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Bina D'Costa's NationBilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia
(originally published in 2011 and republished in 2015) rightly finds
space in the Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series. D'Costa
problematises the exclusion of women's and other subaltern narratives of
the nine-month long 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh and its aftermath
in the nation-building process in Bangladesh. She argues that subaltern
narratives have been either delegitimised or selectively appropriated
by the elites and nationalists to fit their patriarchal imagination of
the nation. She further argues that this process of silencing subaltern
narratives in the larger national narrative has had a precedent in South
Asia in the nation-building process of both Pakistan and India, whereby
both have delegitimised women's memories and narratives of the
partition of 1947.
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Building upon feminist scholarship that mark nationalism as gendered and constructed (Carol Pateman's The Sexual Contract (1998); Nira Yuval-Davis and Flavia Anthias' edited volume Women, Nation, State (1989); Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland's edited volume Gender and International Relations, (1991); Nira Yuval-Davis' Gender and Nation (1997) and others), D'Costa sets upon herself the challenging task of reading the silences of official history on the Birangona,
the raped woman during the Bangladesh nationalist movement and
recovering a history that is inclusive of the lived realities of the
people, especially the women.
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D' Costa argues that the silencing of women's narrative in a
post-conflict state is necessary for maintaining the 'state's imagined
purity' (p.1) within the patriarchal imagination of the state where the
state is imagined as a female and perpetually in danger of being
invaded. Thus, in this construct, the narratives of rapes, forced
marriages and forced impregnation of women symbolically pollute the
national identity and have to be suppressed— their memories
delegitimised. Using a feminist constructivist view D'Costa outlines
how, in violent conflicts in recent times, women's bodies have been used
symbolically to construct a national identity.
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This is evident in the official process of 'recovery' of 'abducted
women' in the aftermath of partition. Both India and Pakistan denied
agency to the women in question; women themselves had no say on their
future or on that of the children born of them during the period, as
such children were seen to belong with their father and father's
country. Religious identity was used as the primary criterion to decide
the fate of the children (p. 69). D'Costa relies upon literature to
build upon this narrative (G.D. Khosla's Stern Reckoning: A Survey of the Events Leading up to and Following the Partition of India (1949); SDPP papers; Urvashi Butalia's The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (1998); R. Menon and Kamla Bhasin's Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition
(1998)). Similarities are found in the course of the rehabilitation
program for women in the aftermath of the 1971 Liberation War which is
at the crux of the book and is dealt in details in Chapters four and
five.
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Chapter three gives a detailed historical and socio-political analysis
of the reasons for the war and breaking away of East Pakistan (now
Bangladesh) from West Pakistan (present day Pakistan). Major among these
were the long territorial distance and lack of direct land
communication between the two parts of the nation, economic
monopolisation of the industrial assets by few families from West
Pakistan and the exclusion of the language and cultural symbols of the
Bengali majority of East Pakistan. The Bhasha Andolan or Language
Movement of 1952, a massive movement, had led to the subsequent
recognition of Bengali as a state language. Further, there was
inadequate representation of Bengalis in the army, bureaucracy and the
parliament. Political parties and leaders of East Pakistan were critical
of this institutionalised discrimination against the Bengalis. In the
General Election of December 1970 Awami League, the principle opposition
party in East Pakistan led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, gained an
electoral majority but was not invited to form the government. Further,
martial law was promulgated in East Pakistan in March 1971 to restrain
the civil disobedience movement and overpower the intelligentsia and the
political leaders. On the direction of Mujibur, who had already been
arrested, Bangladesh was declared independent and all Bengalis were
called upon to fight the Pakistani army. The following nine-month-long
military rule in East Pakistan under Lieutenant General Tikka Khan was a
strategic genocide which targeted the intelligentsia, Bengalis and
supporters of the Muktibahini or the Liberation army set up by the
Bangladesh government in exile.
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At the crux of the work is the embittered history of South Asia, the
partition of India and Pakistan, and the persecution of the 'hinduised'
Bengali Muslims of East Pakistan based on their 'unIslamic' practices of
allowing their women to participate and publicly perform songs and
dances. The wearing of sari and bindi was proclaimed by the political
and religious leaders of Pakistan to be 'unIslamic', and the growing
mistrust of the Bengali Muslims who were seen to be close to Indian
Bengalis because of their common culture, language and love for Tagore.
Language and culture became the axis around which popular perception
about and against the Bangladeshi nationalist movement was built on both
sides. The clerics in Eastern Pakistan too saw it as an interference of
India in Pakistani matters and believed that the Bengali women need to
be chastised and if required 'raped' and 'impregnated' by the Pakistani
army and their collaborators.
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Over the years the government of Bangladesh, Pakistan and India had
entered into various treaties over the issue of prisoners of war, war
crimes and trial of war criminals, yet there has been no progress in
getting justice for the Birangonas. According to D'Costa, the Bangladesh
government strategically used the data pertaining to war crimes and
rapes to get international help and aid in the aftermath of the war. It
acted in a fashion similar to the Indian and Pakistani government in the
post-partition period. In the manner of a patriarch it established
abortion and adoption programmes for the children born out of the war
rapes. There was little room for the women (whose age, social and
educational conditions varied enormously) to exercise their agency. They
were left at the makeshift government rehabilitation centres where they
waited their parents or relatives to take them back, which often did
not happen. The other government step for rehabilitation was aimed at
marrying these women victims off with a dowry. This often failed as men
would do away with the dowry and leave the woman behind. The process of
economic rehabilitation was almost a non-starter. Over the years the
rehabilitation program was merged with the Women's Ministry which
brought an end to the testimonies and information of rape survivors and
the rehabilitation centre.
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In the course of her field work in rural Bangladesh in late 1990s and
early 2000, D'Costa is faced with silences around women's narratives and
is confronted with difficulties in identifying and accessing
Birangonas, as the stigma attached to them would cause a social death.
The silence is imposed on the women through a long political process and
through the traditional patriarchal society (p. 115). D'Costa also
interviewed various Bangladeshi social workers, nuns from the
Missionaries of Charity, social workers from India and a doctor from the
International Planned Parenthood and UNFPA who were part of the
Bangladesh government's rehabilitation program in the aftermath of the
war. She also interviewed an author who had compiled and published life
stories of Birangonas and members of the civil society who were involved
in the justice movement for Birangonas.
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D'Costa laments that Bangladeshi feminists have not protested at the way
injustice has been meted out to Birangonas over the decades by
successive governments. There has been a political silencing in the way
the government treated them. Further, society relegated the women to
home and hearth in the post-war scenario which resulted in a decreasing
presence of women in activism; men gained independence while the women
did not. The few women who did speak up were questioned and stigmatised.
The government granted amnesty to all prisoners of war, many of the
collaborators of Pakistani army and religious leaders who supported the
Pakistani army went on to become ministers and part of the bureaucracy.
Individuals responsible for the war crimes were never held responsible
while the mistrust amongst the communities continued leading to what
D'Costa terms 'brittle peace'. It was only after the 2008 parliamentary
elections in Bangladesh, where the Awami League came to power with
trials for war crime as part of its election manifesto, that the
International Crime Tribunal (ITC) was established in 2010 and several
cases were reopened.
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In the final chapters, D'Costa argues that the Bangladeshi feminist and
civil society has to lead the nation towards peace. She argues that
lasting peace can be achieved through a multipronged process
encompassing individual empowerment as well as transnational networking
and peace building. She exerts feminists and activists to help transform
the lives of the Birangonas from the context of 'victimisation' to
'self-assertion'. At the same time, civil society and feminists have to
build upon transnational networks such as SANGAT (South Asian Network
for Gender Activists and Trainers)—which has been actively working in
the area of transnational feminism in South Asia since 1990s—to garner
support for their demands of people's tribunals for war crimes. She
suggests learning from the way people's tribunals in different
post-conflict nations have come to recognise and prosecute war crimes,
especially, sexual violence. D'Costa also lays open the various hurdles
that might confront such a public tribunal—lack of government support
and state constraints on non-governmental organisations; lack of
transnational networking amongst feminists and lack of required
expertise on various issues; shortage of funding and challenges in
maintaining confidentiality. Learning from earlier attempts by feminists
and activists to claim justice for the Birangonas, D'Costa unpacks each
of these probable hurdles and tries to suggest ways to overcome these.
In doing so, she endeavours to provide a road map for peace building and
justice in South Asia.
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The book is an important contribution in the field of women studies,
political science, international relations and South Asian studies. It
gives the reader a view into the particular communal history of South
Asia, the way women and minority communities have been violated and
repressed under majority religious and nationalist ideologies. It is
also a timely contribution (along with other works on Bangladesh such as
Yasmeen Saikia's Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh (2011); and Nayanika Mookherjee's The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War of 1971
(2012) and literature from India on partition) from the subcontinent
towards feminist literature on the gendered process of nation building
and hegemonic national identity. It shows possibilities of alternatives
through the inclusion of micro-narratives and subaltern perspectives.
Lastly, in its recognition and call for strengthening transnational
feminist networks, it offers an alternative to the nation state and
makes way for further transnational collaborations in South Asia.
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