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Dhaka Day by Day

Throwing off the Shackles

by S Bari
The two men had a hazardous job To monitor gatherings that smacked of seditious, revolutionary intent, meetings that threatened the stability of the state. Today's assignment for our two Special Branch heroes was a meeting that was plotting, of ail the explosive, anti democratic'things, the proper treatment of
It was an exhibition on violence against women. organized by Olkyobaddho Nanri Satnaaj. Be-
gum SuOa Kamal opened the • how. and speakers included Ayesha Khanum. Secretary of Bangladesh Mahlla Parlshad. and lawyer Sigma Huda.
Posters and a small selection of publications on the topic were the major attraction. Ain o Saai-ish Kendra's excellent booklet "Let’s learn about the law" was available. Simple sketches accompany a straight forward explanation of a woman's rights under Islamic law. Areas covered particularly well are child marriage and divorce proceedings. Mahila Pari shad had on display a number of books dealing with Begum Rokeya.
Various pamphlets of statistical and analytical studies on violence against women were for sale, but the most recent of these only went up to 1985. When asked, one re-
searcher in the subject said that ffjpfC umo-date studies do exist but have not appeared on the market yeL
When exhibitions on topics such as these include posters, you can be sure subtlety 1s not the watchword. Ils the old Art versus Social Relevance argument: invariably leading to a defeat of artistic endeavour. Most of the posters were predictably of women hanging by their necks, impaled on fences, beaten, mutilated, bodies piled Indiscriminately In rooms.
This depiction has two flaws. Newspapers regularly print such pictures, ostensibly as a
token of their dedication to the cause of women's rights but really as the perfect sensationalist attention-grabber, near-pomography. As a couple of the few men at the exhibition commented among themselves. "This is actually ex citing for a lot of men. These pictures don't manage to show why this is happening."
Which is the second flaw: shots of mangled women do not convey the whys and the what to dos of the Issue, they show only the grisly out-
come. The Saptagram poster on dowry is a sketch of a large balance; on one side sits a woman, and the other side is loaded with dowry goods such as a IV and a bicy cie. Concise, clean, • and not open to any lent pornography.
As Huda said in her address, the presence of Special Branch men was not threatening; if anything; it was funny. The police. on the whole, do not treat the complaints of women seriously. Beatings and burnings, marital rape. complete distortion of marriage and divorce procedures all go on unhampered.
But when a few women and enlightened men get together to talk about it, the efficient . law enforcement machine shows up, presumably to pro-| tcct our women from such
dangerous dreams as getting a decent deal out of life. The very p&kchc'e1' of those two men proves that the security and humane treatment of women Is a political issue.
One poster sums up all oppressions and all the justifications, and pulls off the Art meets Social Relevance act: a woman kneels, and piled on her bent back arc the Bible, the Quran, the Geeta, and books on the laws of the state that discriminate against her. The system expects that their combined weight will keep her down, but the exhibition was part of the hope that she Will throw these books off her back.