A look at women in war and war literatures

Google image Jansi Rani

Time to time, wars occur in this world regardless of penchant of any living being on this earth and at most times wars are forced. In very early days, homo-erectus who were the earliest generation of human-evolution had fights with other animals and the only purpose behind the fights was to get food and it made no harms to the environment. But later on, the evolution itself urged needs for fights and the behind reasons also started growing. When the stage of human evolution turned to be homo-sapiens from the stage of homo-erectus, these small fights also became wars since the reasons had been turned to be ambitions focused. But it is not a thing to be said proudly that it is a sign of evolution as very obviously, each war owes desecrated records of stories and each drop of blood which is spoiled in the roads was used for creation, then this world would have been somewhere else. But here what I want to tell is that the word war itself is seen as a fact that is more supportive to masculine gender. The traditional literatures related to wars criticize feminine as much vulnerable to wars or as reasons for the occurrence of wars. A very popular traditional Tamil literature ‘Ramayana’ illustrates a woman called Seetha as the reason for the war occurred between Rama who was the king of Ayothi in India and Ravana who was the king of Sri Lanka. Though the literature explicitly says ‘Seetha’ as the reason for war, but when going deeply into the literature it can be observed that the prime reason was the ‘haughtiness and dominance of Ravana who was the king of Sri Lanka’. In my view, whenever wars occur, it happens due to two reasons which are the advantages taken by the dominant side and the vulnerable aspects of the other side and it can be simply said due to the ‘cheap mentality of human beings’ and their inexpensive perception which is ‘they can dominate the whole world’ which will never happen. As the best example  ‘Hitler’s German as the heart of the world’ concept can be considered. So when a person or people mislead with some specific advantages that they have got, it is obviously harmful to the people who don’t have it. Thus from this harmful side, always an opposition is influenced with a specific leadership and this is the ultimate point where wars start. But all the war literatures focus much on stimulating ‘heroism’ which is only consecrated to masculine or they criticize women as factors which are so far away from war or much vulnerable or even as reasons for the occurrence of wars. Let’s take the Vietnam War literature; it only focuses creating heroism for the American soldiers who were sent to Vietnam against communists. What literatures try to criticize about women in war is only on how they were harmful to the war, how they were used as motivators of men in war. But the reality says it different. According to Gillian Courtney in the article of Contribution of women in revolution of America, it is mentioned that a lot of women made significant levels of contributions to revolutions especially it rewards women such as Margaret Cochran Corbin and Mary Ludwig Hays who directly contributed to the victory. Even in the eastern world, women such as Jansi Rani can be rewarded in the top position for the revolution against Slavism. But I think the very traditional Tamil literatures talk much about women and wars. Literatures such as ‘purananuru’, and ‘kalithokai’ have given significant importance to women and they say young girls gave high priority to marry the soldiers and a mother’s story was quiet popular in puranauru and the story is short enough as follows. A mother had seven children and she had already lost her husband in war. So she decided to send her children for the warfare and according to her decision, six children were sent and they were killed by enemies. Then also she sent her last child which was an infant and it also was killed and alas, she went and died. So I think very traditional Tamil literatures have given a good space for women which truly lacks in the modern literatures even. Also the other thing that war literatures forget to talk about is the normal people’s lives especially on how they were treated by dominant parties, how painful was their bunger lives and how their blood and energy were spoiled. But Golden Age a novel by Thamima Anam gives an excellent output outlined on normal people’s lives and their circumstances occurred during Afhan war. Though war is a perfect desecration, by all the means, war literatures must arise and they will help others who were not affected by war for an understanding on how painful it is and of course it will be a good realization on truths. The only fact that can be said proudly about anyone who fails in the war is that at least they were not cowardice and did something ambitiously and yes in reality, women do a lot.