Ekattorer Ekattor Nari

By profession Supa Sadia is Public Relations Officer of Stamford University Bangladesh. But her passion is writing. Ekattorer Ekattor Nari (71 women of '71)  is indeed a commendable work she has done with great care. The popular mainstream narrative of the 1971 War of Liberation has remained confined for the past 40 years in describing the struggle for, and resulting in, the independence of Bangladesh as a matter of achievement in exchange of 30 lakh lives of martyrs and the 'honour' of two lakh women.

Unique ways of participation in and passing the war by the nation, but for a rare few, were never in the spotlight as were the account of deaths, physical injuries and armed combat. Women, in particular, remained the victims of war rather than active participants, both in the war fields and other fronts of war.

While the men warriors became heroes after the victory in the war, women on the other side could not get the honour of warriors but carried the wounds of war as they were being treated as victims in the nomenclature of 'birangana'.

Ekattorer Ekattor Nari (71 women of '71) by Supa Sadia claims to register a 'protest' in favour of women of 1971 against this conventional narrative of the war. The recently published book chronicles lives of not only the women warriors but women from all walks of life, from every nook and corner of then-East Pakistan, in every role in or out of the war. They are not 71 in number, as the title says, but 72, with a bonus of the then-Indian premier, Indira Gandhi, as she had a significant stake in the war.

The book describes the tales of women participants of war, who were armed warriors, liberation war organisers, had offered nursing assistance, were mothers and wives of martyrs, better halves of leaders and martyred intellectuals. They were also the rape victims, women who assisted the whole process of war or fought in various intellectual fronts. Thus the author tried to sketch a comparatively broad picture of women in the war of independence in 1971.

The names include martyrs like Ayesha Bedouri Chowdhury, Vagirothi, Selina Parveen; acclaimed warriors like Taraman Bibi, Sitara Begum; active participants in armed war fronts like Naila Khan, Nurjahan Murshid, Matia Chowdhury, Hena Das; freedom fighter organisers Nilima Ibrahim, Sufia Kamal, Salina Hossain, and a number of familiar names besides many unfamiliar ones.

Indira Gandhi's inclusion came as a special appendix in the volume.

The two-year work of Supa Sadia hit the bookstands recently, following a similar book on the 1952 language movement styled Bayannor bayanno nari (literally, '52 women of 52'), published in 2011.

 The reviewer is a major in English Literature and a part-time reviewer.