‘Cartographies of struggle’: remapping the plight of Bengali women in/after the 1971 war in Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography

ABSTRACT

Ethnic conflict influences the lives of people beyond geopolitical boundaries. In the last two decades, literature from Bangladesh and India has produced narratives of the women who experienced the 1971 war of Bangladesh. Few works have portrayed the stories of Bengali women who migrated to Pakistan after partition to escape their economic struggles and social stigmas. Kamila Shamsie, in her novel Kartography, portrays the lives of people in Karachi amidst the 1971 ethnic struggle between Bengalis and Pakistanis as well as the 1980s ethnic struggle between Pathans and Muhajirs. The novel exemplifies how women become vulnerable targets in any ethnic conflict even if they do not have direct involvement in it. Shamsie’s novel shows that women form cartography contingent upon their narratives of struggle because mapping their existence might not correlate with the political map of a nation. This paper discusses Shamsie’s approach to elaborating on how the lives of women were affected by the 1971 war, connecting them in a single map beyond political lines.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic conflict
• 1971 war
• migration
• women victims
• Pakistani narrative

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Muhammad Ali Junnah (1876–1948) was the proposer of a ‘two nation’s theory’ which resulted in the creation of Pakistan in 1947 on the basis of the religious identity of the majority.

2. Muhammad Ali Junnah (1876–1948) was Pakistan’s first Governor General.

3. Razakars is a term used to refer to those Bengali people who collaborated with the Pakistani military during the 1971 war in finding and killing Bengali freedom fighters and in kidnapping Bengali women for rape and torture.

4. Third World Women refers to the women of the developing countries of the Global South. Though this term is less widely used now, during Mohanty’s period of writing it was used to describe areas that were perceived as ‘less developed’ or ‘developing’.

5. Muktibahini refers to the freedom fighters of Bangladesh/East Pakistan.

6. Pathans are the second largest ethnic group in Pakistan; originally found in the Punjub regions. In Kamila Shamsie’s novel, Pathan represents the native ethnic group of Pakistan.

7. Muhajirs are the largest ethnic group of Pakistan. After the partition of 1947, Urdu speaking Muslim people from different regions of India migrated to Pakistan and are known as Muhajirs.

8. This is a phrase used repeatedly to determine the necessity of mapping the struggle of the Third World Women in Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s book Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 43–85).

9. Here Bangladeshi narratives refer to a select narrative history, narrative non-fiction and fiction by Bangladeshi writers. A study of Bangladeshi narrative history (Rahman, 1982/2009; Iqbal, 2008), summarized the descriptions of women as either rape victims or oppressed. Narrative non-fiction (Ibrahim, 1994/2017; Mamoon, 2017) has brought to light stories of rape victims in Bangladesh on the basis of oral histories, but their agency and role as fighters have been largely denied. Narratives have glorified the deeds of male freedom fighters but recent media coverage (Amin et al., 2016), and fiction (Anam, 2007; Ara, 2015) have brought to light the instances in which women took on the roles of fighters, social activists, and nationbuilders during the 1971 war of Bangladesh.

10. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975) was the founding father of Bangladesh. He is referred to as Bangabandhu (friend of Bengal) for his contribution to the formation of Bangladesh.

11. Here Alexander refers to Alexander the Great, the ancient king of Macedon, Greece.

12. According to political economist, S. Akbar Zaidi (2017) discrimination against Muhajirs, who mostly live in the suburban areas and the outskirts of the city of Karachi, is amplified by the the urban-rural policy of the Pakistani government. The provision of services and the civil rights of people living in the outskirts and the suburban area of greater Karachi city is compromised since these areas are categorized as rural in the Pakistan census. Zaidi (2017) adds, ‘Karachi, would include those people who live in the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation area, but exclude the hundreds of thousands who live just a few feet outside this arbitrary boundary, and yet carry out all their economic and social activities within Karachi’. So, despite being engaged in the city life of Karachi, Muhajirs are treated as outsiders. Since Muhajirs do not have residencies outside of the city, they are further disadvantaged when Pakistani government allocate places in government jobs and government-run universities according to the urban-rural division they have created (Shamsie, 2001, p. 176).

13. Erastosthenes was a Greek cartographer who was the first person to determine the size of the Earth in around 240 BC. He also made significant contributions to world maps (Source: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200606/history.cfm, retrieved on 23 July 2019;; with ”See Chodos, 2006“).

14. Karachiites refers to the people of Karachi, Pakistan.

15. The word ‘Bingo’ is used in Shamsie’s book (Shamsie, 2001) to mean someone who is dull-headed or infereior in rank. Bengali people live as second class citizens in the Pakistani city of Karachi and are sometimes addressed as ‘Bingo’ by native Pakistani people. See also Kabir (2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sanjib Kr Biswas

Sanjib Kr Biswas is a Research Scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Patna, India. He has received state-level prizes for composition. He has presented research papers in many national and international conferences and has also published research articles with referred journals like Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, Journal of International Women’s Studies etc. For his PhD dissertation, he is tentatively working on the title, “Women and/in the 1971 War of Bangladesh: Representation in Feminist Narratives”. His ORCID id is https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9351-489X. He can be reached at: [email protected]

Priyanka Tripathi

Dr. Priyanka Tripathi is an Associate Professor of English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Patna. She has published with Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Literature & History (Sage), Asiatic, JIWS, Contemporary Asia (Taylor & Francis), Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Postcolonial Studies (Taylor & Francis), IUP Journal of English Studies etc. She works in the area of Indian Writing in English, Gender and Sexuality, and Literary Censorship. Her ORCID id is https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9522-3391. She can be reached at [email protected]