Dowry --- and women as sacrificial lambs
A sad novel leaves Z.A.M. Khairuzzaman worried
Sokhinar Boli. A tale of atrocities perpetrated on women offers a powerful testimony to different types of gender-based violence experienced by women and girls throughout their lives. Violence against women is a pandemic, one that transcends the bounds of race, culture, class and religion. It touches virtually every community, in virtually every corner of the country. Too often sanctified by customs and reinforced by institutions, it thrives on widespread impunity for perpetrators in what remains a patriarchal world that is reluctant to grant women equal rights and protection from gender-based violence. Domestic violence against women, especially violence perpetrated by husbands for dowry, is a serious problem in Bangladesh. For many, home is not a haven but a place of pain and humiliation, where violence is an integral part of everyday life hidden behind closed doors. The publication is a noble endeavour of the author who is very much sensitive to touchy issues like violence against women. Such realities are recognised as serious human rights violations. By raising the issue in the novel, the writer has clearly wanted to highlight the issues of violence against women. The book serves to raise awareness and provoke action in addressing the causes of gender-based violence, as well as assisting and defending hundreds of women targeted by violence. These women are our sisters, our mothers, our daughters. The author's initiative is the first ever undertaken in our country. Idris has dedicated his novel to his beloved spouse Lina. Sokhinar Boli is more a fictionalising of facts than a novel. What can be the magnitude of atrocity, oppression and humiliation on a village girl who is forced to marry a peasant twice her age? That is the question raised in the work. Accumulated woes of oppression, insult and humiliation inflicted on the body and mind of Sokhina drive her into attempting suicide. She has wanted to free herself of the inhuman torture inflicted on her by her husband but has failed. The poor woman is rescued by passersby along the river where her unconscious floating body has been found stuck beside a bridge over the river. The story in brief is that Sokhina, a teen aged girl of class eight and daughter of a poor father, is married to an illiterate, aged and stubborn man who is poor but greedy. He has always wanted to fetch dowry from his poor father-in law. He creates continuous pressure on her to bring dowry for him from her parents. Her mother-in-law also joins him in the inhuman act. She too begins to insult, scold and even beat her in a bid to recover the promised dowry from her. In such a situation, Sokhina's mother dies. At this stage, she is sent to her father's house, ostensibly to look after her father. Her greedy husband then begins going there off and on. He presses her to give him all her family property as a gift in legal form. Naturally, she does not agree to the suggestion. Consequently, she falls prey to inhuman physical and mental torture at the hands of the husband. Finding no other way out, the poor woman decides to commit suicide but she is saved through the love and care of her kind-hearted classmate Yasmin, who eventually arranges her friend's divorce and subsequent remarriage. It is her former fiance Ishaq whom Sokhina marries and so comes by a new lease of life. The happiness does not last, though. It ends when Sokhina's former husband kills Ishaq. Ali Idris, in his first novel, has depicted a pen picture of an underaged rural girl. Many such girls are compelled to marry early and undergo unspeakable atrocity, oppression, torture and humiliation by their husbands and in-laws for dowry, which remains a silent scourge in society. Ultimately, their marriages end in tragedy. Life could otherwise have been happy ones. In the book, the writer narrates the agonies that attend the married lives of rural women. He paints a vivid picture of his vast experience of rural life --- full of astounding stories of poverty, agony, ills and superstitions. Though a chartered accountant by profession, literature is a passion with Ali Idris. He was born in Habiganj in January 1948. He began writing in the 1970s. Within a short span of time, he wrote a good number of short stories, novels, travelogue and ballads which won acclaim at home and abroad. His other published books are Khoai Nodir Bakey, Shakhinar Boli, Purbo Africae Aek Jug, Markin Haoa and Geetidhara. He is also a regular columnist in newspapers In recognition of his contributions to literature, Idris was awarded the Atish Dipankar Gold Medal in 2003 and honoured by many other organisations including Bangladesh Writers' Foundation in folk-literature in 2005.
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