Daily Times

“Thousands of families of ill-fated Muslims, many of them refugees from Bihar, who chose Pakistan at the time of the partition riots in 1947, were mercilessly wiped out. Women were raped, or had their breasts torn out with specially-fashioned knives. Children did not escape the horror; the lucky ones were killed with their parents”, says Anthony Mascarenhas in a newspaper article titled ‘Genocide’ published back in June 1971.

In the recent history of our own homeland the story of the Bihari women, who were raped during the carnage of 1971 is shrouded. The saga of their sacrifices, their surrender to patriotism and their humiliation as community is obscured. It is taxing, tiring and tricky to fathom the melancholy of ancestor who coped with two migrations — one in 1947 and second time in 1971. To evade a special and communal mourning for 46 years is arduous.

Biharis are the Urdu-speaking people with many having a native proficiency in Bengali language as well, who got settled in the former east wing of Pakistan after migrating from India in 1947. They maintained a pro-(West) Pakistani stance, supported the Pakistani armed forces and also opposed the separation of the eastern wing. Hence, when conditions leading to the making of Bangladesh ripened, they faced vengeance from Bengali mobs and militias. An estimated 1,000 to 150,0,00 people were killed. Many married Bihari women and single girls were abducted and braved sexual assaults including rape.

In the aftermath of the Dhaka Fall on December 16, 1971, 300,000 Biharis who escaped from becoming the prisoner of war and mob killings were stranded in one-room houses as stateless refugees, as the planes that were supposed to take them to Pakistan never arrived. In 1978, the Pakistani government stripped stranded Biharis of their Pakistani citizenship. Nearly 100,000 of them still live in horrifically rotten camps.

The honourable Bangladeshi Supreme Court did rule that Biharis were eligible for Bangladesh citizenship in 1972. After all these years, some of them have still preserved their Pakistani passports and identity proofs. The Red Cross facilitated the initial repatriation of a few thousands to Pakistan that was ultimately interrupted due to the reluctance of Pakistani authorities. General Musharraf who on his visit to Bangladesh while in office as President of Pakistan, rightly apologised for the atrocities in 1971. He took a morally bold step in 2002 by stating, “Your brothers and sisters in Pakistan share the pain of the events in 1971. The excesses committed during the unfortunate period are regretted. Let us bury the past in the spirit of magnanimity. Let not the light of the future be dimmed.” That admittance probably did not envelop the rape of Bihari women and guarantees of return of the citizenship to the unfortunate patriotic people.

Rape in times of wars is one of the ways of violently achieving strategic social, economic, political and military objectives. In modern times, scores of activists, psychologists, and scholars have broadly admitted this strategic rape theory

Different documents enclose haunting and heartrending narratives on the most brutal acts of war rape against unarmed women of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Bosnia, Guatemala, Yugoslavia, DRC, and Myanmar besides many developed countries. Rape in times of wars is one of the ways of violently achieving strategic social, economic, political and military objectives. In modern times, scores of activists, psychologists, and scholars have broadly admitted this strategic rape theory. The study of deviant dealings, like involvement of civilians and soldiers in mass murder, the backing of mass bloodshed by the elected leadership, incrimination of victims of rape, culture of absolution for perpetrators etc. has also engrossed researchers.

The subject of the state-regulated gender identities and their legitimisation by the elites was dealt by Dr Bina D’Costa in 2011 with a critical feminist perspective in her book Nation building, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia. Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971, a book by Prof Yasmin Saikia, in 2010, describes how the war is viewed in the three countries; Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. It is remembered as the ‘war of liberation’ for Bangladesh, for India, a triumphant settling of scores with Pakistan and in Pakistan, it is an act of betrayal by the Bengalis. According to Saika, Pakistani and Indian soldiers and Bengali militiamen raped and tortured women on a mass scale. Pakistan’s narrative is given in the book Creation of Bangladesh: Myths Exploded that was published in 2016. The author, Dr Junaid Ahmed, a Pakistani scholar lost his family members including parents, in the mayhem of 1971. What remains elapsed is the bearing of a complex continuum of sexual violence on Bihari women and their successive generations who lost their self esteem.

The international law took its first notice of war rape, in 1949, with the Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that explicitly prohibits wartime rape and enforced prostitution. The embargoes were reinforced by the 1977 Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. However, judging rape as a war crime and crime against humanity is a relatively recent forward move. The rampant rapes of women in the former Yugoslavia in 1992, obtained the thoughtfulness of the UN Security Council thus affirming on 18 December 1992, that “massive, organised and systematic detention and rape of women, in particular Muslim women, in Bosnia and Herzegovina” as an international crime that must be addressed. The formation of International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was after the rape of 100,000 and 250,000 Rwandan women in 1994. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, in force since July 2002, includes rape and any other form of sexual violence as a crime against humanity when it is committed in an extensive or systematic way. The case of raped Bihari women has yet to be accessed by the international laws.

The raped Bihari women and stranded families were neither an invented story nor collateral damages. They are real humans who must be remembered, respected and rehabilitated. They should be our official reminders for the validity of peace and call for righteous measures. Our leadership has to take an intellectual risk. Wounds are healed through closure not concealment. The calling of our destiny guides must include consoling of Bangladeshi and Pakistani women who lived through the era of 1971.

The writer is a gender expert, researcher, activist and a free thinker. She tweets @survivorwins

Published in Daily Times, December 4^th 2017.