It was to be expected that the widows of 1971 were going to have a pinched existence. Their husbands, who died in those sublime days of our history, lost their lives in action against the occupation forces or became collateral damage in that war -- caught in the crosshairs of the marauders’ guns.
Those were times when women depended totally on their men for support, and once they lost the providers, they realised the meanings of words and phrases like “helpless,” “destitution,” or “in dire straits.”
Pity is not what these women deserved, but pity is what most of them got, and worse still, the indifference of a nation that owed them its very existence. A war-torn poor nation would always have been hard-pressed at making reparations, but with intra-party wrangling, palace intrigue, leftist insurgencies, the ineptitude of the administration, among others, made matters worse.
The treasury-busting spending on the armed forces for sustaining military dictatorships, for the 15 of the first 20 years of the existence of the newly independent nation, meant very little sanction for these bereaved women.
What was meted was always paltry, considering their needs, if not say an all-out slap on the faces of the martyred. Anarchy, rampant corruption, nepotism, and rehabilitation of the power-base of anti-independence forces meant whatever was available for helping these widows went to the wrong pockets.
It is but an immense example of patriotism, love for one’s country, when a married man leaves behind his family and prepares to take a bullet. Even if all men do not necessarily “love” their wives, but it would be a rare instance to find a man who is willing to let go the circle of his progeny, psychiatric problems aside.
A man does walk away from his children for an all-numbing love for another or heeding some call that is peculiar to the person walking off, but that is an exception, not the rule.
More often than not, a man works till his last breath to provide for his children, to love them, to ensure them of a foothold in the journey of life. It is a strong cultural, philosophical, and even physiological urge that a man feels.
The young, the often reckless, are always the first to fight for ideals, unencumbered, as they mostly are, by the strings of family life. It takes little to inspire the young, and of course unmarried, to put their lives in harm’s way.
It is this rebellious trait in the character of the young that allows many demagogues to goad them into combat, ostensibly to obtain freedom and economic emancipation, but all the time with the secret agenda of bringing some nefarious self-serving goal to fruition.
Of course, men have been conscripted into wars, coerced into joining them, threatened even on pain of death. But in 1971, many men joined the war knowing full well that they could have tried to save their families from the rapacity of the enemy, but they left to fight with their brethren, leaving their families to fend for themselves.
These martyred men dreamed of a future, living in a country that would be emancipated from tyranny of all kinds, an impossible dream, but still they dreamed and sacrificed all for realising that dream.
Time has told us otherwise as to what level of emancipation has been achieved in four decades, but their sacrifice remains untainted, a supreme example of selflessness -- and I bow my head to these men and believe that the widows of the glorious dead, unsung heroes, at times, deserved better.
