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After 10 years:
During the last ten years, Shirin Banu continued relentlessly to work with women from the local communities, helping to organize people at local level. She is involved in many NGOs.
But, despite holding a leading position at PRIP Trust and being one of the former freedom fighters, Shirin Banu remained a simple and unpretentious person who does not seem to be too comfortable to speak about herself.
Nonetheless, Shirin Banu takes a strong stance when asked about current topics of Bangladesh’s society.
One of these topics is the religious fundamentalism which is currently on the increase in Bangladesh. Shirin Banu sees fundamentalism today as more organized and aggressive than before and she adds that the recruitment of followers starts already in the madrassas. Shirin Banu thinks that people should organize themselves against fundamentalism, as the fundamentalists are threatening the open minded people. She says: “Just protesting from the streets will not be enough. They are very well organized, economically, politically and socially.”
Shirin Banu is also very determined about the punishment of war criminals and she is satisfied, that finally, since 2014, four war criminals have been punished.
In a recent interview with a daily newspaper, Shirin Banu spoke about the recognition of the participation of common people in the Liberation War of 1971, which has not been included in the history of Bangladesh, let alone the participation of women freedom fighters. Regarding the Biranganas, the many women who were raped during the liberation war and later recognized as war heroines by the Bangladeshi government, she said: “How will you know their story when our society is so hostile towards the Biranganas? It is good news that the government has recognized the Biranganas as freedom fighters. I think the Biranganas were the bravest of the freedom fighters. They sacrificed the most for the country; they went through the most heinous types of torture. (…….) When the war was over, our struggle ended but the struggle of the Biranganas had just begun. We write ‘his story’, not ‘her story’. If we want to write about women’s role in our Liberation War, we will have to change our mindset and look at things differently. It will not be possible until and unless the young generation comes forward and takes responsibility. “
Another critical issue Shirin Banu is working on is the marriage age. She fights together with PRIP Trust that the marriage age will not be reduced to 16 years as it is suggested by large parts of the society. She says that women’s movements take this issue very seriously and they will fight together against it.
When I ask her whether and how men should be involved in women’s rights’ issues, she says, that men should eventually also be included, but first women had to become aware of their rights. That’s why they first had to be trained separately. She says: “When I worked with women in the country, and there was a man, the women kept silent. That’s why they had to be trained separately. But nowadays men and women should fight jointly.”
Shirin Banu concludes: “It’s still a long way to go, but we need to continue. It’s important to identify the critical issues and fight for them. Violence against women increased in our society. In our childhood we played in the fields, our mothers were not so worried. Nowadays the value system has declined. If women demand their rights, they encounter violence.”
Shirin Banu, the former “girl with a gun” continues being a fighter, although she admits: “Sometimes I get depressed, but we are warriors of this field and we must go on. When we talk to same-minded people it helps.” And besides that, what gives her hope, too, is that people like her daughter, together with their generation, will continue to fight for the right cause.
Update: Shirin Banu passed away on 21 July 2016, after suffering a cardiac arrest. Hundreds of people paid rich tributes to the freedom fighter.
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“We are all warriors in our own small orbits and these efforts will lead us toward a society free of religious obstacles, bring freedom from hunger, and end all kinds of discrimination.”
Shirin Banu (born 1951) has blended very effectively her experience in politics and with the women’s movement in her work on the empowerment of grassroots-level women leaders. She has motivated women leaders of the Union Parishad (grassroots legislative unit) to coalesce into an elected women’s forum that can collectively bargain to assert their rights and powers. She has also worked to create local women’s groups to unite women in rural Bangladesh against fundamentalism.
Shirin Banu comes from a liberal, politically active background. Both her parents were active members of the communist party. Her mother was the first female whip of the parliamentary party and the first general secretary of the Mahila Awami League. It obviously led to Shirin being politically active from her student days. One of the country’s best-known freedom-fighters, Shirin was perturbed that women were denied the opportunity to fight on the frontlines. Therefore, she disguised herself as a man and joined the war, living daily with the fear of being unmasked. Postwar reality was a big disappointment. Bangladesh’s secular constitution was replaced by an Islamic one and the people did not, Shirin says, “get freedom of religion, freedom from hunger, or freedom from discrimination.” Shirin’s work with the women’s development program of the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development set the course for her life’s work. The spirit of the women in rural Bangladesh stirred her, leaving a lasting impression. Around 1998, she joined the Prip Trust. She now works with women leaders in rural Bangladesh, her most remarkable achievement being the setting up of a forum of elected women in the Union Parishad (Bangladesh’s smallest legislative unit), who would work together to assert their inalienable rights and power. Predictably, Shirin faced raucous opposition from fundamentalist groups. But she knew that if the community stood together and raised its voice, it would stymie the fundamentalists. It was to this end that she created several local women’s organizations. “We are all warriors in our own small orbits and these small efforts will lead us toward a society free of religious obstacles, bring freedom from hunger, and end all kinds of discrimination,” she says.
Prip Trust
South Asia | Bangladesh
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