Role of Shaheed Janani Jahanara Imam during War of Liberation and Post-Independent Bangladesh

The paper aims to understand the role of human being as an 'agent' during the critical and unstable socio-political condition and analyze the dynamics using a gender lens. In particular, the paper chooses a case on Jahanra Imam and analyzes how her role, initiatives and actions during liberation and post-liberation war contribute in 'making history' within the discursive traditional norms, unstable and uncertain political and social situations. Based on the structure-agency theory given by Giddens, the paper follows a case study method from qualitative data collection techniques combining both primary and secondary data. The study demonstrates that, women, during liberation war kept significant contributions through active participation in the war or inspired or supported the freedom fighters. Jahanara Imam, like them, played an active role in mobilizing people including her son in joining the war. Her sacrifice for liberation war, the active role in documenting history through her writings and later on, the demand of the penalties for war criminal demonstrated her contribution in the history of Bangladesh. Furthermore, her contribution even goes beyond the border of our theoretical framework- 'structure-agency' debate, because the community continued to be mobilized on the demand of the penalty of war criminals againsthumanity, that she initiated.