I began reading Our Stories, Our Struggle: Violence and the Lives of Women when my city, Kolkata, was raging about the rape and murder of a young woman – a doctor – who was abused and killed in the hospital where she was training for her post-graduate degree. This collection of fiction, nonfiction and poetry shows how violence permeates women’s lives in South Asia.
Women’s conduct and bodies
Rape is a recurring theme throughout this collection. In the poem “Birangona”, Sadaf Saaz writes about the several thousand Bangladeshi women who were raped by Pakistani forces during the War of Liberation. They were glorified, yet neglected by the state and more often than not reviled and rejected by their families and communities. Teresa Rehman and Hoineilhing Sithou explain how rape has been used as a weapon against women in Manipur by military and para-military forces of the Indian state, as well as by warring communities, for example, the large-scale rape of Kuki women by men of the dominant Meitei community during the 2023 conflict.
Ngurang Reena moved to Delhi from Arunachal Pradesh in 2009 and in “Hidden Vulnerabilities” she focuses on experiences of living through India’s race and gender wars. She writes that her Mongoloid phenotypes have remained marginalised in the “Indian face” and describes how migrants from the northeast of India to the “mainland” battle racial violence in the basic aspects of their lives like health, education and housing. They face cultural and moral policing – regarding their diet, attire, mode and means of income, relationships and recreation – from the state and “mainstream” Indian community. She analyses the stages of belonging and contestation of identities faced by women migrants in the metropolises where they live and makes the obvious, yet often overlooked point, that ensuring women’s safety and well-being ought to be paramount for urban leaders and planners.
In an essay on the literary legacy of Sri Lankan women, Simran Chaddha examines how national and community identities are created to further political goals and racial traits ascribed to women’s conduct and bodies. She refers to writing by women in Sri Lanka, from women cadres of the LTTE to Sinhala women, to analyse how roles and identities were redefined in the course of a war between communities that carried on for three decades. The women fighters of the LTTE embraced the idea of a new womanhood, where apart from reproduction women had to be active warriors in the service of the motherland.
Ratnottama Sengupta, one of the editors of this collection, has written about forms of violence against women that appear endemic to South Asia. In an essay entitled “When Kin Says Kill”, she writes about “honour killings” mainly in India and Pakistan. The highest number of documented honour killings per capita of any country is in Pakistan. The Aurat Foundation of Lahore has pointed out in a report that it is not only women but men too, who are killed to “restore” honour. In “A Face That Makes Death Shiver” Sengupta writes about acid attacks, where men decide to avenge the humiliation of a woman turning them down by throwing acid on her and disfiguring her face and body. Sengupta’s analysis relies on films, survivors’ accounts, government data, legal provisions and newspaper reports to present the various aspects of this brutality and also underlines the cultural assumptions, lack of swift medical care and inadequate law enforcement that compound the trauma of victim-survivors.
No country for women
This volume talks about many unspeakable things. It interrogates the idea of home and family as nurturing spaces as it recounts honour killings, sati and the abandonment of women after sexual assault and rape. There are stories of incest where fathers, uncles, fathers-in-law and male cousins brutally violate the bodies of girls and women in their families. Challenging this idea of machismo, we also encounter the grief and helplessness faced by brothers and fathers when they are unable to protect their sisters and daughters from violence and abuse.
There are several accounts of spousal violence – husbands battering their wives – across classes and communities. In “Do You Want to Die Young”, Farah Ahamed writes about a woman whose husband tortured her mentally, physically and sexually. The collusion between family, state and community is laid bare as this woman is repeatedly attacked by different institutions and individuals. In “Sreeja’s Story” and “The Phone Call”, we see women unravelling as the men they married for love, defying convention and social norms, turn into controlling, frightening monsters.
This collection highlights violation, subjugation and unfettered patriarchy. Salama, a domestic worker often tells other women that “women are charpai” – like this piece of furniture, women are placed where their families put them and they have to fit in. In “The Social Worker” Aysha Baqir writes about the tensions among women, class divisions in society, and the stories women hide behind their apparently confident faces. This collection talks about the darkness in women’s lives and their apparent helplessness, as well as, the action they take to rebuild themselves. It is inspiring to read about Charimaya Tamang, who was trafficked to India from Nepal when she was sixteen, returned to Nepal after she was rescued and bravely testified against her traffickers leading to their conviction in 1997.
This is a well-conceived collection that has brought together different genres, stories and ideas. Many of the writers have offered suggestions for change and have not shied away from asking difficult questions. Kalpana Kannabiran shows us how sexual violence against women has been repeatedly condoned by the state and its institutions in India, and also, often by the public. There are glaring instances of targeted violence against minorities. But women have resisted and have focused on questioning the majoritarian state through interventions at community levels, as well as going to court.
Meenakshi Malhotra makes a distinction between the revenge motive and delivering justice and explains how the Indian state’s reliance on encounter killings and the death penalty cannot create a violence-free society. Similarly, Kannabiran cautions against public sentiment that equates judicial outcomes and justice to quick retribution.
Despite the large canvas this collection covers, the reader misses stories and voices of queer and trans communities. This omission restricts the definition of women to non-queer women. LGBTQI persons across South Asia continue to face discrimination and violence in different aspects of their lives, in private and public spheres; and continue to demonstrate remarkable creativity and resilience as they courageously battle systemic violence and prejudice.
In her Preface, Mitali Chakravarty says that this book has been curated with the purpose of stirring a sense of injustice and discomfort. The essays, stories and poems in the collection do that very successfully. Readers concerned about the all-pervading violence in our societies will find pertinent information, ideas and insights in this book. The powerful writing in this anthology provides food for thought, fodder for debate and pointers for action.
Our Stories, Our Struggle: Violence and the Lives of Women, edited by Mitali Chakravarty and Ratnottama Sengupta, Speaking Tiger Books.
