Kafir Women Speaks 10: Feminist Response To Those Who Deny Genocide Of Hindus
According to Polish Jewish author, Raphael Lemkin genocide is “… the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group… ..genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is extended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundation of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”
Six centuries before Lemkin, a Kashmiri Pandit, Jonoraj, the author of the third Rajtarangini called “genocide” Jatividhwansh”, literally translated as, “the annihilation of a race”. In addition, he talks of genocide as the cutting of the branches of a tree, which the same as uprooting, which is what happened to Hindus in Sindh, Pakistan, East Bengal.
I encountered a “reasonable” elite gentleman, claiming to be of left-wing persuasion, who refused to acknowledge that in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1971 till 2024 Hindu genocide happened, although it is acknowledged by Human Rights Commission and even the Bangladeshi Government. As a feminist, I find this denial very similar to the denial of domestic violence, sexual violence, sexual harassment and to somehow blame the victim for these abuses. It is a culture of silence that patriarchy has taught the victim and it pervades both the individual as well as the cultural psyche. The public imagination of rape and violence has been almost absent, till the feminist movement brought it out. On the personal level, women started to speak in Consciousness raising sessions and realized that what they have been taught is really cultural and about power and not “natural”. For example, sexist jokes, touching in appropriately, etc all emanate from systems of power. Similarly, intense community education about genocide that happened and is still happening to the minorities in Bangladesh needs Consciousness raising and awareness, for our oppressions are in our heads and consciousness. For this at least the educated elite has to be taught the difference between Genocide, ethnic cleansing, hate crimes, as given in the literature and in declared in the United Nations Charter for Prevention of Atrocities and Genocides. Grassroot movements have to be started, and small group discussion have to be created in order for people to be aware and to come to terms with their traumatic past. This will give the present a meaning and the future more consolidated.
