The July Uprising has brought to the forefront the need for a more inclusive understanding of 1971, one that incorporates the perspectives of ordinary people and addresses unresolved issues of justice, accountability, and historical truth, independent of political manoeuvring. What of the women who were forced to become refugees in India, who comprised the majority of the 10 million who fled to India in 1971?
While the contribution of the Birangona is now acknowledged, albeit in fraught ways, refugee women are either overlooked or judged for having left. Yet their stories – of hardship, fear, resilience, and a complicated relationship with the new nation – offer lessons about displacement, the gendered nature of conflict, and the insidious ways in which national narratives can silence and marginalise women. These lessons have consequences today in the context of the plight of Rohingya women, showing us that a conversation about sexual violence and the vulnerability of women in and out of conflict is still overdue.
I had the chance to speak to fifty returned refugees, mostly women, in Khulna. At the outbreak of the war, they had left their homes and walked all the way to the border and into India. It took many days for them to get there, carrying their children on their hips or backs. While some of them fled due to the fear of violence, others left after having faced violence—physical and sexual. Many of their husbands could not join them because they were either dead or had joined the war effort. While they escaped death and violent rape, this journey brought with it its own perils of violence. This negotiation with levels of violence itself, that they had to deem a certain level of violence as acceptable even as their bodies revolted, became palatable only because they believed in the idea of an independent Bangladesh. They knew then that that was the price of freedom.
A Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. Photo: Anisur Rahman
Thus, life in the refugee camps, while offering relative safety from the immediate violence, was harsh in an everyday sense. Camps were overcrowded, resources were scarce, disease was rampant, with the constant fear of sexual violence. Yet women showed resilience, forming support networks and finding strength in shared experiences.
From my interviews with the women who returned, it was evident that camp life united them and helped forge a togetherness based on their lived experience and their longing for home. They shared their worries, their anxieties, their hopes and despair, their guilt for not doing more. They were inspired by the freedom fighters who would visit to avail themselves of the training that the Indian Army provided to active participants in the war. Stories of war and the mere presence of the fighters kept the spirit of independence alive, allowing for greater unity and strengthening of national pride.
The decision to return home was one that none of the women I spoke to forgot; indeed, it is perhaps the most poignant one that refugees undertake as a group—one that the Rohingya refugees here have not been able to make yet. When the news of Bangladesh's victory was announced, celebrations spread across the camps and in the streets. For most, it signalled that they would soon return home. It was one instance where they forgot about their difficulties; overwhelmed with emotion and nationalist fervour at the prospect of an independent Bangladesh, most said they left immediately. Unlike on their tortuous journey to India, most of them returned to Bangladesh by train and crossed over in Benapole, Jessore—a much safer option for the women I spoke to.
The returnees' re-entry was shaped by a curious contradiction, however. On the one hand, women who had experienced camp life as refugees tended to be more patriotic and nationalistic because of the longing for the homeland they experienced in exile. They closely identified with the party that led the War of Liberation, and with its platform for an independent Bangladesh. On the other hand, the returnees were viewed by those who hadn't left as people who had missed or sat out the war, as if they had irresponsibly taken off on a vacation while people were dying and fighting for freedom.
This contradiction affected many of those I interviewed; after returning to the homeland, they grew increasingly conscious of how differently they had experienced the war compared to those who never left. A new "us versus them" dichotomy emerged: the returnees could not understand the direct experience of war, and the locals could not relate to the stories of camp life and hardship in a foreign land.
This dichotomy still shapes current political views. War veterans and those who remained in Bangladesh during the war feel they have a better understanding of politics. Their first-hand experience of war, it would appear, has impacted their view of what they perceive to be threats against the nation. Indeed, the nation seems fragile to them even today, nearly half a century later. During the Shahbagh movement, for instance, war veterans and their families popularised the idea of a nation under threat. This sentiment resonated with hundreds of people in the streets who wrapped themselves in Bangladeshi flags to "reclaim the nation". My interviews revealed that former refugees, in contrast, tended to view the nation-state as less fragile and are thus less likely to rush to the defence of the state in the name of nationalism. These sentiments have broader appeal, too, as we bore witness to how the July Uprising was, in part, fuelled by the charge of "anti-national" against dissenting figures. Indeed, the view of the fragility of the nation-state has led many otherwise rational people to adopt regressive positions.
Today, there are about 123 million refugees worldwide, according to UNHCR, a million of them in our own backyard. As we commemorate the War of '71, let us not ignore the conditions that continue to force people to flee their homes today. In this age of neo-liberalism and imperialism, state violence is more varied. Driven by war, climate change, and social crises caused by structural forces beyond their control, millions of people are being forced to flee their homes with little hope of return in the foreseeable future. Our sympathy for the plight of refugees must be coupled with a resolve to hold accountable the forces that are producing these conditions in the first place, and in such an accounting, it is impossible to ignore the role of nation-states and elite interests.
The legacy of 1971 is, thus, not just about the past; it resonates powerfully in the present, particularly in the context of the Rohingya refugee crisis. The parallels with 1971 are chilling. Just as Bangladeshi women faced systematic rape as a weapon of war, Rohingya women have endured similar atrocities at the hands of the Myanmar military. The reports of widespread sexual violence, gang rapes, and killings are eerily reminiscent of the horrors of 1971.
The Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, like the camps in India in 1971, are overcrowded and under-resourced. Women and girls face heightened risks of sexual exploitation, trafficking, and gender-based violence. They bear the primary responsibility for caring for their families, often with minimal support. Their stories, like those of the Bangladeshi women who fled in 1971, are often unheard, overshadowed by broader geopolitical concerns and humanitarian aid statistics. The current climate in Bangladesh, marked by increasing social conservatism, ongoing political polarisation, and a persistent culture of impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence, makes these parallels even more disturbing.
Dr Navine Murshid is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Colgate University, New York. She is currently serving as a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at North South University, Dhaka.
