Bangladeshi government soon after the end of the war, gave the title of “birangonas” (war-heroines) to the raped women and shifted the focus to majorly three areas:
Rehabilitation: Various rehabilitation centres were set up for victims.
Abortion: Soon after independence, the government adopted the abortion programme, and international adoption was permitted.
Financial Assistance: Government provided financial assistance in various ways to the victims of war-time rape.
Moreover, the government allowed the destruction of all records of abortions and international adoptions. Thus, at present, there is no official documentation recording the number of these abortions and adoptions. However, Lessa Gazi’s commendable documentary allowed the preservation of testimony of some of the victims of war-time rape.
The United States, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Genocide Watch recognised the Genocide and atrocities committed during the Bangladeshi war. However, it has been more than fifty years since the war ended, and still, the Bangladeshi women have not received an official apology from Pakistan.
“We still haven’t received an apology from Pakistan for the horrendous war crimes it committed against the Bengali people.”
Non-recognition of these atrocities by Pakistan, the United Nations and the rest of the international community demonstrates that justice has not yet been delivered to the victims of these atrocities.
Way Forward: Lessons for the Future
During the War of 1971, the imagination of women as reproducers of a nation and symbols of honour has led to ignorance and violation of their bodily autonomy and integrity. As discussed above, the saga of sexual violence against women in the Bangladeshi Liberation War was infected by the differences in their Islamic and Bengali identity, along with racial, religious, cultural, historical and linguistic variations between these two different regions (East and West Pakistan). The intersectionality of sexual violence, along with other factors, needs to be recognised to better understand its impact on the victims and their families. The genocide of 1971 should be acknowledged to uphold international accountability and prevent future atrocities.
References:
Saikia, Y. (2011). Women, war, and the making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971. Duke University Press.
Mookherjee, N. (2015). The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories, and the Bangladesh War of 1971. United Kingdom: Duke University Press.
Mookherjee, N. (2015). The raped woman as a horrific sublime and the Bangladesh war of 1971. Journal of Material Culture, 20(4), 379-395. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183515603742.
"Operation Searchlight and the University of Dhaka: Beginning of the Liberation War of Bangladesh", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.11, Issue 11, page no.d51-d66, November-2024, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2411309.pdf.
Ranjan, Amit. “Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971: Narratives, Impacts and the Actors.” India Quarterly 72, no. 2 (2016): 132–45. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48505492.
MOOKHERJEE N. The absent piece of skin: Gendered, racialized and territorial inscriptions of sexual violence during the Bangladesh war. Modern Asian Studies. 2012;46(6):1572-1601. doi:10.1017/S0026749X11000783.
Chowdhury, E. H. (2016). War, Healing, and Trauma: Reading the Feminine Aesthetics and Politics in Rubaiyat Hossain’s Meherjaan. Feminist Formations, 28(3), 27–45. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26776835.
Guhathakurta, M. (1986). Gender violence in Bangladesh: The role of the state. Inst. of Social Sciences.
Ranjan, A. (2016). Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971: Narratives, Impacts and the Actors. India Quarterly, 72(2), 132–145. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48505492.
Mookherjee N. The Birangonas (War Heroines) in Bangladesh: Generative Resilience of Sexual Violence in Conflict through Graphic Ethnography. In: Clark JN, Ungar M, eds. Resilience, Adaptive Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice: How Societies Recover after Collective Violence. Cambridge University Press; 2021:143-163.
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