In denial: a scholar ignores overwhelming evidence of rape in 71

Allegation of rape and violence in war is extremely difficult to substantiate in the courts. Horrific news of rapes, based mostly on witness accounts, begins to surface only towards the end of a war. By that time, evidence (physical) commonly accepted in the civil courts would no longer be available. Perhaps, the absence of such evidence motivates the apologists of perpetrators, like Sarmila Bose, to deny any such violence.

Nevertheless, overwhelming evidence, which include books, news reports, witness accounts, video documentary, and victims' testimonies of rapes by Pakistani military personnel and its East Pakistani collaborators were available at the time when Sarmila Bose had been preparing the manuscript for her article. Sadly, she opted to disregard all those evidences, perhaps, considering them detrimental to her self-serving explanation and claimed "no rape of women by Pakistan army found in the specific case studies: In all of the incidents involving the Pakistan army in the case studies, the armed forces were found not to have raped women."

She not only denied any act of violence on Bengali women by Pakistani army or by their collaborators, but seemed to be blaming Bengali officers and staff for committing such violence against West Pakistani and Bihari women, when describing the mutiny of EPR at Mymensingh cantonment on March 27 and violence at Crescent Jute Mills in Khulna on March 27-28. She backed up her claim citing the white paper published by the Pakistani government in 1971 and alleged interviews with mill workers and "Bihari" settlers, conducted in 2004.

Mookherjee (2006), in her rebuttal to Sarmila Bose's paper, presented some evidence of violence against Bengali women by Pakistani army. Additional evidence is presented here to remind the readers of Sarmila Bose's wilful disregard of the available proof. For example, Bose ignored Susan Brownmiller (1975), a well cited and authoritative book on violence against women, who reported the number of rapes committed by Pakistani military to range between as low as 200,000 to as high as 400,000. Adam Jones, a scholar on gendercide, quoted Brownmiller as saying, "Rape in Bangladesh had hardly been restricted to beauty."

Jones states that girls of eight and grandmothers of seventy-five had been sexually assaulted. "Pakistani soldiers had not only violated Bengali women on the spot; they abducted tens of hundreds and held them by force in their military barracks for nightly use… Some women may have been raped as many as eighty times in a night."

Jahan (1997), another well cited study, also ignored by Sarmila Bose, described the horrific violence by Pakistan army. Although Pakistani sources tend to dispute the number of rapes reported in Brownmiller, they stop short of entirely denying the contention that rape had indeed happened. Yet, Sarmila Bose, an alleged scholar, did not hesitate to deny the rapes by Pakistani military. She also disregarded Chaudhury (1972), providing vivid description of violence against women during the Liberation War.

Excerpts from Chaudhury read: "Some army officers raided the Rokeya Hall, the girls' hostel of Dacca University, on October 7, 1971. Accompanied by five soldiers, Major Aslam had first visited the hostel on October 3, and asked the lady superintendent to supply some girls who could sing and dance at a function to be held in Tejgaon Cantonment. The superintendent told him that most of the girls had left the hostel after the disturbances and only 40 students were residing but as a superintendent of a girls' hostel she should not allow them to go to the cantonment for this purpose. Dissatisfied, Major Aslam went away. Soon after the superintendent informed a higher army officer in the cantonment, over the telephone, of the major's mission. However, on October 7, at about 8pm Major Aslam and his men raided the hostel. The soldiers broke open the doors, dragged the girls out and stripped them before raping and torturing them in front of the helpless superintendent. The entire thing was done so, openly, without any provocation, that even the Karachi-based newspaper, Dawn, had to publish the story, violating censorship by the military authorities. In seven days after liberation, about 300 girls were recovered from different places around Dacca where they had been taken away and kept confined by the Pakistani army personnel. On December 26, altogether 55 emaciated and "half-dead" girls on the verge of mental derangement were recovered by the Red Cross with the help of the Mukti Bahini and the allied forces from various hideouts of the Pakistani army in Narayangunj, Dacca Cantonment, and other small towns on the periphery of Dacca city."

The incidence, as mentioned in the excerpts, was also reported in the Karachi-based daily, Dawn. But Sarmila Bose seemed to have had no clue about it.

Even, the US-based NBC news network broadcasted a documentary on the victims of rape by Pakistani military on February 20, 1972. In the broadcast, the narrator can be quoted saying, "It's the women who are silent, women like Saeeba…she is sixteen years old, widow and pregnant with a child of a Pakistani soldier. Like thousands of women in Bangladesh she is carrying a child which she doesn't want… like many women who are raped by Pakistani soldiers, Saeeba is disgraced among her people…."

This report also focused on a government shelter where many of the rape victims had babies (often referred to as war babies) and many had to be aborted… No mention of this broadcast could either be found in Bose's so-called "systematic analysis."

In a recent documentary "War Crime of 1971", Shahriar Kabir presented testimonies of Ferdousi Priyobhashini, Nazma Begum and other victims of the Pakistani military. None of these seem to have made any dent on Sarmila Bose's tenacious defence of Pakistani military either, as reflected in her attitude in the appearance at a book launching ceremony at Woodrow Wilson center on March 15, 2011.

Sarmila Bose's deliberate efforts to deny any violence against women by Pakistani military are also reflected in her frequent use of the word "male" in phrases like "adult male members of their family," when describing attack on faculty residences in Dhaka University, "…about 14 men and one child" when describing onslaught on minority in Shankharipara, and "one male Hindu refugee" when recounting the massacre by Pakistani Military in Chuknagar, Khulna, in May 1971.

A 1996 UNICEF report on sexual violence against women ascribes sexual violence as attacks on the victim's family and culture in a society where women are "viewed as repositories of a community's cultural and spiritual values." Similarly, Pakistani military violence against Bengali women was pre-meditated assault on the Bengali culture and the self-rule of the East Pakistani people. Denying such assault or any attempt to discount the severity of atrocities committed by the Pakistani military is an affront and a new assault to replace facts with twisted views of allegedly self-righteous scholars.

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Dr. ABM Nasir is an Associate Professor of Economics at the North Carolina Central University, USA.