This anthology is a blend of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry that celebrates women’s resilience and their capacity to transcend victimhood. Inspiring courage in victims of all kinds of violence, it covers instances from all the countries in South Asia, something that we nowadays consider the Global South. The outspoken tales of resilience amid suffering in this book strike at the very heart of the patriarchal mindset in all its forms. The topics covered across the borders of India into Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. It includes stories, narratives and chronicles of rape – familial rape, the rape of children – murder, hudood, honour killing, marital violence, dowry cases, forced disappearances, molestation, stalking and the egregious identitarian crimes committed upon tribal women and girls, and others for their class and caste status. They look back at the shadows cast by rape, neglect and abuse on the widows of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and feature the untamed primordial urges in all these societies that underpin many crimes against women, such as those taking the form of Sati, the outrageous practice of acid attacks and the ultimate humiliation—the rejection of a girl child by her family. We are all familiar with such forms of social evil and atrocities against women, but it is appreciable how the editors have been able to garner so much information between the two covers of the book.

Divided into three parts, Part One, titled “Narratives from Life”, has twenty entries and begins with “Nirbhaya: Twenty Years After” by Meenakshi Malhotra. This powerful essay on ‘Nirbhaya’ shows how her case catalysed critical changes to rape laws in India and how the victim and her parents ‘broke the mould of victimhood’. The protests against the injustice and barbarity of that gang rape brought unprecedented international attention to the issue. Though it is not possible to describe each individual entry in this review, one must admit that each essay is extremely powerful and well-written. We get an eye-opening account of heinous sexual crimes against women during the ongoing Kuki/Zo-Meitei conflict in Manipur, the way twelve women in their sixties and seventies had marched in 2004 to an army outpost and stripped naked to challenge the soldiers for raping and shooting young Manorama, supposedly picked up for questioning as they called her an insurgent. Farah Ahamed, a Pakistani lawyer and writer, bases her story on interviews with a young Christian woman in Lahore, wrongfully incarcerated under stern patriarchal laws; we get to read about the harrowing lives of Chakma women living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh; a case study on suicide stemming from familial rape written by Anuradha Kumar; multiple narratives of marital discord and violence narrated by Nishi Pulugurtha and Mallika Bhaumik; and Pakistani artist-writer Selma Tufail underscoring societies steeped in patriarchy in which only some dare to be different. One of the most poignant and brave entries is provided in the first-hand telling of sexual abuse by writer Ankita Banerjee; Ratnottama Sengupta supports strict regulation of crimes against women and holds that education must bridge socio-economic gaps and generate meaningful employment opportunities for young men that will aim to foster respect for women’s rights and prevent gender-based violence. Acid attacks and honour killings are issues that have been discussed on several occasions, as has been the Bilkis Bano case, and Kalpana Kannibaran’s powerful essay on the state condoning such crimes also features in this section.

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Part Two of this anthology, titled “Imagined Realities” contains ten fictional entries that echo issues already discussed in the essays. Sucharita Dutta Asane’s story “Fire” tells us about a tribal woman who stands alone and tall after being widowed and raped; Aruna Chakravarti’s “The Witch” is a narrative of the loneliness, abuse and murder of an aged woman that mingles with the story of her young granddaughter’s coerced incestual relationship with her father; two stories from Sri Lanka by Radhia Rameez closely resonate with the non-fiction narratives; “The Social Worker” by Aysha Baqir unfolds a powerful story about dowry in an affluent household in Pakistan where abuse begets abuse and the victim turns persecutor; Farah Ghuznavi’s story “Escaping the Mirror” recreates the lives of Bangladesh’s affluent society; child rape and molestation are further amplified in Tisa Muhaddes’s story “Over and Over Again”. The fiction section ends on a note of hope as S Bari in “Touch Me Not” depicts rape in South Asia through the story of a courageous survivor who rebuilds her life, putting a disturbing past behind her.

The third section of this anthology is titled “Verse of Resilience.” Six entries by Arundhathi Subramaniam, Sadaf Saaz, Bipasha B Haque, Tamoh Siddiqui, Mitali Chakravarty and Deepti Naval present a challenge: to inspire courage amid depictions of bleakness and victimisation. While in all these poems there is expressed the need to construct a more equitable society, Deepti Naval’s narrative in prose and verse questions the norms that perpetrate the gender imbalance in the social setting.In the preface, the editors state: “Our stories aim to spark a transformation in the South Asian social framework by highlighting the insufficient effort to fully integrate women into the mainstream of humanity, historically dominated by men”(x). They further say, “Every story, narrative, and poem in this book is curated with the purpose of stirring a sense of injustice and discomfort, with the ultimate goal of fostering equity, freedom and justice, envisioning a better world. Man and woman are meant to live side by side, not as abuser and victim but as companions”(xv). At a time when the recent tragic rape and murder of a young doctor in Kolkata received unprecedented protest from the general public, we seem to be far away from reaching this utopian state imagined by the editors, but the attempt to focus an entire volume on violence against women as represented through different literary genres is definitely laudable. Overall, the book is not just a collection of narratives about violations but a call to action, inviting readers to join the chorus of voices demanding change. Thus, this anthology is recommended for all classes of readers, serious and casual alike.

The reviewer is former professor of English, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan

Spotlight

Our Stories, Our Struggle : Violence and The Lives of Women

Edited by Mitali Chakravarty, Ratnottama Sengupta

Speaking Tiger, 2024

352 pages, Rs 599/-