Birangonas: The liberators left unliberated

The 16th day of this month marked the 46th Victory Day of my beloved country, Bangladesh. I could write a jovial, hyper patriotic and reassuring Victory Day piece, but I will not. Instead, I am going to use this opportunity to touch upon a topic that has long been deemed to be too 'unworthy' of our acknowledgement, too 'dirty' to infiltrate our conscience and too 'impure' to fill the pages of our history books. That is the story of the Birangonas, our forgotten female freedom fighters, who fought not with weapons but with their bodies.

In the Bangladesh Liberation War that lasted nine months, it is estimated that members of the Pakistani military and local collaborators raped between 200,000-400,000 Bangladeshi women. However, even such a high number is believed to be a conservative estimate by Dr. Geoffrey Davis, the Australian abortion specialist who volunteered his medical services to Bangladesh in 1972. It is important to note that rape on such a mass scale was not merely incidental, rather it was deliberately organised to function as a weapon of war. Bengali females ranging from eight-year-old daughters to seventy-five year-old grandmothers were abducted and confined in Pakistani military barracks, where they were raped repeatedly, which often ended in murder ('Why is the mass sexualized violence of Bangladesh's Liberation War being ignored?', Anushay Hossain, The New York Times, March 2016). The ultimate aim of this vicious campaign is believed to have been to disenfranchise and tarnish the vertebrae of Bengali society, i.e. their women, to wipe out the reproducers of future Bengali generations, akin to the targeted killings of Bengali intellectuals (Dr. Nusrat Rabbee; Ami Birangona Bolchi (The War Heroine Speaks), Dr. Nilima Ibrahim). Survivors describe how females were "strapped to green banana trees and repeatedly gang raped. A few weeks later, they were strapped to the same trees and hacked to death'' ('Bangladesh', Women Under Siege Project, Hirche Lent Michele, February 2012). The systematic campaign of this kind of genocidal rape was spearheaded by certain West Pakistani religious leaders who issued fatwas which categorised Bengali women as gonimoter maal (war booty) in a convoluted attempt to give their barbaric war strategy an aura of religious legitimacy.  

After Bangladesh attained independence, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Father of the Nation, conferred the rape survivors the title of "Birangona" (war heroine), as a means to reintegrate the women into society with honour and respect. However, this failed as the public at large still viewed these women as a symbol of "social pollution" and shame, dishonoured and defiled by the abhorrent enemies beyond redemption ('Ravished women of 1971: For whom the bell tolls', The Daily Star, December 2013). Consequently, the term Birangona became more and more associated with the derogatory term barangona (prostitute), and these women came to be viewed as the spoils of war. An official strategy of marrying the women off was largely unsuccessful as not many men came forward, and the few who did expected the state to pay a large dowry. Those women who were 'lucky' enough to get married were usually maltreated, and the majority of men, once having received the dowry, abandoned their wives.

For these women who were ostracised by society, abandoned by their husbands and even disowned by most of their own families, their lives were one of destitution. The plight of the Birangonas can be tragically juxtaposed with those deemed worthy of being officially recognised as 'freedom fighters' who were not only revered by society but also received state benefits such as a monthly stipend, medical care and reserved quotas for their descendants in public recruitment and enrollment in educational institutions. 

As for the thousands of children borne out of the rapes, they were either subject to infanticide or forcibly taken from their mothers and adopted by foreign nationals as no one wanted 'their polluted blood in this country' ('Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World', Christian Gerlach, Cambridge University Press 2010). However, some mothers, unable to bring themselves to look at their 'impure' newborn children, did willingly give away their children to adoption.

After fighting a long and harsh battle for recognition, 41 Birangonas finally received official recognition of 'Freedom Fighters' by the state in 2015. As welcome as this change may be, it must not be forgotten that these women have already lived the better part of their lives in utter misery and stigmatisation. Furthermore, 41 is an awfully minuscule number, not even coming remotely close to covering one percent of the total number of Birangonas, even if the lower estimate of 200,000 is taken into consideration. Even though Jatio Muktijuddha Council promises that "all the Birangonas will be recognised in due course of time,'' the fact remains that most of them have already died and those who are still alive may not live to see it, given the state of bureaucracy. So while terminology and legal classifications may be reversible, the lives that these women have led as a result of our misdoings in the past remain irreversible. They lived and died as liberators who were failed to be liberated. For indeed, justice delayed is justice denied. Therefore, I remain unable to wholeheartedly partake in rejoicing our Victory Day, for I strongly believe that until the Birangonas receive the honour, respect and heed that is so truly deserved and so long overdue, our 'liberation' remains somewhat self-serving, un-inclusive and incomplete.

The writer is a trainee-advocate at Chancery Chambers in Bangladesh and a legal volunteer at the Bangladesh Society for the Enforcement of Human Rights (BSEHR - Manabadhikar).