The Groundbreaking Daughters of East ...

The Groundbreaking Daughters of East Bengal

How a generation of vigorous women shattered gender barriers to serve their motherland...

by Tamim Choudhury

War and women. Women and http://www.desiclub.com/community/culture/culture_article.cfm?id=109war. At first glance in Bangladesh, it is difficult to fathom women's involvement in armed conflict and restoration in a Third World nation where major societal avenues as commerce, education, religion, and politics are dominated by men. I write politics as it is doubtful whether the female chiefs of the two major political parties would have ever ascended to the coveted status without the males in their families. However, during the Earth-shattering months of the Liberation War and the subsequent renaissance period, Bangladeshi women played a grand role as they encountered the occupying army, healed the war-wounded, assisted violated women in recuperating, answering the call for help on multiple fronts.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Looking back at the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, it is politically unfeasible to have two different regions making up one nation; the eastern arena is a low-lying, river-crossed landmass carrying an overwhelmingly homogeneous population with a distinct Sanskritized language and rice-based diet; the western wing is a mountainous terrain holding multiple wheat-consuming ethnicities, where those in the urban helms of power use a Persianized tongue. Separated by more than the physical space of 1000 miles, these areas were married in the name of Islam, their common religion (Dimock 2002).

Troubles rose soon after the honeymoon period, as the leadership hailing from the western quarter demanded for Urdu to be the sole state language. After a bitter struggle, Bengali was officially recognized, but the tides of turbulence had merely surfaced. Tensions stretched as East Pakistan held major shares of population and foreign exchange source, yet hardly 36% of the nation's budget went to this region (Dimock 2002). Clouds gathered for the darkest months of Bengal on December 1970, when the Awami League, the East Pakistani party of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman that demanded regional autonomy, gained a great victory in national parliament, constitutionally making him the next prime minister. Next March, the military and political forces clutching onto West Pakistan halted the constituent assembly. Following the illegal denial of power, vigorous Sheikh Mujib launched a province-wide civil disobedience program. On the Ides of March, General Yahya Khan, president under Pakistan's second martial law, arrived in Dhaka. The military dictator is followed by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, winner of the largest number of seats in West Pakistan. Under the pretext of negotiations with Sheikh Mujib, a massive undercover buildup took place, as troops in plainclothes as well as arms were flown into fertile Bengal. The General departed Dhaka on the horrendous night of March 25, dutifully followed by Bhutto, as the ruthless Pakistani Army was unleashed into the darkness. The army shelled two sleeping student dormitories with their titanic tanks, afterwards breaking inside to shoot the unfortunate survivors. They flamed Bengali-operated police stations, carried Sheikh Mujib into the night, dragging the eastern realm of their own nation into a barbaric war of genocidal proportions (Payne 1973).

Even in the highly patriarchal society of Bangladesh in 1971, women actively participated in the battle for independence. Taramon Bibi was among the liberation warriors valiantly resisting the 100,000-strong army. Using weapons like the submachine Sten gun, she encountered the soldiers on the frontlines of war. Initially, she was recruited to the resistance camp for so-called womanly duties as cooking and cleaning, but her keenness as a markswoman combined with valor made her a commendable combatant (Amin 2002). Neighboring India provided Himalayan heights of support during the war, sheltering millions of Bengali refugees, training freedom fighters, among whom was Gouri Das, a lecturer in a small-town of East Bengal, who turned to espionage. Gouri was certainly not the only woman in this covert field. She trained Bithika Biswas and Kanak Mondal, who regularly crossed the silvery Ichamati River to slip information to the resistance (Malik 1972). Even in sensitive conditions, women like Rokeya Begum assisted freedom fighters. She was pregnant while steering her boat on a nightly basis to provide food for the guerillas camped on a nearby island. Often, some of the liberators would rest at her house while the expecting mother kept surveillance. In a chaotic time when suspected resistance fighters were tortured, executed, or both, these gallant individuals worked against the odds to release golden Bengal from the venomous fangs of an oppressive regime (Amin 2002).

Nursing is pivotal for a resistance force to remain active. Captain Sitara Begum was a commanding officer in the makeshift Bangladesh Hospital in the plateaued, forested eastern state of Meghalaya, India. She left East Bengal at the onset of war, but tended to the wounded freedom fighters and Indian Army who sought healing at the medical center (Amin 2002). On a similar line, after escaping the army in East Bengal, Nasreen Rab worked alongside her husband Captain Rab in establishing a similarly framed hospital in Baropunjee, India (Choudhury 2002). Moreover, Geeta Kar was a 15-year-old medical attendant in another field hospital in Agartala, eastern India. After her father's shocking execution by the scarlet hands of the army, she enlisted in guerilla training. However, fate had a different path for Geeta, as she stepped on the lamp-lit path of Florence Nightingale, healing scores of war-torn souls (Amin 2002).

On a quiet evening on December 3, 1971, the Battle of the Subcontinent was ushered in by the Pakistani Air Force that thunderstruck against several Indian airfields. India swiftly responded by obliterating Pakistani battleships off the coast of booming Karachi, and advancing onto East Bengal with ramming speed. Combined with the 100,000-strong predominately Bengali freedom fighters, whose command headquarters stood in the capital, the campaign to defeat the Pakistani Army, severely deprived of reinforcements and morale, became a simple matter of time. The battle for freedom came full circle on December 16, 1971, as General Niazi, the "Tiger" who governed over East Pakistan, surrendered to Indian General Jagjit Singh Aurora on the same racecourse from where Sheikh Mujib declared the non-cooperation speech nine nightmarish months back (Payne 1973).

The radiance of liberation finally dawned on Bangladesh, but at the cost of an estimated 70% destroyed villages, three million deaths, and 200,000 violated women. None of the attacks were meaningless, huts and croplands were burned down to deprive East Bengalis of shelter and food, the executions that included a vast segment of the nation's professionals were designed to physically and intellectually mutilate the state, the systematic rapes were aimed to dig a psychological scar that will stay long after the assailants are gone. Post-liberation Bangladesh was a ravaged society, desperately in need of rebuilding. Women greatly assisted those heinously violated by the Pakistani Army and local collaborators. The Bangladesh Central Organization for Rehabilitation of Women held a female director, and was among several institutions providing shelter to victimized women. They were offered vocational training to gain economic and social independence, as well as adoption services for the unwanted children, products of violence, neither of whose biological parents would be there to help them grow, learn, develop into well-functioning, proud members of society (Malik 1972).

Leo Tolstoy wrote, "man must inevitably follow the laws laid down for him." The humanitarian rule of helping the distressed, destitute, downtrodden must have moved many women into action, as they strived to promote human welfare. Among women activists in Bangladesh, Begum Sufia Kamal's name plateaus in a league of its own. The noted litterateur founded the Mahila Sangram Parishad during the edge of civil war, a women's organization that supported Sheikh Mujib's regional autonomy plan and an end to martial law. After independence, her organization also reported on and setup rehabilitation opportunities for the myriads of war ravaged women (Chaudhuri 1972). The Arabic word asabiya, sympathy for mistreated ones in the community, comes to mind when writing of welfare workers like Ayesha Nabi, principal of the College of Social Work in Dhaka University, who coordinated activities like visiting abused women in hospitals and counseling their distraught families (Malik 1972). It is startling how the Pakistani government, a member of the United Nations, can easily accept Geneva Civilian Convention Article 27, "women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor, in particular rape," while shredding the dignity of thousands of women in what was then their own nation (Chaudhuri 1972).

On a personal note, I vividly recall visiting Dhaka University on a crisp, December morning of the new millennium. My fair-toned, tall and slim aunt, my tour guide who was a mere child during the blazing Liberation War, points at the grand Invincible Bengal statue and mentions of the monument as being an emblem of Bangladeshi nationalism. As I recently had the fortune of meeting Syed Abdullah Khalid, the man with neck-long, wavy hair and sparkling eyes who chiseled the monument in around a year's time, a heightened sense of appreciation haloes over my image of the figures. The triumvirate of freedom fighters beam off the concrete ground; the rural warrior on the forefront shoulders a rifle while a bullet belt embraces his skirt-like lungi; the urban combatant on right holds his head high while holding a three-nought-three rifle, and on left flank a nurse in a flowing sari caresses a first-aid kit as she looks forward with an illustrious glow.

As this is the sole monument I have seen that cements women's role in the war of 1971, it single-handedly manifests a dynamic generation of Bangladeshi women who battled for freedom on the crimson battlefields and ivory nursing units, and afterwards stretched out their hands to lift a shattered nation. The feminine figure stands tall for the nearly 500 women freedom fighters who held a rally on a similar winter in '95, speaking against continued inequality, injustice in a golden land they helped liberate (Reuters 1995). She firmly holds her ground for the multitude of unsaid, unwritten, unsung women who served their motherland during her greatest need. Their remarkable involvement in liberating and rebuilding their homeland deserves admiration, and should be carved in the halls of nation-building, as these qualities must flow throughout our Gangetic rivers of time.

Work cited from:
Amin, Aasha Mehreen, et al. "Tales of Endurance and Courage." Star Weekend Magazine. March 22, 2002.
"Bangladesh's women warriors call for justice." Reuters. December 15, 1995.
Chaudhuri, Kalyan. Genocide in Bangladesh. Bombay: Orient Longman, 1972.
Choudhury, Muhammed, ed. "Professor Nasreen Rab." Moulvibazar.com. 2002.
Dimock, Edward C. "Bangladesh." Encyclopedia Americana. Grolier, 2002.
Malik, Amita. The year of the vulture. New Delhi: Orient Longman Ltd., 1972.
Payne, Robert. Massacre. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1973.