Assignment on War Child

Course: DS 401: Political Economy and History of Bangladesh

Course Teacher
Sonam Saha
Assistant Professor
Department of Development Studies
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Dhaka.
Email: sonamsaha@du.ac.bd

Submitted by
Nafis Hasan
Class Roll: 10, 13th Batch
Department of Development Studies
University of Dhaka.

Date of Submission
2 November 2023
A Melancholic Tale:

Merina Khatun is a war baby from Tarash Upazila in Sirajganj. Her mother, the late Pachi
Begum, was a war heroine (Birangona). During the liberation war, the Pakistani military and
its allies abducted and raped Pachi Begum brutally. Then she conceived Merina and attempted
suicide by taking pesticides to avoid the social disdain of bearing a fatherless child. Luckily,
she survived and gave birth to Merina in the middle of 1972. Pachi Begum could not breastfeed
her child, as it reminded her of the brutal and unbearable torture in the army camp. The other
children of Pachi Begum raised Merina with love and kindness. But she had to grow up
receiving taunts like 'Jaroj sontan' from her neighbor, which caused a lifelong truma for her.
Even today, Merina's children have to hear bad comments about their mother's birth history.
People also castigated Merina's husband for marrying her.

Merina was one of 5000 (estimated) children who were born between 1971 and 1972, known
as war babies. Some of them found homes with foreigners in North American or European
countries, such as Shama Hartt in Canada, Jane Radhika in England, Shikha Cappuccino in
Ottawa, and Kohinoor Nordberg in Norway. Others were very unfortunate, like Merina, who
had to grow up in Bangladesh with the lifelong stigma of being a war child. These people are
living proof of the agony and wounds of the liberation war. They have been in this agony for
50 years, and the government has made very little attempt to lessen their plight.

Reaction from a childish society:

General A.A.K. Niazi had commanded his army to weaponize rape with a view to breeding a
pure Pakistani race by impregnating the girls and women of Bangladesh. Around 200,000
women and girls were raped, tortured, and traumatized during the independence war, and most
of them were conceived during or after the war. The society of Bangladesh at that time was not
mature enough to embrace these helpless women with proper dignity. Rather, society rejected
them for bearing illegitimate children. Families did not risk their lineage honor by taking their
abused daughters home. Being a conservative country, rape was, even at present, viewed as an
immense source of humiliation for an assaulted woman and her family. Also, most of the
husbands, after coming from the war, refused to accept their raped wives because they were
profane according to religion. As a result, many women committed suicide to get relief from
this burden, while others chose to have an abortion. One estimate suggests that around 150000
to 170000 women aborted their children all over the country. Few women—around 25000
women—had decided to bring their children into this world. People's attitude towards these
innocent children was also harsh, just like it was towards their mothers. So, the survival of
these children was uncertain at that time.
Response from the newborn government:

Reconstructing the war-torn country included a lot of difficult tasks, and war baby
rehabilitation was one of them. Neither the state, family, nor society were willing to take
responsibility for these war children because they were of 'tainted blood'. Prominent social
worker and author Nilima Ibrahim documented an interview in her book 'Ami Brirangona
Bolchi' with Bangubandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman where he suggested sending away these
war babies to foreign countries so that the babies could have been raised like normal human
beings. Besides, Bangubandhu did not want to keep any polluted blood in his country, and so
did society and communities. Therefore, the Bangladesh government launched two strategies
simultaneously to get rid of this problem: 1) abortion and 2) adoption.

At that time, Muslim laws did not permit both abortion and adoption. Abortion is viewed as
killing a life in Muslim sharia law, which is a heinous crime in Islam. Similarly, Sharia law
forbids the western idea of adoption because considering someone else as one's own father is
haram in Islam. Moreover, most of the adopted children were sent to Christian countries, and
Muslim leaders opposed this policy, fearing that these children would not be raised as Muslims
under Christian parents. But the Bangladeshi government had promulgated two special laws,
ignoring resentment from the Muslim community.

The Abortion Law was effective in the country from January to October 1972. Under this law,
the Bangladesh Central Women's Rehabilitation Board set up rehabilitation centers in Dhaka
and 17 different areas of the country to keep the abused women safe. In these rehabilitation
centers, women aborted or delivered the child without revealing their identity. Apart from these
government-sponsored centers, some Christian missionaries, such as Shishu Bhaban in
Islampur, established by Mother Teresa in 1972, also provided facilities for women to give
birth in private. Besides, different international organizations like the Red Cross, International
Planned Parenthood (IPP), and the Catholic Church agreed to assist in this process at the request
of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. International Planned Parenthood had assigned Geoffrey Davis,
who was an expert on late-pregnancy abortion, to deal with the abortion process and the training
of local volunteers. Dr. Davis had worked in Bangladesh for six months and himself aborted
around 5,000 fetuses. In his 2002 interview with Bina D'Costa, he expressed that they aborted
all those women who were eligible, and for the others who had given birth, the rehabilitation
center sent their children to International Social Services for the adoption process.

Geneva International Social Service (ISS) was the leading organization in the adaptation
process for war children. They started their activities after issuing the Bangladesh Abandoned
Children (Special Provision) Order in 1972, which permitted foreign agencies to adopt war
babies and took them away from Bangladesh. Other international agencies involved in the
adoption process, in addition to the ISS, included the Kuan-Yin Foundation, Families for
Children, Terre des Hommes (Switzerland), and the Holt Adoption Program (US). Most of the
adoptive parents were from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, France,
and Sweden. The abortion program was continued throughout 1972. However, the process was
not as smooth as it had seemed. Nilima Ibrahim mentioned in her book that girls cried while
giving their babies away. Social workers had to use sedatives sometimes to make the girls
sleep, and then they took the babies. The incident of losing children worsened the trauma of
women, but the state had to ignore it as the 'purity' of the race was its top priority.

50 years of misery:

The post-war government of Bangladesh took only short-term measures, including abortion
and adoption, in response to the war baby problem, which was necessary in the first place. But
after that, they overlooked this matter and did not feel the necessity of initiating any long-term
resolution. The government did not even prepare a list of adopted babies. As a result, the topic
of war babies has just vanished from the liberation history of Bangladesh. Nobody was
interested in knowing how the adopted babies grew up and were treated in foreign countries or
about the lives of those who were growing up in Bangladesh. War children who lived in
Bangladesh have gone through two-thirds of their lives with stigma, agony, fear, humiliation,
and embarrassment. They were deprived of basic human rights such as education, jobs, etc.
because they could not mention their father's name on their birth certificate or national
identification card. The situation for adopted ones was somewhat better. Many of them
completed their higher education at renowned western universities and are now employed in
different professions. They feel proud to be a living part of Bangladesh's birth history. On the
other hand, some of the adopted war babies ended up living a miserable life abroad and
despised Bangladesh for not taking care of them.

Nobody gave an eye to the distress of war children until the International Crimes Tribunal in
Bangladesh declared war babies secondary victims of sexual violence by the Pakistani army.
On December 23, 2014, the tribunal heard the testimony of Shamsur Nahar, who was the first
war baby to testify before the court. The tribunal found that war babies were cut off from the
basic rights of a citizen as well as social recognition. Therefore, the tribunal recommended to
the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs and its associates that they should initiate the process
of identifying war babies promptly and then give state recognition as 'War Children' with
monthly allowances. But the process was very slow, and war children had to wait until 2022 to
get state recognition.

Concluding Remarks:

Secularism was one of the four fundamental principles of independence in Bangladesh. In a

secular state, institutions are completely independent from religious ideas, and the government
makes decisions free from the influence of religion. But the post-war government of
Bangladesh did not uphold its secular ideology in the case of war babies. They judged these
war babies from a patriarchal religious viewpoint and tagged them as 'polluted blood' since
they carried Pakistani genes. The decision-makers ignored the fact that their mother was
Bengali and, moreover, a 'war heroine." Instead of nurturing them as Bengalis, the government
chose to get rid of them by using abortion and adoption as tools.

However, it was my utopian opinion. The solution taken at that time was, perhaps, the best for
both Bangladesh and those newborns. The International Social Service also supported the
adaptation policy. They argued that the religiously orthodox community in Bangladesh would
never accept war babies and that the natural development of these babies would be hindered,
which proved to be true subsequently. Those who grew up in Bangladesh have been
experiencing humiliation for 50 years. Recently, they got state recognition as 'war children'.
They can now access the facilities and benefits of the government without mentioning their
father's name. But this recognition is of no use as they have already passed the age of receiving
education and applying for government jobs, except as a consolation and to erase the imprinted
stigma. Unfortunately, Bangladesh is really too late to give proper honor to the war babies.
 Reference

Ibrahima.N.(2010). Ami birangona bolchi, Jagrti Publication.

Chowdhury, M. (2015), Juddho shishu: 71 er obuduto itihas. Academic press and publishers
limited.

Kanya, P. (n.d.). A tale of two war babies. The Business Standard.

Islam, R. (2022, October 25). Finally, 'war children' to get state recognition. Prothom Alo
English.

1971: Rape and its consequences - Dhaka. (2010, December 15). bdnews24.com.

Rahim, N. (2020, December 11). OP-ED: All the children born of rape. Dhaka Tribune.

Victory's Silence. (n.d.). The Daily Star