Wartime Rape: The Figures of the ‘Birangana’ and the ‘Comfort Woman’

The essay briefly draws in references from Nilima Ibrahim’s Ami Virangana Bolchhi (1996) (along with various other literature on Biranganas) and Yuki Tanaka’s Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (2017) and other testimonies, to highlight the politics behind homogenizing women who were victims of genocidal rape during war, as “brave” in an attempt to systemically overlook the atrocities that went on. Violence is a pervasive factor of the human experience.