Myth 5: Genocide of three Million Bengalis
The nonsensical figure of ‘three million genocide’ first appeared in an editorial of the Soviet Communist Party’s newspaper, Pravda. The same newspaper, days before publishing the figure, had asked in an editorial, “how many people of Bangladesh have been killed?” before coming up with the fictitious number. Syed Karim, Bangladesh’s first Foreign Secretary, who authored Sheikh Mujib: Triumph and Tragedy, the definitive biography on the life of Sheikh Mujib, writes, “As for the number of Bengalis killed in the course of the liberation war, the figure of 3 million mentioned by Mujib to David Frost in January 1972, was a gross overstatement.
This figure was picked up by him from an article in Pravda.”
Serajur Rahman, a British journalist of Bengali Muslim descent, in a letter titled, Mujib’s Confusion on Bangladeshi Deaths to The Guardian in 2011, wrote, “On 8 January 1972, I was the first Bangladeshi to meet independence leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman after his release from Pakistan... I explained that no accurate figure of the casualties was available but our estimate, based on information from various sources, was that up to three lakh (300,000) died in the conflict. To my surprise and horror, he told David Frost later that ‘three million of my people’ were killed by the Pakistanis. Whether he mistranslated ‘lakh’ as ‘million’ or his confused state of mind was responsible, I don't know, but many Bangladeshis still believe a figure of three million is unrealistic and incredible.”
M. Abdul Mu'min Chowdhury, a native of Sylhet and a Bengali nationalist who was a teacher at Dhaka University, explains in his book, Behind the Myth of Three Million, that after the fall of Dhaka, Sheikh Mujib formally instituted a 12-member inquiry committee to prove the validity of his claims. However, the draft report came with a casualty figure of 56,743, which included the mass killings.
Sarmila Bose in her book, Dead Reckoning writes that the claim of three million dead has been used widely by journalists and academia without any verification. They have failed to provide a single reference.
Richard Sisson and Leo Rose carried out detailed research on the birth of Bangladesh in their book, War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh. The authors interviewed two Indian officials who had held responsible positions on the issue of Bangladesh in 1971. When questioned about the actual number of deaths in Bangladesh in 1971 attributable to the civil war, one replied “about 300,000.” Then, when he received a disapproving glance from his colleague, he changed it to “300,000 to 500,000...”
Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, Commander in Chief of the Eastern Command of Indian Army, during the 1971 War rejected the three million figure. He said that Mujib’s figure was ‘absolutely impossible’ because Pakistan Army had ‘simultaneously fought within the country and at the borders.’
Renowned researchers have proved that 3 million was an impossible number in the time and geographic span. Most scholars and analysts conclude that the number of deaths in 1971 was between 50,000 and 100,000 people and that includes the mass killings of Biharis and West Pakistanis.
to believe...
