True account of bloody origin of Bangladesh
Did Pakistan commit genocide and kill 3 million natives
of East Pakistan in 1971?
Dr. M. Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury, a Bengali
nationalist who enthusiastically participated in the nationalist cause, spoke
out in 1996 to tell the factual story of what went on during that war. He says
the allegations against Pakistan were entirely cooked up and the actual death
toll was much lower than the incorrectly fabricated 3 million figures. He cited
an extensive range of sources to show that what the Pakistani army was carrying
out in East Pakistan was a limited counter-insurgency, not at all genocide.
He questions the conventional narrative of an
oppressed, downtrodden Bengali nation fighting a brave and noble war of
“liberation” from a tyrannical regime in the face of impossible hardship only
to emerge as a free nation to whom the future now belonged. He says that greed
for personal power and Indian predatory ambitions against its only regional
counterweight were the only things that motivated the players who incited the
breakup of the only homeland created for the Muslims of the subcontinent.
He explains how the allegations of genocide were
artificially cooked up and from where the “absolutely impossible” 3 million
figure was hatched, and anyone who tried to dig for the real truth in those
days was murdered. He gives research-based details of each major incident that
was blamed on Pakistan: the killing of intellectuals in Dhaka University,
killings elsewhere in Dhaka, the murder of 5,000 Buddhists and 17,000 Awami
Leaguers, the massacres and destruction visited on Kushtia, Jessore, Khulna and
Chittagong, and the rapes of 400,000 women resulting in 200,000 pregnancies.
He then goes on to explain another category of
atrocities committed by the so-called “liberators” that anti-Pakistan
propagandists have whitewashed from all historic record, these were carried out
against large numbers of East Pakistanis that fought for Pakistan and just
about everyone who did not support Mukti Bahini. He describes the savage and
gruesome ways they (he gives actual names and credentials of the victims) were
murdered and otherwise brutalized and recounts the stories survivors themselves
told, and apportions responsibility directly to Mukti Bahini and Sheikh
Mujib-ur-Rehman.
He says the true story must be told otherwise
Bangladesh will never be a truly free nation and a normal member of the
international community or the comity of Islamic nations. He says only the
truth will enable reconciliation between Pakistanis and Bengalis and enable
them to move on from the past and move toward the future together as brotherly
nations like they used to be at one time.
Another reckoninf account of the Birth of Bandladesh is Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War written by Sharmila Bose.
This ground-breaking book chronicles the 1971 war in South Asia by reconstituting the memories of those on opposing sides of the conflict. 1971 was marked by a bitter civil war within Pakistan and war between India and Pakistan, backed respectively by the Soviet Union and the United States. Through a detailed investigation of events on the ground, Sarmila Bose contextualizes and humanizes the war while analyzing what the events reveal about the nature of the conflict itself. The story of 1971 has so far been dominated by the narrative of the victorious side. All parties to the war are still largely imprisoned by wartime partisan mythologies. Bose reconstructs events via interviews conducted in Bangladesh and Pakistan, published and unpublished reminiscences in Bengali and English of participants on all sides, official documents, foreign media reports and other sources. Her book challenges assumptions about the nature of the conflict, and exposes the ways in which the 1971 war is still playing out in the region.
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