First casualty of a war is the 'Truth'...
Who were in majority in Bangladesh(East Pakistan), the Bengalis or the non Bengalis, Biharis, others...only Mukhti Bahni armed mercenaries numbers quoted was in excess of 175,000, many times more than the 40,000 Pak army men.
And by many accounts more non Bengalis and Biharis, people from west Pakistan(as they were unarmed) were killed by the Mukhti Bahni rebels as they have the local support and the arms and finance...it is very believable that unarmed, women children were killed who were non Bengalis and Biharis, Urdu speaking too in much larger numbers than the Bengalis killed.
They were on the rampage, and not the non Bengalis...unarmed men and women, children are more likely to be killed in large numbers than the fully armed Mukhti Bahni mercenaries.
PERSECUTION OF NON-BENGALIS (MAINLY BIHARIS) – A FORGOTTEN REALITY
Myth makers’ talk about the millions of Bengalis killed and raped, but they have very little or no time to tell about the massacres of non-Bengalis by Awami League militants aided by East Pakistan Rifles and police. Immediately after the postponement of 3rd March session of constitution making National Assembly on 1st March, 1971, Bengali mobs took to streets. Armed with guns, knives, daggers, dirks, sickles and other weapons, they started attacking and looting shops and houses of non-Bengalis which included West Pakistani workers and Biharis. The strategy was kept simple, i.e. “loot, kill & burn”. Thousands were killed in cold blood; raped, looted, houses were burnt in different parts of East Pakistan including Dhaka, Chittagong, Jessoure, Khulna, Barisal, Kushtia, Rajbari, Sylhet, Mymensingh, and Comilla.
Here is something what Anthony Mascarenhas, who is known for his reporting against Pakistan Army, had reported; “Thousands of families of unfortunate Muslims, many of them refugees from Bihar who chose Pakistan at the time of the partition riots in 1947 were mercilessly wiped out. Women were raped, or had their breasts torn out with specially fashioned knives. Children did not escape the horror: the lucky ones were killed with their parents; but many thousands of others must go through what life remains for them with eyes gouged out and limbs roughly amputated. More than 20,000 bodies of non-Bengalis have been found in the main towns, such as Chittagong, Khulna & Jessore. The real toll, I was told everywhere in East Bengal, may have been as high as 100,000; for thousands of non-Bengalis have vanished without a trace.”
[The Sunday Times, London, 13th June, 1971]
The Sunday Times of London, reported in its issue of May 2, 1971: “Ten days of piecing together the details in East Pakistan have revealed a huge and almost successful mutiny in the Pakistan Army and the brutal massacre of thousands of non-Bengalis— men, women and children. More than 20,000 bodies have been found so far in Bengal’s main towns but the final count could top 100,000….Eye-witnesses in more than 80 interviews tell horrifying stories of rape, torture, eye-gouging, public flogging of men and women, women’s breasts being torn out and amputations before victims were shot or bayoneted to death. Punjabi Army personnel and civil servants and their families seem to have been singled out for special brutality…”
The Times of London reported on April 6th, 1971: “Thousands of helpless Muslim refugees settled in Bengal at the time of Partition, are reported to have been massacred by angry Bengalis in East Pakistan during the past week…”
The Daily Statesman of New Delhi reported in its issue of April 4, 1971: “The millions of non-Bengali Muslims now trapped in the Eastern Wing have always felt the repercussions of the East-West tensions, and it is now feared that the Bengalis have turned on this vast minority community to take their revenge…..”
M.R. Akhtar Mukul from Mukti Bahini wrote: “There is a wooden bridge to help private car, jeep and pedestrians to cross the river. But its middle portion is missing. Someone has removed it. To speak to the local people I got down from the jeep along with Mr. Asad. Seeing my large body, big moustache and long hair, the locals started whispering with one another suspecting me to be a non- Bengali. I sensed my heart getting cold out of fear. Luckily, I am an accomplished speaker in Bogra’s local tongue. My habitual jokes and manner of speaking removed their suspicion and helped make certain rapport between us. Afterwards I came to learn that they have been engaged in an awesome mission. The non-Bengalis from Jaipurhat-Pachbibi area who have been fleeing towards Dhaka through Bogra were finished off here on the bank of the river. Women and children have been kept unharmed in a homestead. For a number of days the villagers have been doing this at night with ‘mashals’ in hand.”
[Ami Bijoy Dekhechi (I Have Seen Victory) page. 70]
In the following sections, I am quoting some more news reports and few accounts of the survivors belonging to different districts. These accounts are taken from “Blood and Tears” by Qutbuddin Aziz.
Specimen of interview sheet for eye-witness account. (Blood and Tears)
Butchery at Dhaka
In the state of lawlessness Peggy Durdin, a writer for the Magazine Section of the New York Times & her husband, also a reporter for the NYT, were attacked by Awani League demonstrators with iron bars and long poles in the heart of Dhaka on 2nd March, 1971. She wrote of it in the New York Times of May 2, 1972: “On the first day of the general strike particularly, emotional groups of demonstrating, shouting teenagers near the great (Baitul) Mokarram Mosque started to attack my husband and me with iron bars and long poles.”
London’s Daily Telegraph, in its issue of April 7, 1971, carried a report from its staff correspondent in Dhaka, quoting a native of Dundee: “He describes how after President Yahya’s broadcast on March 26, a mob came to the factory. The
goondas (thugs) went on the rampage. They looted the factory and offices, killed all the animals they could find and then started killing people. They went to the houses of my four directors, all West Pakistanis, set fire to the houses and burnt them alive, including families totaling 30. They killed the few who ran out.”
Uniformed rebel puffing cigarette to singe the eye of a terrified Bihari.
Mohammed Farid, who was employed as Assistant Supervisor in the Spinning section of the Adamjee factory in Adamjee Nagar New Colony in Dhaka witnessed the gruesome massacre and escaped it by dint of good luck. He said: “On March 19, a killer gang of Awami League militants, armed with guns, sickles, daggers and staves came into our factory. The Bengali security guards joined them and they rampaged through the mill and the houses of the non-Bengali mill hands. The killer gang attacked the Weaving section and slayed scores of non-Bengali employees in barely half an hour of Operation Murder. I saw many dozens of wounded mill hands running towards my Spinning section. I hid myself behind a big machine at the far end of the Hall. The killers swarmed into my unit and attacked the non-Bengal employees. Some of the victims ran out and the killers chased them, shooting with guns. The killing spree of the rebels continued for nearly 3 hours. At night, when I emerged from hiding, hundreds of dead bodies were littered all over the factory premises. The killer gang looted the houses of non-Bengalis and burnt many. They slaughtered hundreds of innocent men, women and children and threw many corpses into flaming houses…Close to the water tank lay the dead bodies of many non-Bengali girls who, I learnt, were ravished by the killers and then murdered. It was a terrible scene. I estimate about 1,000 non-Bengalis were killed.”
[Blood and Tears, page. 27-28]
Slaughter houses in Chittagong
The situation in Chittagong was even worse. The operations in Chittagong against non-Bengali population were supervised by Awami League High Command, M.R. Siddiki who is also known as “Butcher of Chittagong”.
Eye gouging and burning the skin of victims was a favourite torture method of bengali rebels.
In a dispatch from Chittagong, Malcolm Browne of the New York Times reported on May 10, 1971: “…But before the Army came, when Chittagong was still governed by the secessionist Awami League and its allies, Bengali workers, apparently resentful of the relative prosperity of Bihari immigrants from India, are said to have killed the Biharis in large numbers…”
“In Chittagong, the colonel commanding the Military Academy was killed while his wife, eight months’ pregnant, was raped and bayoneted in the abdomen. In another part of Chittagong, an East Pakistan Rifles Officer was flayed alive. His two sons were beheaded and his wife was bayoneted in the abdomen and left to die with her son’s head placed on her naked body. The bodies of many young girls have been found with Bangladesh flagsticks protruding from their wombs..”
[Sunday Times, London, 2 May, 1971]
“I had joined the Gul Ahmed Jute Mills as a Security Guard in July 1971. I had heard from non-Bengalis about the mass slaughter which the Bengali rebels had conducted in March 1971 in Chittagong. One day, on my way to the Jute Mill, I spotted a small human skull lying outside a deserted house. Through a crack in a window, I looked inside. To my horror, the skulls and bones of many children laid in heaps inside the locked room. Some clothes were strewn on the floor and they looked to be the ones usually worn by non-Bengali children. With the help of some friends, I dug a grave and interred the remains of the innocents in it. Subsequently, I learnt that in March 1971, this house was used as a slaughterhouse by the rebels and they had killed many women and children in it.”, said Jamdad Khan who worked in a Jute Mill in Chittagong.
[Blood and Tears, page. 66-67]
“Hundreds of teenage girls were kidnapped from our locality by the Bengali rebels. We found no trace of them after the rebels retreated. There were reports that the killers violated their chastity, murdered them and threw their bodies into the Karnaphuli river”, said Fatema Begum from Raufabad, Chittagong.
[Blood and Tears, page. 71-72]
Here, it is pertinent to mention that according to Jyoti, Pakistan Army had killed 50,000 Buddhists of Chakma tribe in Chittagong Hills. But the good journalist doesn’t know the fact that Chakma tribesmen sided with United Pakistan at the time of creation of Bangladesh.
Carnage in Khulna
A horrifying description of the slaughter of Khulna’s non-Bengalis appeared in the Washington Sunday Star on May 9, 1971: “In Khulna, newsmen on an army-conducted tour yesterday saw what a non-Bengali resident described as a human slaughter house. Sheds were said to have been used by East Pakistan’s dominant Bengalis in mass killings of Bihari immigrants from India, West Pakistanis and other non-Bengalis during March and early April at the height of the secessionist uprising…Reporters were shown a wooden frame with chains affixed on top where women and children reportedly were beheaded with knives…There was a form of a garrote attached to a tree where the residents said victims were choked to death. Cords attached to one tree were described as hanging nooses. Bodies were said to have been thrown over a low wall into the river running alongside. Long rows of shops and homes in the non-Bengali sector of Khulna were badly burned, apparently by Bengalis.”
“…At Khulna, newsmen were shown facilities where frames were said to have been set up to hold prisoners for decapitation. Fragments of bloody clothing and tresses of women’s hair were strewn about. The place was said to have been used by the Bengali insurgents for the execution of thousands of non-Bengali residents…”
[New York Times, May 9, 1971]
An account of Nisar Ahmed Khan, a survivor from Khulna: “In the night of March 23 and all through the next day, the Bengali rebels went on the rampage against the non-Bengalis in this locality. The rebels blocked all the access roads and sealed off the routes of escape for the non-Bengalis. Armed with rifles, sten guns, hand grenades, knives and spears, a huge killer mob fell upon the hapless non-Bengali men, women and children. The rebels burned and blasted the entire neighborhood; they looted the homes of non-Bengalis and as the victims ran out of their houses, a hail of gunfire mowed them down. Many women and children sought refuge in the main Mosque and in my school building. The killers murdered the Imam (Priest) who begged them in the name of God to spare the innocents. Teenage girls and young women, kidnapped by the Bengali rebels, were lodged in the school building. At night, they were raped by their captors. Those who resisted were immediately shot. Some hapless women jumped from the roof of the sex assault chambers to escape their violators… Some old men, women and children were marched by the rebels to the river-side human abattoir where they were slaughtered and dumped into the river. The killers trucked away many dead bodies from the town to the river bank where they were flung into the water…I did not go to my school on March 24, the day of the massacre. The next day, a Bengali attendant came to my house in Satellite Town and gave me the grisly details of the killing. Hundreds of dead bodies, many of young women, he said, lay in heaps in the school building…On March 30, when the federal troops entered Khulna and the rebels retreated, I went to my school. It was a horrifying spectacle. Bloated, decomposed dead bodies lay in hundreds and the stench of rotting dead was nauseating. It took me almost a whole month to bury the dead.”
[Blood and Tears, 86-87]
Grief in Dujanpur
The Times of London, in its issue of April, 6, 1971, quoted a young British technician who had crossed the Indo-Pak frontier at Hilli: “He said that hundreds of non-Bengali Muslims must have died in the north-western town of Dinajpur alone. After the soldiers left, the mobs set upon the non-Bengali Muslims from Bihar. I don’t know how many died but I could hear the screams throughout the night. In other parts of the region, he said. Biharis had been rounded up and were being held as hostages…” Sexual violence in Dujanpur was worst. Given below is account of some of the survivors who narrated thier ordeal later.
Twenty-year-old Sakina Bibi, whose husband, Abdus Shakoor, was done to death by the Bengali rebels in a raid on her house in Neelmati in Dinajpur on March 22, 1971, gave this grisly account of her plight: “The non-Bengalis in our locality lived in hutments. A killer mob of Bengali rebels attacked our locality at night; they burnt the shacks and looted every article of value in our homes. In less than half an hour, they gunned to death all the non-Bengali male adults in our locality. They wounded my husband with a scythe and then shot him…After killing all the non-Bengali men, they lined up about four hundred sorrowing non-Bengali women and, at gunpoint, stripped off their clothes. I wanted to throttle myself when one of our tormentors, brandishing a scythe in my face, tore off my clothes. With guns ready to shoot, they forced us to parade in the nude. A few women, who tried to escape, were mowed down by the gunmen. In this march of the naked women, I spotted the wife of my brother. She said the killers had done him to death; they had also killed her little son. We walked five miles to Narkuldanga. By the time we reached this place, not more than 150 captive women were left. A few were shot; many were taken away by the other rebels on the way as their share of the loot. One of them was my sister-in-law; she was young and pretty. I never saw her again…Our Bengali captors detained us in six huts. For the first three days, we had not a morsel of food. We lived on water and wild fruits picked from the trees. All through the period of our captivity, the hapless captive women were subjected to multiple rapes. Six teenage girls who tried to escape were shot. On April 10, when the Pakistani troops routed the rebels, the retreating Bengalis tried to slaughter all of us but we were rescued in the nick of time.”
[Blood and Tears, page. 100-101]
“Our Bengali captors dumped us in a cluster of huts in the village of Baraul. At night, they fell upon us like vultures. Some women who resisted their violators were shot to teach a lesson to the others. Their bodies were mutilated; their breasts were slashed off and “Joi Bangla” was carved with knives on their lifeless foreheads. On April 10, a unit of the Pakistan Army captured the village and rescued us”, said (then) Twenty-four year old Noor Jahan who had also lost her husband.
[ibid: 100]
“I led the federal troops to the Iqbal High School where I knew that the non-Bengalis had been slaughtered. Nearly 2,500 rotting dead bodies, with bullet marks and knife wounds, were retrieved and given a mass burial. The wombs of some pregnant women had been slit open by their tormentors. The heads of some decapitated bodies were missing. I spotted many dead children whose limbs had been splintered. I saw the slaughter-houses operated by the Bengali rebels on the banks of the Kanchan River; it seemed river of blood had flowed there. I saw the fiendish implements with which the slaughterers tortured their victims before the actual kill…”
[ibid p. 102]
Massacres in Jessore
The story of Jessore massacres is quite interesting. Pakistan Army was blamed for the massacres in Jessore but decades later, Indian journalist, Sarmila Bose brought up the true facts and told what really had happened there. She told about a photo, showing a soldier with a gun slung at his shoulder walking near some dead bodies. Dead bodies were shown as of ‘Bengalis killed by Pakistan Army on 2nd April, 1971’ by myth makers. But Sarmila, after her detailed examination told that “the bodies were dressed in Shalwar Kameez – a clear indication that they were Biharis”. [9]
Massacre in Jessore
Similarly, Italian Priest, named Reverend Mario Veronesi was killed on April 4. Veronesi was killed in Christian Fatima Catholic Hospital in Jessore by rebel troops from the East Bengal Regiment mistakenly as a Pathan. Indian propagandists and their Awami League protégés blamed the Pakistan Army for his slaying. When the Italian Ambassador in Pakistan visited the Roman Catholic Mission in Jessore to investigate the circumstances of Father Veronesi’s death, the military authorities explained and offered evidence to prove that the Italian Priest was killed by the Bengali rebels and not by the federal Army. Facts show that Jessore was under the control of the Bengali rebels from the East Bengal Regiment on April 4 when he was gunned down. Eye-witnesses of the March-April 1971 killings of non-Bengalis in Jessore, also maintained that their information was that the Bengali rebel soldiers had killed Father Veronesi and four others in the Roman Catholic Hospital. [10]
“I was there with Alan Hart of BBC Panorama and a Bengali speaking photographer, Mohammed Amin. We thought the troops and local citizens were about to attack but they then got other ideas. Among each contingent arriving at the HQ were tall, usually bearded Punjabis. Their hands were tied and they were being brutally pushed along by rifle-butts. We thought the West Pakistan soldiers were attacking and we scattered similarly, only to discover, on a grass patch beside the road, men freshly stabbed and bludgeoned, lying in still flowing pools of blood. Four of them were still just alive, rolling over and waving their legs and arms. But none of them made any noise. At this moment our Awami League guide became hysterical and tried to rush us back. He said it was not safe, the West Pakistanis were attacking. He tugged us away from the bodies. But suddenly, Alan Hart, myself and Mohammed realized who these dead and dying men were. They were not Bengalis; they were, we are convinced, the Punjabi prisoners we had seen, bound and under guard, an hour before. The victims could not have been killed by anyone but local Bengali irregulars as these were the only people in Central Jessore that day. The terror and behavior of the Awami (League) politicians and the crowd is circumstantial evidence, and our photographer, Amin, who knows his Pakistani types, is certain the victims were Punjabis…Even as the locals began to threaten us and we were forced to drive away, we saw another 40 Punjabi ‘spies’ being marched towards that same grass plot with their hands above their heads.”
Another British newspaper, the Daily Mail of London, published the following write-up from Brian Rimmer in its issue of April 3, 1971 on the slaying of the Punjabi traders: “The merchants—pictured here by a BBC Panorama team which reached Jessore—were rounded up, roped together and marched off by Militia men. Shortly after, Western reporters came across their bodies. They had been battered and stabbed. One man still writhed in his death agony.”
“The night of special horror for Jessore was April 4, four days after the local East Bengal Regiment had revolted against the national army…Jessore and Khulna are among the most heavily damaged towns in East Pakistan. Many market areas and buildings are burned out; the streets deserted…Throughout the tour, Government authorities and persons produced for interview have told of thousands of non-Bengali residents, including women and children, having been slain by the separatists, often after having been tortured.”
[New York Times, 9th May, 1971]
Bloodbath in Mymensingh
Maurice Quaintance of the Reuters News Agency said in his Mymensingh dispatch of May 7, 1971: “Reporters flown here on the second day of a conducted tour of trouble spots interviewed a man identified as the Assistant Postmaster of Mymensingh who showed scars on his neck and what he said was a bayonet mark on his body. The man said he lived in a colony of 5,000 non-Bengalis of whom only 25 survived the massacre on April 17. The interview ended abruptly when the Assistant Postmaster mentioned the killing and mutilation of his family and burst into tears.”
On the next day same newspaper gave following report about Mymensingh: ” 1971, from Mymensingh, Malcolm Browne of the New York Times, reported: “At intervals, along streets lined with ramshackle houses, bodies have been buried in shallow graves and covered with piles of red bricks. Bodies covered with bricks are found even on the porches of houses which themselves are unoccupied and closed.”
“Officials also said that before the Government soldiers took the city (Mymensingh), the Bengalis had killed at least 1,000 Bihari or non-Bengali residents. Army officials introduced correspondents to people who said there had been a slaughter of Bihari residents by the dominant Bengali group led by members of the Awami League, the political party that was outlawed by the Central Government soon after the military action began in East Pakistan on March 25. There were so many bodies here, one officer said, it was impossible to identify them or bury them. He said that they had to be thrown into the Brahmaputra river, a tributary of the Ganges. The main loss of life here apparently occurred in the fields and fruit groves outside Mymensingh and in clusters of huts that had been burned to the ground.”
[New York Times, 7th May, 1971]
American news service, Associated Press wrote about Maymensingh in early May, 1971: “There were 5,000 non-Bengalis where I lived and now there are 25 survivors.”
“There is evidence that non-Bengalis were attacked, hacked to death and burnt in their homes by mobs… Eye-witnesses told stories of 1,500 widows and orphans fleeing to a mosque at Mymensingh, in the north, as armed men identified as secessionists slaughtered their husbands and fathers.” [Ceylon Daily News, Colombo, May 15, 1971]
What happened to Biharis after 16th December, 1971 is another story of blood and tears.
I am not trying to impress up-on that no Bengali was killed during the war. Many Bengalis, including civilians, innocents, as well as not so innocents, were killed in cross-fires but the casualty figures given by Bangladesh and India are entirely baseless. After looking at all these facts and comparing them with what governments of Bangladesh and India, the way the myth was recycled by their journalists, it seems that Hitler was dead right that “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself. And the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.”
Notes and References:
1. Abdul Gaffar Choudhury, Shahosh Kare Kichu Shaythay Katha Bala Proyjan (With Courage a Few Truth Have to be Said), The Dainik Janapad, Dhaka, 20 May, 1973.
2. Abdur Rab Khan, ‘Contemporary International Conflicts in South Asia: A Compendium’ BIIS Quarterly Journal, Dhaka, October, 1993; Cf 443, also Mubaidur Rahman in Dainik Inqilab, Dhaka, 26 March, 1994.
3.Yahya Mirza, Interview with Mr Abdul Muhaimin, The Tarokalok, Dhaka, 1 March, 1990
4. An interview with prof. Ahmed Sharif Keshab Mukhapadhay, May 13 2005
5. Dead Reckoning: Memories of 1971 Bangladesh War page. 181.
6. ‘93,000 Pakistani soldiers did not surrender in 1971 because….?’ by Junaid Ahmed, Global Village Space, April 1, 2017.
7. Abul Hasanat, The Ugliest Genocide in History, Muktadhara (Swadhin Bangla Sahitya Parishad) page. 79.
8. Abul Hasnat, op cit: 78.
9. The truth about the Jessore massacre by Sarmila Bose, The Telegraph India, March 19, 2006.
10. Blood and Tears, page. 171
Author can be reached at
ahsanakram661@gmail.com.
“History is written by the victors.” (Winston Churchill) The Indo-Pak War in 1971 ended with the dismemberment of East Pakistan and the subsequent birth of a new country “Banglade…
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