Sondesh

Laurent WEYL : THE INCONSTANT ARCHIPELAGO

In the region of the haors, in the northeastern part of Bangladesh, the floods last six months. The inhabitants have learned to live with this unusual cycle which confines them to living six months of the year in isolation.

This series is part of a a report on two seasons in the island village of Abdullapur. For one month, the rice harvest attracts reapers, gleaners and merchants from all over the region.

 The prosperity of the landowners is measured by the size of the rice bales in their courtyards. Some are over seven meters high. The rice is always reaped by hand. During the biggest harvests, the day laborers can work up to twenty hours per day. At harvest time, the reapers from all over the region construct long cabins of bamboo and straw where they take shelter during the night.  Unlike the harvesters, the people who work the rice after the reaping are for the most part natives of the village. The women, who are usually limited to domestic work, make a major contribution.

Less than fifty years ago, a thick forest of hijols stood in the place of the rice paddies. Once a common native tree of the haors, now cut down for fuel, these trees are fast disappearing.

In researching for my short play I came across the stories of the Birangona women - survivors of rape and assault during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The title, “Blameless Woman”, was meant to be a mark of respect as given by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the Father of Bangladesh), but instead it became a slur, a way for these women, hundreds of thousands of them, to be shunned, forgotten, thrown away.

There was a book by scholar and feminist activist Nilima Ibrahim, Ami Birangona Bolchi that documented the stories of these women. This video was made by UK’s Komola Collective, which is putting on a performance piece about these women very soon.

What struck me about the stories was how determined, proud, and outspoken these women are. They were ANGRY - not just at the Pakistani soldiers, but also at their fellow Bangladeshis, some of them family members, for betraying them and adding to their hurt. They held complex and ambivalent feelings about their country: proud and owning their titles as War Heroines, but unhappy at how their stories were getting ignored and forgotten.

There was an article about an Australian doctor that helped these women get abortions, and if there were babies delivered they were sent to International Social Services for adoption. The doctors claim that the women willingly went through the abortions; some of the women say that they fought hard to deliver the babies but were coerced into abortion. Even the ones that delivered the babies talked about their anger with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman for taking their babies away; his logic was that “these babies would be unwanted anyway and they would have a much better life elsewhere”. Patriarchal or pragmatic, who knows. I still don’t know what happened to those kids; maybe they have been as lost to history as these women were.

I sent a draft of my script to my mum and she asked me about the mention of the Birangona; she knew the term as War Heroine and didn’t understand why I would write that particular character (a friend of the couple) as shunned by her family. That she knew these women existed was a big step forward; that she didn’t know about the betrayal by her own country was heartbreaking. But then again, I had no clue about all this till about a week ago and I’m learning new things every day.

Resources:

Breaking Down the Birangona: Examining the (Divided) Media Discourse on the War Heroines of Bangladesh’s Independence Movement by Kajalie Shehreen Islam (.PDF)

Wikipedia article on rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War

Profile of Nilima Ibrahim, writer of Ami Birangona Bolchi

English translations (by Dr. Nusrat Rabbee) of survivor accounts from Ami Birangona Bolchi, with current-day photos of Bangladesh and the Birangona

Account of Mrs. T Nielson, a Birangona who fled to Europe to start life anew after being ostracised in Bangladesh (also translated from Ami Birangona Bolchi)

Photography and poetry about the Birangona by Tarfia Faizullah

Information on the performance of Birangona: Women of War

Interview with Dr. Geoffery Davis, the aforementioned Australian doctor that assisted Birangona with abortions and deliveries

NBC News footage from 1972 about the Birangona

Disgusted? Ashamed to call yourself a Bangladeshi? Don’t lose hope.

Pictures from Day 4 of the “Clean Up Dhaka” initiative:-

What’s most important in making a mistake, is making ammends for those mistakes.