Among the
worst victims of any war are women as they have been traditionally
picked out by the dominant male power as the most vulnerable civilian
enemy targets during military engagements. You actually succeed in
subverting the very basis of your enemy’s virile power if you succeed in
violating the enemy’s woman. Then rape becomes disguised military
destruction as you also inevitably destroy the enemy’s morale and
legitimacy and his masculine, fighting qualities in the process. Any war
necessarily leaves behind a trail of devastation in its bloody wake as
noticed in widows and mothers who have lost their sons and sisters who
have lost their brothers and daughters who have lost their fathers in
action. We read about such feminine suffering in the epics and war
novels and watch movies, admire paintings and listen to music that focus
on related themes. But reality is perhaps always more disturbing than
art. Prisoner of War camps, the handling and exploitation of comfort
women by soldiers in combat, Nazi and Japanese battle atrocities against
women during the Second World War, the collective memory and killing
fields of Vietnam: they all bear grim testimony to the fact that woman,
being a most ordinary civilian and, therefore, a non-military subject,
nevertheless becomes a most prominent military target during invasions.
War times are insane moments in human history when the exercise and
passage of civilized law and order and governance (let alone good
governance) are temporarily suspended to encourage widespread plunder,
inhuman brutalities and mayhem.
Impact of Mass Violence
We have to
look into the possible impact of mass violence against women and the
violence this triggers off as a dangerous chain reaction with
mind-blowing consequences. Children suffer, dependents suffer, the
service sector of the economy suffers and the entire domestic ethos of a
given people may even be destroyed with the destruction of women (not
necessarily in the physical sense) and their sanctity in war. Woman has
always been the weaker, fairer other in the context of both martial and
masculine hegemony. It becomes convenient, therefore, on the part of
fighting men to attack and appropriate the women first and, in this
logical process of culmination, to eventually appropriate the otherness
of the enemy’s territoriality with a kind of xenophobic frenzy because
the woman in the final assessment is a man’s property and nothing much
else (according to the dominating male discourse). The enemy is not only
then brought to his humble, submissive knees but the very core of his
dignity and sanctimonious moral values is also simultaneously ripped out
and violated in public. Just recall the Court Scene in the Mahabharata
when Queen Draupadi, who was even menstruating at that point of time,
was manhandled (without any effective protest whatsoever) before her
famous and macho husbands and all the royal elders. Lord Rama fought
with Ravana and ultimately killed him over the issue of a single woman:
however, Rama also asked his wife Sita to prove her (unspoiled) chastity
by entering into a circle of fire once the war was over. Therefore, Rama
had fought the war not to prove his affection for Sita but to prove his
unfaltering machismo.
Double Jeopardy
It is true that wars have been declared because of women (recall Helen
of Troy) and wars have been instigated by women like Cleopatra. But it
is an even greater truth that women have always been exploited and
finally destroyed during combat. A woman faces a double jeopardy during
war: she has to suffer as a woman and she has also to suffer as the
symbol of pride, prestige and property of her man. Invading armies have
been traditionally given the license to gang rape women, often before
their helpless men at gunpoint: this not only results in distorted
sexual gratification for the invaders but also effectively breaks down
the enemy’s final vestiges of any meaningful resistance. So the Women
and War interface would come across as both a gender and a humanitarian
issue to which international Institutions and Non-Government
Organizations should accord immediate and topmost priority. They must
help formulate agreements like the historic Geneva and Berne
Conventions. This would at least constitute the first faltering step
toward a better human civilization and a Brave New World in this most
insecure new millennium.
Quo Vadis?
But the disturbing question remains: is woman simply a construct that
has to be effectively destroyed during warfare or is woman a human
category that has to be addressed critically by the discourse of
violence and the violence of politics? An opposite trend has emerged in
recent times after the invasion of Iraq by the United States of America.
Male prisoners of war at the infamous Abu Ghraib Prison have been
sexually assaulted and harassed by American security forces that
included women personnel. This is a pathetic twist that indicates
history making one full turn where human nature tends to avenge human
nature by equating sexual domination with power games. Our original
position about Women and War thus takes on a different existential
stance in the light of recent military engagements worldwide. Admittedly
Abu Ghraib happens to be an exception when one recalls military excesses
committed against women in North-East India and (reportedly) in Jammu
and Kashmir. Such atrocities are the logical fallout of protracted army
presence in civilian areas on the pretext of battling terrorism.
Manhunts without any warrant, disrespect to human rights and disregard
for the rule of law in disturbed times lead to the subversion of the
sustaining moral fabric of any civil society. So much so that the aged
women in North-East India protested against the brutality of security
forces by parading naked in public.
Reconciliation and Reprieve
There cannot be any conceivable reconciliation between the forces of
violence and the subjects of war at such a critical juncture. The only
reprieve that one may construe long after the effects of violence have
somewhat subsided lies in the core of civil society and social capital
that may help conjoin the sanity of the collective with the goodwill of
the State. For often it is the State and its array of repressive
apparatuses that are responsible for sponsoring violence against women
during anti-terrorism military exercises. But the State unleashes its
own brand of sexual violence and widespread terror in this process.
Conclusion
There cannot be any convenient conclusion with regard to this most
critical discourse on Women and War. But civil society organizations,
voluntary associations, human rights activists, peace workers and
academic institutions may deliberate upon such disturbing issues in
order to explore practical solutions to this problem. Sensitization
workshops should be held to train the security forces worldwide so that
they may read notions of human rights into military maneuvers and
tactics and in the process learn to respect the dignity and sovereignty
of the human body. It becomes a sort of body politic treatise in the
process that teaches one to respect the human body and its sanctity.
Force may not always be deployed in a sanitized manner but at least its
aftershocks may be restricted to military and not civilian (and
therefore vulnerable) soft (?) targets like women.
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