In the same month as International Women’s Day, Bangladesh, not quite as international as it may pretend to be, was privy to three instances of women taking the front seat in the news.
First, a story that ironically came out just as we passed our 45th birthday as an independent and free nation: In a village in Chandpur, it was discovered that women haven’t been voting for generations because an Indian pir had come in the 70s and issued a fatwa and had decried that women in the village need not do so.
Next, in what sounds like a news-bite out of the most backward villages of Afghanistan, Hasina Begum, a woman in Lakshmipur, was tortured after her husband suspected that she had had an extra-marital affair. She was tied to a tree as she was tortured, and around her neck was hung a garland made of shoes. Her hair had been shaved off. Among the perpetrators was her brother, Aziz, and her son, Faruk.
Finally, in Comilla Cantonment, Tonu, a Comilla Victoria Government College student, was raped and murdered near her place of residence. Tonu, a part-time private tutor, had been coming back home when the incident took place. People have, since then, been protesting en masse and staging protests demanding justice for the fallen girl.
Each of these three stories represents a small but significant part of the “women” problem that has plagued Bangladesh and the world for so long. Each highlights what is potentially a fatal flaw in the way we see women and perceive them, still, as being somehow “other” to the main, primary existence of societal existence, a complementary addition to the overarching narrative.
I would perhaps be the last person my friends and colleagues would look to for proof that patriarchy exists and that it is a very real thing. But the purpose of this piece is not to provide evidence for such a system. It is, if it does indeed have one, to show that the problems, despite all the progress we, the country, and we, the world, have made, exist in all its terrifying glory and myriad, different ways.
How is it that in this day and age, there are nooks and crannies within Digital Bangladesh where men and women exist who follow an archaic system of rules and regulations handed down to them by some pseudo-representer of God? What exactly are these pirs anyway?
From what I’ve heard, been told, and read, they are magic-wielding conmen who are privy to some divine pathway to the One and Only, and provide false hope to people in need of luck, love, and favour, pretending they have cure-alls for their earthly (and not quite so) needs.
That is not the kind of person that should have any power over what a person should or shouldn’t do. They shouldn’t have had that power then, they definitely shouldn’t continue to have that now, not in the 21st century. Stories of men and women, fearing baan, or hoping for cures for diseases, still trickle down to my ears.
This is not only ridiculous, but barely acceptable. And that one singular pir, from close to half a century ago, should have so much influence as to convince an entire village that women are inferior beings, is universally not so.
Like any other belief that is based more on superstition than reasoning, the inflections of the pir’s influence has continued to play a substantial part in the village’s politics, and God knows how many more villages there are like these, where women lay muted, unable to participate in the political process.
Religion (or rather, some might argue, wrongful interpretations of it) has always played a critical role in oppressing the rights of women. And we cannot continue to let it do so, not anymore, and especially not when it comes to this. That is too big a part, too huge a chunk of our own selves as a society that is being crushed under the weight of false prophets such as pirs.
And imagine this, really, truly: A human being tied to a tree. No matter what he or she has done, no matter how grave her crime is, people cannot take it up on themselves to pass judgment on her, especially not when that involves shaving their heads and hanging shoes around their necks.
The fact that there still exist people within our very periphery, not even attempting to hide their disregard for another person, their lack of empathy for someone who they think has done them wrong in some way.
In this story, two things shouldn’t matter: What the woman did, and the fact that she was a woman. What should matter is that this is a never-ending story being told again and again by people who are not being reprimanded as they should be.
Even within our governments and protectors, our police and officials, those who serve to protect us, opinions which continue to see the other genders as that much of an “other,” exist.
Imagine it and weep tears you cannot. Because you too are slowly becoming desensitised by the normalcy of it all, like the world has become to suicide bombs and forced migration.
And, if that is the case, can we truly expect anyone to be shocked at the way we have behaved, when a girl gets raped and murdered under the nose of the army?
Can we really expect change, can we expect that same government, those same policemen, who let other such stories take place, who watched as a Pohela Boishakh was scarred forever almost a year ago, to stand up and give everything they have to find the people who did it, and prevent such an incident in the future?
We can, and we should. We must demand it. We must scream and beseech and pound our chests in righteous fury, because otherwise, none of us know when the energy will be beaten out of us and we will not longer be shocked and awed at the way we have let not women, but ourselves down.