‘Our Stories, Our Struggle’: Shocking tales of misogyny from South Asia show how dire the problem is

I began reading Our Stories, Our Struggle: Violence and the Lives of Women when my city, Kolkata, was raging about the rape and murder of a young woman – a doctor – who was abused and killed in the hospital where she was training for her post-graduate degree. This collection of fiction, nonfiction and poetry shows how violence permeates women’s lives in South Asia.

Women’s conduct and bodies

Rape is a recurring theme throughout this collection. In the poem “Birangona”, Sadaf Saaz writes about the several thousand Bangladeshi women who were raped by Pakistani forces during the War of Liberation. They were glorified, yet neglected by the state and more often than not reviled and rejected by their families and communities. Teresa Rehman and Hoineilhing Sithou explain how rape has been used as a weapon against women in Manipur by military and para-military forces of the Indian state, as well as by warring communities, for example, the large-scale rape of Kuki women by men of the dominant Meitei community during the 2023 conflict.

Ngurang Reena moved to Delhi from Arunachal Pradesh in 2009 and in “Hidden Vulnerabilities” she focuses on experiences of living through India’s race and gender wars. She writes that her Mongoloid phenotypes have…

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