What Was the Fate of Women During the Bangladesh Liberation War

Surrender of Pakistani Army, Dhaka, December 16, 1971. Signing is Lieutenant General Niazi.

March 1971 marked the beginning of the Bangladesh Liberation War. By December of the same year, more than 25,000 women had been forcibly impregnated through a common tool of war; rape. These women, whose number represents only 10 percent of the reported rape victims, were given the name Birangonas——war heroines.The men who fought for a liberated Bangladesh were also considered war heroes. With visible scars of battle, they returned to the remains of their villages and were welcomed with sympathy and gratitude. Birangonas were not so fortunate. These victimized women, who had survived torture and continuous rape at the hands of enemy officers and soldiers, were rejected by their families and shunned by society due to unyielding cultural norms. They became imprisoned in both their own minds and newly created nation. Bangladeshi war heroines endured scorn and stigmatization in their homes due to a rigid and patriarchal culture. The origin of the plight of the birangonas, however, was brought on by religious hatred and a perverted notion of purification, which was sanctioned and carried out by the military government of West Pakistan.

Establishing Pakistan

The division of Pakistan.

The land known as Bangladesh was liberated twice; once in 1971 as a sovereign nation and earlier in 1947 as part of Pakistan. By relinquishing colonial control over India, Britain helped give birth to the independent state of Pakistan. As with any new nation, problems had to be surmounted. The crux of the problem that resulted from the division of India and subsequent establishment of Pakistan was the distribution and migration of the multi-ethnic and bi-religious populace of the region. West Pakistan, the exclusively Muslim and governing region of the nation, was separated from its eastern section by more than one thousand miles of Indian land. East Pakistan, inhabited primarily by Bengalis, had a large Hindu population which was viewed as inferior by the West Pakistani elite who governed the nation. Pakistan’s first military dictator, General Ayub Khan, described Hindus as having, “‘all the inhibitions of down trodden races.’”

Prior to the dictatorship of Ayub Khan, the new nation was governed by West Pakistani elites, both military and civilian. The Bengalis had no governmental representation and very little presence in the military, though it was their production of jute that generated the largest portion of international revenue for Pakistan. Through the early 1950’s, Bengalis grew increasingly embittered by what they deemed to be the exploitation of their labor by Pakistan’s central government. The insult cut even deeper in 1952 when the central Pakistan government declared Urdu, the primary language of only 7 per cent of the population, to be the official national language. The Bengalis, who comprised an overwhelming 54 per cent of Pakistan’s population, protested the governments decree through what became known as the Language Movement. Seemingly out of place in this non-violent protest were women, who had been encouraged by secular Bengalis to become active in their native culture. As a result, the governing Islamists in West Pakistan viewed these women as “bearers of Hindu culture.”Increasingly throughout the 1950s the Pakistani government became keenly aware of the growing Bengali nationalism. In an attempt to quell the accelerated movements in the East, a new Constitution was implemented in 1956 that gave national recognition to Bengali as an official language. This meager gesture did little to appease the swelling tide of Bengali nationalism. Student activism, which began with the Language Movement, had spread to the rural peasantry and the West Pakistan elites soon found themselves facing a cultural revolution in the east.

The Bengali Cultural Revolution

A protest by the Language Movement.

The cultural and social liberation that Bengalis were experiencing gradually evolved into a call for autonomy by the economically exploited and politically disenfranchised population of East Pakistan. The Awami League (AL), founded in 1949, was instrumental not only in the Language Movement and Bengali nationalism, it was also the catalyst in the drive for Bengali autonomy. By promoting social liberalism and advocating for the cultural inclusion of women, the AL became the greatest threat to West Pakistan’s national dominance.

In 1969, Sheik Mujib, leader of the AL, presented the Six Point Program. Economically, the plan called for the power of taxation and a fiscal policy for East Pakistan along with separate foreign exchange accounts. These demands, coupled with the mandate that East Pakistan have authority to maintain military and paramilitary forces, were rejected by then dictator Ayub Khan. Awami League supporters reacted to this apparent dismissal of their political relevance by pressuring the Ayub regime into collapse. General Yahya Khan took control of Pakistan in March 1969 on the promise of restoring civilian authority and calling for “the first full and free vote in Pakistan’s history.”Mujib and the AL escalated in importance and garnered enough national recognition to campaign effectively for the 1970 national election. The prominence of the AL coincided with another profound event at the end of 1970 which forever changed the history of East Pakistan.

Operation Searchlight

Intellectuals murdered during Operation Searchlight.

In November 1970, a cyclone of tremendous magnitude made landfall in Bangladesh, leaving the rural population in need of governmental relief. The sluggish and limited response from West Pakistan only exacerbated the bitterness growing in the minds of Bengalis. They responded in the following month’s election by overwhelmingly voting AL candidates into national offices and the majority of congressional seats. The Muslim elite in the west were unwilling to relinquish power which left President Yahya Khan with the conundrum of having to simultaneously satisfy Bengali liberals in the East and Muslim elites in the West. His solution satisfied neither. He called for a parliamentary meeting in March 1971 with the hope of reaching a compromise on what was to be done with the government. West Pakistani elites refused to participate in a compromise with Bengalis, who they viewed as “devious, deceitful, villainous people.”That being the case, Yahya postponed the session and stalled Mujib and the AL in order to provide time for the Pakistani Army to prepare for an attack on East Bengal.

"Operation Searchlight" was the code name given to the attack that began on March 25, 1971. Lieutenant General Tikka Khan, who had been installed as military governor of East Pakistan, ordered the attacks that began by disarming police and paramilitary units in the capital city, Dhaka. Once the armed opposition was neutralized, Bengali males were summarily rounded up and executed so as to provide no further threat from able-bodied young men. Civilians were taken from their homes as tanks rolled down the streets of Dhaka toward the university. After being expelled from Dhaka with his fellow newsmen, London Daily Telegraph journalist, Simon Dring filed a report from Bangkok three days after Operation Searchlight ended. His eyewitness accounts tell of Pakistani troops “firing incendiary rounds into the buildings,” and in the “Hindi area of the old town, the soldiers reportedly made the people come out of their houses and shot them in groups.”Bengali Hindus were the primary targets of the Pakistani army as the Islamist elites demanded what they considered a pure Pakistan. In order to erase Bengali and Hindu influences from Pakistan, the troops were ordered to eliminate artists and intellectuals; they murdered them. They were also ordered to utilize women to degrade the “burgeoning Bangladeshi national identity,” and “boost the morale of soldiers;” they raped them.