ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the atrocities against women in the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh, as represented in Dilruba Z. Ara’s Blame, the author’s latest and major work of fiction. How does the author handle the rape of women and the consequent struggle of the rape victims in postwar Bangladesh? Focusing on this question, the chapter attempts to analyze how women become easy prey to violence in war and assess the aftermath of these women’s traumatic experiences. Blame, Ara’s second novel, chronicles the turbulent years between 1965 and 1971, bringing to the fore the life of Laila, the protagonist of the novel, aged only 13 when the novel begins, as well as the life of Gita, Laila’s friend. Both Laila and Gita, representing womanhood in the war, go through harrowing experiences of being assaulted and raped in the war, but they feel dismayed and dazed when their families abandon them after their return at the end of the war. The author underlines how even their own families denounce them for the incident of rape for which they are, in no way, responsible – hence the title of the novel. Blame foregrounds, amid other concerns, pre-war days, communal tension, friendship, love, betrayal, a sense of freedom and belonging, and the minutiae of war between the well-armed Pakistani army and the Bengalis. The chapter, therefore, investigates the war to locate a wide range of atrocities perpetrated against women that Ara skillfully portrays in the novel.
