‘Daughter of the Agunmukha: A Bangla Life’ by Noorjahan Bose: Commonality of women’s suffering

It is not easy to visualise a large aquatic zone which is a confluence of seven rivers. The image is both frightening and enchanting. It forms the backdrop and the starting point of this riveting autobiography of Noorjahan Bose. Her story is disturbing and heartening at the same time — a story of courage, suffering and struggle.

Noorjahan Bose, both the narrator and the main character of the story, was born in 1938. She acquired this unusual name as she was born in a Muslim family and married a Bengali Hindu. She lived through the Partition in 1947, the language movement in East Bengal against the imposition of Urdu on Bangla-speaking Pakistanis, the liberation struggle of Bangladesh in 1971, and much more. Her individual story is a micro-reflection of the story of a nation, struggling for Independence, recognition and respect.

There are three separate strands interwoven into Noorjahan’s story — her individual struggles, her life as a Bangladeshi nationalist, and her ideological commitment to feminism. Noorjahan’s individual life was marked by trials and tribulations at every stage of her life. A rebel, who always questioned the choices that were made for her by the outside world, she married the person she loved, who unfortunately died even before their child was born. She then married a close friend of her first husband, who was a Hindu. This turned out to be difficult and she had to often compromise with her or his religious identity. During the course of the Bangladeshi struggle for Independence, she had to project him as a Muslim to protect him from being killed by the Pakistani forces. Once she was on the Indian side of Bengal around June 1971, she had to project herself as a Hindu to gain acceptance in her husband’s family. She gave herself the name “Joya”. Curiously, this stigma continued to haunt her even after she shifted to the US in the 1970s. In Washington, she got death threats for having married a Hindu. She was ordered to convert her husband to Islam. If she did not, she, her husband and daughters would all be killed. The threats persisted for quite some time and tormented her for individual decisions taken many years ago.

Noorjahan’s lived life covered a wide geographical spectrum — from her small village Katakhali in East Bengal to Barisal to Dhaka. From Dhaka, she shifted to Cambridge with her husband and then lived in Karachi. In the ’70s, Noorjahan shifted to the US. These tectonic migrations were deeply unsettling for her. Every time she got used to a place and social environment, fate intervened and she had to move to a new, alien and unfriendly place. There was no settling down for her, except perhaps in the US, where she spent the longest spell and where she lives now, till the writing of her life story.

However, this constant movement was also an advantage. It gave her a great vantage point to compare different places, communities and cultures. She discovered great differences between cultures, but also equally great similarities. For instance, Noorjahan noticed that women everywhere were at the receiving end of discrimination, abuse and sexual violence. The difference was only of degree, but no place was immune to sexual violence against women. This was a stark reality which cut across class, religion and nation. This imparted a missionary zeal in her to work for a better life for women.

The second major strand in Noorjahan’s life was as a Bangla nationalist. She participated in the language movement in 1951 as a small child. As she grew up, her indignation at the discriminatory treatment meted out to the Bengalis of East Pakistan by the Pakistani government increased. In 1970, before the general elections in Pakistan, there was a huge cyclone in East Pakistan, which took half a million Bengali lives. The callous and negligent attitude of the government and refusal to undertake any relief work filled Noorjahan, and many like her, with total indignation. This also became the trigger for the liberation struggle. During this period, Noorjahan was mostly in Kolkata and was struck by the great accommodating spirit and solidarity by the Indian Bengalis. Many university teachers vacated their houses to accommodate refugees from East Pakistan. This was an example of regional and cultural solidarity in which religious differences became insignificant.

However, the greatest moral obsession in her life was on the women’s question. As a child, she was sexually abused by her uncle. As she grew up, she both experienced and observed all the possible hardships and suffering that accompanied a woman’s life. She was able to put her experiences into perspective in the 1960s when she read ‘The Second Sex’ by Simon de Beauvoir. The book gave her an ideological anchorage. As she understood the deep and historically entrenched nature of patriarchy, she also became sympathetic towards the behaviour of many men in her life, including her husbands. She discovered that ideas of male superiority did not emanate from individual convictions, but carried the collective training and socialisation of thousands of years. This made her compassionate towards her fellow human beings, but also very determined to fight for the safety and dignity of all women.

This is a remarkable book on the remarkable life of a remarkable woman.

— The writer is a former professor of history