South Asia’s Irrepressible Women

In February, I was in India to investigate the ongoing program of ethnic cleansing against Bangladeshi Hindus. I visited over a dozen and a half refugee camps—some semi-legal, most not even that—along the volatile India-Bangladesh border, and often in the proximity of Maoist and Islamist camps. Speaking out against their conditions can be a life and death decision for these refugees who lack any legal status and the protections that come with it. Sometimes, the West Bengal government would get wind of my impending visit and send a Commissar ahead to intimidate the refugees into keeping silent. In one camp, refugees were particularly reticent to talk about ongoing incursions into India by Bangladeshi Islamists, especially because a representative of the communist West Bengal government was present. They would speak freely of atrocities that occurred some years back in Bangladesh, but they would become mute when I asked about cross-border attacks by Bangladeshi radicals. Finally, one elderly woman stood up and said, “I’m not afraid of anybody,” and proceeded to describe the frequent violence the refugees still face in West Bengal. In another camp, a group of young girls were especially adamant about their pride in being Bengali and their determination to help others regain it. One of them told me how she want to be a schoolteacher and teach young Bengalis their history and culture so they will demand the same rights others have. The common thread linking these two incidents is that the people who had the courage and determination to take a stand publicly—and to make a difference for their people—were women. These women spoke out in potentially dangerous situations while their male counterparts remained silent. In some of the camps I visited men were my major informants; in others, women were the ones who testified to Islamist violence. That tended to intrigue me as our image of rural Hindu societies is one in which women occupy a decidedly lower status than men. One common story both men and women repeated to me involved abductions of young Hindu women in Bangladesh. They might be walking by the road or on their way to school when groups of Islamists would force them into vehicles, carry them off, and then rape them. The attacks were abominable, but the victims also knew that they would be victimized again; this time by their own people who would not let them return home where they were thought to have shamed their families. In fact, they often had no choice but to remain with their victimizers and even bear them children.