Women and war: coping with rape after 1971

The most acute form of vulnerability women experience is rape and Bangladesh saw the largest incidence of rape during 1971. In war situations, rape is common and the horror of war is largely defined by such acts. Yet the violent reaction by Bangladeshis to their raped women produced a second generation of violence against them. It's not just about what communities experience through sexual violence but how societies react towards the victims as well.

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When mass rape in 1971 became obvious there was general anxiety all around and stories of how women were preferring death to rape became a common expression. Sexuality thus became more important than life in social eyes. I would like to state that I have asked several raped women if they would prefer death to rape. The answer has been that before rape death was considered by a few but in post-rape situations they wanted to live.

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We all know the horror of rape but post-rape horror was no less. Begum Maleka Khan, who worked with raped women who had become mothers says, "When I think of them I become emotional. When the mothers would learn of the child's birth they would react differently. Some would scream saying no, no, I don't want to see the child who has caused so much suffering to me. Others would be torn between the instinctive love towards one's child and what it meant as a consequence. Many would turn their face away knowing what a war baby meant socially. A few placed motherhood above all and embraced the child."

In a society where bearing a child for women is the most important thing, bearing a child became the greatest burden. Dr. Davis, a doctor who worked on raped women in 1971 has mentioned that those who reached him were the lucky ones since most resorted to dangerous indigenous methods of abortion. Extreme social panic swept through Bangladesh in 1972 particularly in rural areas. People knew of rapes and its impact and so did the victim and by extension the family. Secrecy became a necessary tool for survival.

Our societies have a private space where much is possible, but societies also have a public space where very little is allowed and in case of sexuality this private-public demarcation is very sharp. Although rape is necessarily a forced act, a violent act and in 1971, primarily a war crime, it's shorn of all its dimensions and turned into a private act of transgression. So adultery and rape becomes one and therefore causes the same level of stigma.

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People do not include the sexual 'outsider' in society which includes both the adulterer and the raped. Once sexuality reaches the public space, it threatens structures within society particularly the family unit which serves society as no other institution does. This collective behaviour pattern is not very kind or compassionate towards rape victims but is considered necessary by society to provide a variety of stabilities. It's not about good or bad, it's about the cultural construction that society's used to preserve itself and its public norms, images and myths.

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It took our embedded associate several months to become friendly enough to know the information flow within the village and find out that there were several incidents of rape there. However, as a form of protection they had created a symbolic raped woman, a landless man's wife, who was 'hired' if you were to absorb all the public inquisitive pressure.  Thus, by creating a public victim, — she was raped also — and ensuring a livelihood for her, all interest of the people and the attendant threats to their collective life was diverted and the village became 'safe.' It was one of the more successful examples of coping with the consequence of rape that I have seen.

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The violence of rape disclosure can be observed from the experience of the Kumarkhali women who after their public acknowledgement of rape suffered so horrendously that we were shocked at the capacity of collective human cruelty. While producing a documentary on 'women and 1971', we came across one of the three 'disclosers' who was unable to eat due to stress, was convinced she had cancer. She showed me her medical reports and said she didn't want to live. Local journalists said that people in the village wouldn't let the family use public ponds and children were taught to mock the family.

Life for them was so terrible that I looked back almost with relief at the case of two sisters in a Kushtia village who had been raped in July 1971. They were so stigmatised, they committed suicide even when the war was on.  Perhaps they thought it was a better thing to do given what women experienced after their rape incidences become public knowledge.

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In another case, women who were raped were helped by other women of the village to keep it a secret.  So they never ever discussed it and I was told that the men never came to know of it or never asked. I asked them if there was a question of the secrecy system failing and somehow men would come to know all that.  This is what she replied: "To create problems for a family, other men would have to know. We never discuss it with them so they never know. Only we, women talked about it once in a while."

I had asked her, if some of the husbands knew. She had said, "That's quite possible isn't it. But why should they make a private pain public and cause problems for themselves?''

In this connection, I had asked a lady from Barisal about war babies and I was shocked to hear that there was a war baby in her village. She said that initially some people made some noises but the child was from a poor family and had no property on which claim could be made by others so it was forgotten and the war baby grew up without hindrance.

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The final case is about a lady from Dhaka whose husband was killed and she was forced to spend sexual time with a Pakistani army officer under threat which qualifies as rape. When she returned home, she faced the obvious stigma and she ran away to a family friend's house outside Dhaka along with her young daughter. Facing similar situation there she took an extreme decision and contacted the Pak army officer who met her and hearing her plight agreed to marry her.  So she left her daughter with an elderly family friend and departed for Pakistan. The child was raised by this couple and she was married off later and her shaheed father and missing mother was never discussed. The mother didn't contact the child again.

Before leaving she had said that at least she was sparing her daughter the agony of being the child of a raped woman.

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Rape is terrible but living with rape is even more so – it lasts a lifetime.

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Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist and researcher.