Illustrator: Asha Dangol
Bīrāṅganā (বীরাঙ্গনা), which translates into war heroine in Bangla means ‘brave women’, which was the title given to the 200,000 to 400,000 Bangladeshi women who were raped and made sex slaves in military rape camps by the Pakistani Army during the 1971 Bangladeshi Independence War.
I distinctly remember first learning about their struggles when researching into the liberation of Bangladesh, after I had heard a passing comment by Amā, who was hesitant on celebrating Independence Day because of how traumatic the war was for women in contrast to my dad.
I believe most of the diaspora can relate to this when I say our parents do not speak about the war – it’s like that secret everyone knows but never mentions; we might hear small snippets but in my particular case I researched most of it on my own before I asked my parents.
In no way do I blame them for the coping mechanisms they use in dealing with a truly horrific and genocidal war. It was 2012, I was 16 in Bangladesh when I asked my parents, after meeting my Nāni, about the war. As I sat there awkwardly trying to get over the language barrier, I could not help but wonder what she was doing in the war, what had happened to her, what was her story?
That night I heard about stories of the war before I could not imagine even thinking of. You can read as many books about 1971 possible yet there is a certain context with which only those who lived through it can comprehend.
Amā went on to talk about the stories that she had heard growing up, about how Pakistani soldiers would come village to village, killing whom they please and taking girls and women as young as 7 and as old as 75 to the rape camps.
She told me how Nāni’s mum and all her sisters had to hide for days in the attic when they heard that the soldiers were coming. How so many women and girls got dragged by their saris, how their screams can be still heard, how girls she grew up with were never seen again, how no amount of rainfall can wash away the stench of blood from those nine months.
After this summer, I took it upon myself to learn about their struggle. The struggle of the Bīrāṅganā is important to me because of how much these women had to suffer and historically how much Bangladeshi women have had to suffer.
The Bīrāṅganā are still alive today which reaffirms how, given the living collective consciousness of the tragedy, history is still wet with the blood of their loss and survival. They are still living with their stigma they are still living with their trauma.
This is another example of how our pain is erased, war is gendered it means different things for different genders. Yet it is always the women who suffer the most and it is always the struggles and pain of women that are never fully acknowledged. The last stage of every genocide is denial, and so the denial of the genocidal rape, which gets erased from the discourse surrounding war, is violence in itself. Their pain has still not been acknowledged, and their muted pain, if anything, is being erased.
This is why it is imperative for us, as the Bangladeshi diaspora, to know of them, and to know of the Bīrāṅganā. How can we expect others to know when we do not even know? Why do we not know? We need to let go of this performative nationality we indulge in and we must start understanding these struggles for no one but ourselves, and the honour of the sacrifice made by our ancestors. Otherwise, these stories will fade away with them too.
By Tasnima Uddin