Ariba Khan, Nishat Ahmed & Nile Johnson

Political turmoil plagued Bangladesh more often than peace, so when women gained equal suffrage in 1947, they were suspicious and rightfully so. My grandma was born ten years later, but her life, unfortunately, wasn’t too different from that of her mother or her grandmother, in fact. Despite, legally being able to, stigma and lack of education terrified my grandmother from immediately participating in Bangladesh’s “democratic” elections.

In a country with a violent and a rapidly changing political atmosphere as that of Bangladesh’s, voting was seen as a dangerous task for its citizens and especially for its women. When my mother was born, something shifted in my grandma. She said to me that giving birth to a daughter made her “fearless” and so she did something with that new found strength—she went to vote. My grandmother lived through the brutal fight against Pakistan for Bangladesh’s independence, so finally having the courage to vote in her country was a truly exhilarating feeling. That sentiment, however, was not shared by my mother when growing up. She didn’t experience the restriction that my grandmother did, so she didn’t understand how important voting exactly was for her future and the future of her country. When I questioned my mother, surprised to hear her lack of voting history in Bangladesh, she just laughed an excused it to a lack of time.

My mother moved to America soon after she got married, and for the first time, like my grandmother she was restricted from voting and had to wait five years to receive citizenship before she too learned the importance of voting, I, thereby, grew up in a household where election season was always an exciting and nervous event. My mother’s and grandmother’s struggle with voting had taught me, even more, the importance of it. So I can’t wait until I get to come home with an ‘I voted’ sticker and the knowledge that I had a part in shaping the political future of my country.

A portrait of suffragist Lucy Stone.

A family portrait.