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[[File:1971_Instrument_of_Surrender.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|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.<ref>Bina D’Costa, ''Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia'' (New York: Routledge, 2011), 77. These figures are considered low by those who were in Bangladesh at the time of liberation. Some have suggested the number is upwards of 400,000 rape victims. Due to the cultural stigmatism, it is proposed that numerous victims did not come forward at the time and have yet to do so since.</ref>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.
== 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.”<ref>Lawrence Ziring, ''Bangladesh: From Mujib to Ershad, An Interpretive Study'' (Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 1992), 70.</ref>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.”<ref>Simon Dring, “Dacca Eyewitness: Bloodbath, Inferno,” ''The Washington Post, Times Herald'' (1959-1973), March 30, 1971, http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/docview/148145683.</ref>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.<ref>Jalal Alamgir and Bina D’Costa, “The 1971 Genocide: War Crimes and Political Crimes,” ''Economic and Political Weekly,'' March 26, 2011.</ref> <dh-ad/>
== Rape as a Tool of Genocide ==
To make Bengalis “‘true Muslims,’” was the order given by General Yahya Khan.<ref>D’Costa, ''Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes'', 119.</ref>As a result of early inculcation and a multitude of propaganda, Pakistani Muslims hated Hindus. Although no official documentation exists, perpetrator accounts verify that the orders given by the Yahya regime and General Tikka Khan included forced impregnation on Bengali women. These women——presumed Hindus——were taken to “rape camps” where they were kept for months at a time in order to be serially raped with the goal of impregnating the women with Muslim fetuses. Joseph Fried of the ''New York Daily News'' reported from Dhaka that, “‘a stream of victims and eyewitnesses,’” relayed to him that, “‘truckloads of Pakistani soldiers…swooped down on villages in the night, rounding up women by force. Some were raped on the spot. Others were carried to military compounds.’”<ref>D’Costa, ''Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes,'' 121.</ref>No Bengali women were spared.
The intent of the perpetrators was to destroy in whole or in part an entire group. Further, in a military and patriarchal society, “collective sexual violence…exemplifies an ethic of male exceptionalism,” whereby women are possessions belonging to one group or another. In sum, a reciprocal violation occurs during military rape in that there is a “simultaneous elevation of ‘our’ women in opposition to the degradation of ‘theirs.’”<ref>Roland Littlewood, “Military Rape,” ''Anthropology Today'' 13, no. 2 (April 1997): 9</ref>Following this line of reasoning to its logical end, the women of Bangladesh were used as tools in a war for liberation; a liberation they would never realize.
== Aftermath in Bangladesh ==
''Biharis'' in East Pakistan were non-Hindu Bengalis who sympathized with and aided the West Pakistan Army during the Liberation War of Bangladesh. India joined the cause on the side of Bangladesh late in the war and with its military might quickly forced Pakistan’s surrender. With the troops to whom they remained loyal tucked away in POW camps in India, the Biharis were left in alone to face the wrath of the Bengalis. Bihari women faced the same fate as the birangonas.
While interviewing soldiers in the Comilla prisons, Dr. Davis spoke frequently to Pakistani officers. They had no remorse. These men were unable to grasp the notion that they had done something wrong. When Davis spoke of the international outcry after the rape camps had been discovered, the officers asked, “‘Why are they getting so excited about it? It was a war! You rape the women!’”<ref>D’Costa, ''Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes'', 200.</ref>For the rapist, the rape has an ending. In a society where women are seen as property and being the victim of sexual violence is stigmatized, there is no end for the victim. When a family’s honor is lost, the blame falls “not upon the rapist, but upon the raped.”<ref>Sharlach, “Rape as Genocide,” 95.</ref>War heroines remain prisoners even in the silence of their shame.
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==References==
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[[Category:Wikis]] [[Category:AsiaAsian History]] [[Category:Genocide]] [[Category:Women's History]]
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