Silent Daughters in the Motherland: Ethnonationalism, Sexual Violence and the Politics of Recognition in Bangladesh

Just six days after gaining independence, the newly formed Bangladeshi state took an internationally unprecedented move and conferred the title of Birangona (war heroine) to women of Bengali ethnicity who were raped by the Pakistani Army and their local collaborators during the War of 1971 (Mookherjee 2015b). Yet, the Bangladeshi state's indifference to rape, abduction, forced impregnation of the ethnically diverse indigenous women in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) conflict stands out in sharp contrast. Against this backdrop, I conduct a focused inquiry into the politics of selective recognition of sexual violence in conflict situations in Bangladesh, specifically examining the Liberation War of 1971 and the movement for autonomy in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). By undertaking this comparative study, I analyze this duality through the lens of Bengali ethnonationalism and its gendered nation-building project. I apply discourse analysis to archival and scholarly sources, looking specifically at official state documents, reports, and newspaper articles to uncover patterns in narratives. I argue the Bangladeshi state constructs and recognizes victims of sexual violence by perpetuating hierarchies along ethnic and gendered dimensions within an ethnocentric nationalist framework. By shedding light on the complex interplay between nationalism, gender, and sexual violence in conflict settings, I highlight broader implications for states' narrativization of wars and history and their approaches to addressing violence against women.