Safety, Human Rights, Legal Support & Justice

• The Bangladesh Genocide - Dr. Massimo Introvigne
• The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep1 - In Search of “East Pakistan"
• The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep2 - The Language Riots
• The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep3 - Cracking Down on Bengali Leaders
• The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep4 - 1970, Year of Decision
• The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep5 - The First Killing Fields
• The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep6 - A Killing Frenzy
• The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep7 - Eradicating Hinduism
• The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep8 - The World Protests, India Intervenes

The Bangladesh Genocide - Dr. Massimo Introvigne

As a sociologist of religion who has spent decades studying the dynamics of persecution, identity, and minority vulnerability across continents, Dr. Massimo Introvigne has long observed that some tragedies fade from global memory not because they lack significance, but because the world often hesitates to confront the fullness of their truth. The genocide in Bangladesh— particularly the targeted violence against Hindu communities—remains one such under-recognized chapter in modern history.

This eight-episode series seeks to illuminate those events with clarity, balance, and scholarly responsibility. It examines not only the historical facts of the atrocities, but also the deeper social, religious, and political forces that shaped them. In doing so, it gives voice to survivors, acknowledges the suffering of marginalized communities, and explores how patterns of hatred and discrimination can evolve into systematic violence.

Dr. Introvigne expresses his hope that this work will contribute to a broader global understanding of how religious and ethnic minorities become targets, why early warning signs often go unnoticed, and how remembrance is essential to preventing future abuses. For him, documenting these stories is not simply an academic duty—it is a moral imperative.

The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep1 - In Search of “East Pakistan"

by Massimo Introvigne

Part 1 of 8

2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the Bangladesh genocide of 1971, one of the most brutal and most forgotten pages of 20th-century history. The fact that violence against the Hindu minority has started again in Bangladesh in October 2021 makes the anniversary even more sad and sinister.

The genocide happened in 1971, but its root causes are much older. Perhaps the oldest is the accusation by Muslim traditionalists and fundamentalists that most Bengali-speaking Muslims are “crypto-Hindus.” While the term technically indicates Hindus who just pretend to be Muslims (or Christians) to avoid discrimination and persecution, it became a slanderous word used to criticize Sufis and others whose folk religious traditions appeared as unorthodox to fundamentalists, and who would occasionally also visit Hindu or Sikh shrines.

Such Islam was prevalent in what is present-day Bangladesh, although the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami was also active there at the time of Partition. In 1947, the British granted independence (although initially in the form of dominions maintaining allegiance to the British crown) to India. They had decided that leaving colonial India continue as a single country would lead to civil war and carnage, giving the sectarian tensions between Hindus and Muslims. Their solution was the Partition, i.e., creating two separated independent dominions: India for the Hindus and Pakistan for the Muslims.

While members of other religions were expected to stay where they lived, the Partition moved between 10 to 20 million people who did not want to remain in a country where their religion was not prevalent. Not all moved, though, and today there are still more than 200 million Muslims in India, at least four million Hindus in Pakistan (but Hindus claim the official statistics are manipulated, and they are in fact closer to 8 million), and more than 12 million Hindus in Bangladesh.

Pakistan was formed as a strange country, which included a West Pakistan (present-day Pakistan) and what was called East Bengal and later East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) in a single state, with a single government, but consisting of two non-contiguous parts distant some 1,700 kilometers from each other, with India in the middle. The borders of East Pakistan had a precedent in something also called Partition, which had occurred in 1905 when the Viceroy of India, Lord George Curzon (1859–1925), tried to prevent sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal by dividing the Bengal Presidency (later the Bengal Province) in separated Hindu and Muslim provinces. Bengalis protested, and in 1911 the Partition of Bengal was cancelled. However, it served as a reference for creating East Bengal (later, East Pakistan) with the Partition of 1947.

There were two problems with the Partition. First, it did not happen calmly and orderly as the British had hoped. The resettlement of millions of people generated tensions, violence, and killings. Worse still, resettlement had been intended by the British as a voluntary choice, but some of these who did not want to leave were attacked by mobs of a different religion, forced to flee, or killed. In the end, although statistics are controversial, the Partition might have costed one million deaths.

Violence also erupted in East Bengal, where hundreds of thousands of Hindus were attacked by Muslim thugs. The religious geography of India was extremely complicated, and the British attempt to draw straight lines for the borders left areas that were traditionally Hindus, such as the district of Kulna in East Bengal, to Pakistan, and areas with a Muslim majority to India.

Geographical reasons led to award to East Bengal the Chittagong Hill Tracts, which had never been part of Bengal and had a Buddhist majority, in addition to a significant Hindu minority. On independence day, August 15, 1947, the Buddhists and Hindus of the Chittagong Hill Tracts took to the street with Indian flags, persuaded they were now part of India. Only two days later, they were told that their districts had become in fact part of Pakistan. They tried to revolt, but the Pakistani Army occupied the Tracts. Massacres, rapes, and extrajudicial killings followed.

A second problem, whose importance the British had under-evaluated, was that East Pakistan was much poorer than West Pakistan. Those in the West regarded their compatriots in the East as backward and, because of the old accusations, “bad” Muslims. On the other hand, while in 1947 there was a substantial demographic balance between West and East Pakistan, each with a population around 30 million, numbers in the East grew rapidly because both of the influx of Muslims escaping the Eastern part of India and of a higher fertility. The larger contingent of those who moved from India to West Bengal consisted of at least 500,000 Muslims from Bihar State. Bihari Muslims further grew because of demography, and will become in 1971 both actors and victims of the genocide. By 1951, the population of East Pakistan, 42 million, had overcome the one of West Pakistan, 33.7 million. Until 1971, East Pakistan continued to have a larger population than West Pakistan.

Because of the superior organization of political parties and the economic predominance of West Pakistan, political and military power in the newly created Pakistan remained largely in the hands of the Westerners. Although some Bengalis became presidents and prime ministers of Pakistan, their terms were short-lived and they were often ousted by military coups. In the higher echelons of the army, Easterners always remained a small minority.

This created an intractable political problem for Pakistan. Most  Western Pakistanis wanted their government democratically elected. However, since demography meant that there were more votes in East Pakistan, where politics was dominated by a single party, the Awami League, founded as the Awami Muslim League in 1949 to protect the interests of the Easterners, it soon became clear that any truly democratic election will give the absolute majority of the seats to Awami. The result would have been that rich West Pakistan would end up being politically dominated by poor East Pakistan. For this reasons, democratic elections were never really held—until they did, in 1970, and triggered the genocide.

The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep2 - The Language Riots

by Massimo Introvigne

Part 2 of 8

In  March 1948, a few months before he died, the father of modern Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948), visited East Bengal and proclaimed Urdu the sole national language of the country. The decision had a cultural reason. Although Pakistan had a great variety of languages, Urdu had been an element unifying the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent since the Mughal Empire.

Indian Muslims, that is, except those in Bengal. Bengalis had a language with a venerable literary and even religious tradition. They did not want to renounce it, and when Muslims started to be politically active in British India, Bengalis consistently asked that Bengali be regarded as the official language of national Muslim organizations together with Urdu. The movement known as the Bengali Renaissance, which flourished in the 19th century, further promoted the use of Bengali among both Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims. Bengali was also the language spoken by the majority (54%) of Pakistanis in 1947, as it dominated East Pakistan while West Pakistan had a variety of different languages.

Yet, Jinnah decided for Urdu, which was also perceived in East Pakistan as a way to perpetuate the economic and political subordination of the East to the West within the new country. He chose a trip to East Pakistan to announce that no other language than Urdu will become the country’s official language, and attacked those who thought otherwise as a fifth column of India and even the Soviet Union.

When Jinnah arrived in Dhaka in 1948, students at the local university were already protesting the government’s orientation towards the imposition of Urdu as the national language, and there had been clashes with the police. Jinnah made his announcement on March 21 and went to University of Dhaka to explain his decision on March 24. He barely managed to conclude his speech, with students repeatedly interrupting him.

In the following months Jinnah, who was suffering from tuberculosis, was also diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on September 11, 1948. Language claims were part of the agenda of the Awami Muslim League, later Awami League, founded in East Pakistan in 1949 and later to become the largest Pakistani political party.

Although Eastern Pakistanis had hoped that Jinnah’s successors would be more flexible on the language question, in January 1952 the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan reiterated that Urdu will be the only official language. Under the leadership of the Awami League, protests erupted in Dhaka, where on February 21 five students (and perhaps more) were killed by the police. From 1999, the United Nations celebrate on February 21 the International Mother Language Day, remembering those who lost their lives for their language.

From February 22, protests extended to the whole East Bengal, and more were killed, with the government blaming again India and the Soviet Union for the unrest. On February 23, a Monument to the Martyrs was erected in Dhaka, only to be destroyed by the police on February 26. Thousands, including leaders of the Awami League, were arrested.

On the first anniversary of the February 21 killings, a massive demonstration was held in Dhaka with more than 100,000 participants, and the foundation of a memorial for the victims, the Shaheed Minar, was laid down. The February 21 event was repeated in subsequent years.

Slowly, the Bengalis won their battle. By 1954, there was a majority in the Constituent Assembly favoring the introduction of Bengali as official language together with the Urdu. This was achieved with the Constitution of 1956. In a spirit of reconciliation, the government even supported the construction of the Shaheed Minar.

The idea of a national reconciliation was, however, short-lived, although the victory in the language campaign divided Bengali nationalists between those who wanted separation from Pakistan and those who would have been happy with autonomy and federalism.

The Constitution was abrogated after only two years, in 1958, after the military coup of General Ayub Khan (1907–1974). There were voices among the Pakistani military calling for a return to the Urdu-only regime, but they failed to prevail. Bengali remained an official language. However, the ban of political parties also affected the Awami League, whose leaders ended up in prison again.

In 1965, Pakistan went to a war with India originated by the question of Kashmir. East Pakistan claimed again that its meager resources had been drained to support the inconclusive war, its borders had not been protected, and the power continued to remain firmly in the hands of Western Pakistanis.

In 1966, the Awami League launched the Six Point Plan, calling for a federal Pakistan where the central government will handle only Defense and Foreign Affairs, and all other subjects should be governed by the states. Although the program stopped short of separation, General Ayub Khan and the new chief of the Pakistani army, General Yahya Khan (1917–1980) reacted with virulent speeches calling the Awami League “separatist.” On March 24, President Ayub Khan said he was fully prepared for civil war. Eventually, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep3 - Cracking Down on Bengali Leaders

by Massimo Introvigne

Part 3 of 8

In previous articles, we saw how the West Pakistan establishment faced an intractable dilemma about East Pakistan. If promises that free elections would be held would not be kept, there would be unrest in West Pakistan as well. On the other hand, because of demographic developments and the fact that there were more voters in East Pakistan, free elections might have led to Easterners gaining the majority and governing the nation as a whole, putting an end to the power monopoly of the Westerners.

Complicating the matter was the fact that, while in the West there were several competing well-organized parties, in the East one party, the Awami League, dominated local politics. The Awami League, with the name Awami Muslim League, had been founded on June 23, 1949, when Bengali nationalists separated from the Muslim League, the largest Pakistani party, which was dominated by Western Pakistanis.

The party had three joint secretaries, but Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975), known to Bengalis as Mujib, emerged as its main leader. Mujib will later go on to become the father of modern Bangladesh, and will be assassinated in 1975, a casualty of the turbulent post-independence Bangladeshi politics. His daughter, Sheikh Hasina, is the current Prime Minister of Bangladesh.

Mujib was one of the leaders of the movement for the Bengali language discussed in our precedent article, and was arrested three times for this reason in 1948. He spent another two years in prison between 1950 and 1952, accused of separatism. In the short-lived effort at reconciliation that followed the 1952 language riots, Mujib was allowed to become a member of the East Bengal government and of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan.

After the coup of General Ayub Khan, Mujib was arrested again in 1962 and 1964. He was released in 1965, and as leader of the Awami League launched in 1966 the Six Point Plan, the proposal for an autonomous East Pakistan within a federal Pakistan that we mentioned in the previous article.

The plan was widely popular among Bengalis, but perceived as separatism in disguise by Western Pakistanis. As demands for national elections increased, the Ayub Khan regimes considered that, to prevent an Awami majority, Mujib and his party should be wiped out before elections could be held.

The tools used by Ayub Khan were the intelligence service, the police, and the judiciary. In December 1967, Ayub Khan visited East Pakistan. Although according to the media, and to Eastern Pakistanis, the visit went up smoothly, when he returned back home the intelligence claimed that a plan by Bengali “separatists” to assassinate him has been fooled at the last minute. Some sixty Bengali political and military leaders were arrested, although evidence of an assassination attempt was scarce. A U.S. investigation, now declassified, concluded that no assassination attempt had taken place.

Nonetheless, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the intelligence service of Pakistan, continued to claim that killing Ayub Khan was part of a plot to launch an armed separatist insurrection with the help of India. It was called the Agartala Conspiracy as the conspirators were accused to have met Indian military officials in Agartala, in India’s Tripura state. 1,500 Bengalis were arrested, including Mujib, although only 35 were eventually brought to trial. It was an obvious attempt to destroy the Awami League and its leader, at a time when the emergence in West Pakistan of the new Pakistan Peoples Party, founded by former Ayub Khan’s minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979), was making elections unavoidable.

The plan, however, ultimately collapsed. Although it was not impossible that members of the Awami League might have met Indian officers, evidence that crimes had been committed was scarce.

While the Agartala Conspiracy trial, which had started on June 19, 1968, was continuing in Dhaka, on February 15, 1969, one of the defendants, Pakistan Air Force Sergeant Zahurul Haq (1935–1969), was shot by a guard in the prison. As it had happened before, students at the University of Dhaka were the first to descend on to the streets, soon followed by tens of thousands of Bengalis in the whole East Pakistan. In Rajsahi, in the northern part of East Pakistan, a professor who had joined the protest, Mohammad Shamsuzzoha (1934–1969), was killed by the police.

Protests were spiraling out of control when, on February 22, the government announced that it was withdrawing the Agartala Conspiracy case. All the defendants were released, and a huge crowd welcomed home Mujib, who was publicly decorated with the title of “Bangabandhu,” “The Friend of Bengal.”

Actually, the plot to destroy the Awami League ended up in disaster for the regime. Not only the party was not destroyed, it emerged from the 1967–69 events reinforced.

Ayub Khan, however, was not told the truth by his intelligence service. It was reported to him that the Awami League had been discredited and would not win the elections, which Ayub Khan called for 1970 as the first democratic general elections in Pakistan’s history. Ayub Khan was more easily misled because he had suffered a heart attack and a paralysis that had put him in a wheelchair. On March 25, 1969, he transferred his powers to General Yahya Khan (1917–1980), the commander-in-chief of the Pakistani Army, who was probably preparing a coup.

The electoral clock Ayub Khan had set in motion was, however, ticking. There was no longer a way of stopping it.

The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep4 - 1970, Year of Decision

by Massimo Introvigne

Part 4 of 8

In previous articles, we discussed the maneuvers by the government of Pakistan, dominated by Western Pakistanis, to prevent the Awami League, which represented the interests of East Pakistan, from winning the 1970 elections, taking advantage of demography and the fact that there were more Eastern than Western voters.

Efforts to destroy the Awami League failed, but the agitation in West Pakistan in favor of the elections, led by the Socialist-oriented Pakistan Peoples Party of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979), made cancelling them impossible to the military regime, although Martial Law was still in force.

Nature, however, intervened. 1970 was a disaster year for Pakistan. First, there were floods with thousands of casualties, which led President General Yahya Khan (1917–1980) to announce on August 15 that the elections, scheduled for October 5, were being postponed to December 7.

It was widely suspected that this was just a move to buy time while Yahya was searching for a way to cancel the elections altogether. However, that natural problems were serious was confirmed by two smaller cyclones in October that killed 16,000 in East Pakistan and by the Bhola cyclone that hit Eastern Pakistan on November 12, 1970. It was the deadliest tropical cyclone in history, and might well have been the deadliest modern natural disaster (statistics on some earthquakes, which also had high casualties, are controversial). More than 500,000 Eastern Pakistanis died, entire villages were wiped out, millions lost their homes and jobs.

Because of previous controversies, elections could not be postponed again. In fact, the Bhola cyclone became a main theme of the elections. Relief was slow and insufficient, and Eastern Pakistanis believed that this was one more instance in which West Pakistan had proved it was not ready to invest resources in favor of the poorer and politically unstable East Pakistan.

On December 7, 1970, the general elections were held, except in nine districts in the coastal area of East Pakistan severely hit by the cyclone, which voted on January 19, 1971. Considering the devastations of the cyclone, the turnover was comparatively high, 63%, and as expected more Eastern Pakistanis voted than Western Pakistanis. The results of what historians have called the fairest elections in Pakistani history confirmed that the plan to discredit the Awami League had not succeeded. The League won 167 seats, or all the seats in East Pakistan except two, and the absolute majority of the 313-members Assembly. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party was a distant second with 86 seats. Parties representing fundamentalist Islam also won seats, including Jamaat-e-Islami.

Illusions were shattered, and the worst nightmare of the Western Pakistani establishment materialized. If the Assembly would convene, thanks to its absolute majority, the Awami League would form a government of its own, governing not only East Pakistan but also West Pakistan. As mentioned in our previous articles, in the eyes of most Western Pakistanis this was inconceivable. Bhutto and President Yahya Khan, while disagreeing on many other issues, were both determined to prevent the Awami League from forming a government, and Awami leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975), called Mujib by Bengalis, from becoming Prime Minister.

On January 15, 1971, General Yahya Khan came to Dhaka to meet Mujib. He proposed that the Assembly will convene on March 3, and that the military will let Mujib be elected Prime Minister, while Yahya Khan should continue as President to guarantee the rights of  Western Pakistanis. Bhutto, however, disagreed. He interpreted the Legal Framework Order (LFO) of 1970, which governed the elections and post-election processes, to the effect that a party representing only East Pakistan could not form a government and he, Bhutto, should become Prime Minister as his was the largest party present in both the West and the East.

Meetings between Mujid and Bhutto failed to solve the matter, while Yahya postponed the Assembly’s inaugural session until Bhutto and Mujid would have both agreed to a date.

Meanwhile, a new development further complicated the situation. In East Pakistan, Mujid and the Awami League enjoyed widespread support, but it was not unanimous. There were Muslim fundamentalists in East Pakistan, including members of Jamaat-e-Islami, which considered religion more important than ethnicity or language, and opposed Mujid regarding him as a “secular Muslim.” There were also linguistic and ethnic minorities, which felt closer to the Western Pakistanis than to the Bengalis.

They included a huge number, evaluated between half and one million, of Bihari Muslims, i.e., Muslims from the Indian state of Bihar who had moved to East Pakistan during the Partition. Most Bihari Muslims spoke Urdu as their mother tongue, and had opposed the movement in favor of the Bengali language. Fearing discrimination in an Awami-dominated Pakistan, they took to the streets in the first days of March, expressing their support for the theories that Awami should not be allowed to form a national government. Bengalis reacted, and some 300 Bihari Muslims were killed.

On March 7, Mujid announced that his was now a “struggle for independence,” but at the same time he kept the dialogue with Yahya and Bhutto open. On March 15 and 16, Yahya was again in Dhaka discussing with Mujid how to solve the issues. What he did not tell Mujid is that the Pakistani Army, overwhelmingly dominated by Western Pakistanis, was already preparing a military operation where troops from the West would enter East Pakistan, put it under military rule, and arrest the leaders of Awami. Although nobody in East Pakistan knew it at the time, the genocide will start only ten days after the Yahya-Mujid meetings.

The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep5 - The First Killing Fields

by Massimo Introvigne

Part 5 of 8

As discussed in previous articles, the immediate cause of the Bangladesh genocide was the victory of the Awami League, which represented the interests of East Pakistan, in the national Pakistani political elections of December 7, 1970, where it obtained the absolute majority of the seats in the Assembly. The Western Pakistanis had no intention of being governed by Eastern Pakistanis, and both President General Yahya Khan (1917–1980), who was in power as head of a military regime, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979), the leader of the largest party in West Pakistan, started negotiating with Awami leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975), called Mujib by Bengalis, trying to find a solution.

Mujib kept negotiating, but he went to his last meeting with Yahya Khan, on March 23, 1971, after having raised the flag of independence before a cheering crowd.

However, while negotiations were still going on in March 1971, by February the Pakistani Army had decided to intervene and put East Pakistan under a regime of military occupation. Riots in early March where Bengalis killed some 300 immigrants from the Indian state of Bihar, which were hostile to the Awami League, were later cited by the Army as the reason for the intervention. However, we now know that the decision to intervene had already been taken before the riots involving the Biharis.

Most documents on what happened in 1971 remain classified in Pakistan but in 2000 some were declassified, including (with the omission of some enclosures) the report of the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, created in Pakistan in December 1971 to investigate the atrocities. While the report was ridiculed internationally for assessing the Bengali victims at 28,000 (even a figure ten times higher would have been too low), it did reveal, together with other documents, what the Western Pakistani establishment and the Army expected to achieve with the intervention.

Initially, the plan of the Pakistani Army anticipated that East Pakistan will be “pacified” in two weeks by some 30,000 soldiers from the West. The main leaders of the Awami League, and the intellectuals supporting them, will be arrested. Dhaka University, whose students had been the backbone of previous revolts, will be put under military control. East Pakistan troops, which were theoretically part of the same Pakistani Army but whose loyalty was doubted, will be disarmed. Publications of all media, radio, and television will be suspended, and East Pakistan will be put under a provisional military administration.

The plan, codenamed Operation Searchlight, started on March 25, 1971, after all foreign correspondents had been expelled from East Pakistan. It should have been concluded by April 10, but this was not to be. Mujid was captured on the first day of the operation, and sent to West Pakistan to be detained near Faisalabad. International protests avoided worst consequences for the Awami leader, but he was in prison for the rest of 1971. However, the capture of Mujid alerted the other Awami leaders, and most escaped to India or went underground.

Both university students and East Pakistan troops put up a resistance much stronger than expected, galvanized by the announcement by the Awami League of March 26, made on behalf of the incarcerated Mujid and broadcast from a radio in Chittagong still under control of the Bengalis, which proclaimed the independence of East Pakistan under the name of Bangladesh. In the same day, the Pakistani Army had secured control of Dhaka University, a key target, but only after killing some 400 students and professors. Hundreds of female students were then raped.

Eastern Pakistani soldiers also resisted disarmament, and thousands were killed in the first days of Operation Searchlight. By April 10, when theoretically the operation should have ended, the Pakistani Army controlled Dhaka and other major cities, although still finding resistance in Chittagong, but medium-sized cities such as Rajshahi and Sylhet and large areas of the countryside remained under the control of forces loyal to the Awami League.

Rather than the conclusion of the operations, April 10 saw the formation of a provisional government of independent Bangladesh in India and the formal institution of a Bangladeshi army, the Mukti Bahini. Ironically, the provisional government was established in Agartala, the very place where, as discussed in a previous article, where according to the Western Pakistani authorities the Awami League had started a conspiracy to overthrow the government, although it took oath on April 17 in Eastern Pakistani soil, in Baidyanathtala (renamed Mujibnagar after independence in honor of Mujib).

The reaction of (West) Pakistan was escalation. More troops were sent, eventually approaching the number of 100,000, and an ill-fated decision was taken to arm militias of Eastern Pakistanis hostile to the Awami League. They were either Bihari Muslims or Islamic fundamentalists, including members of the Jamaat-e-Islami. These militias will become responsible of some of the worst atrocities in the following months, and retaliation against them after the independence will lead to the killing by Bangladeshis of thousands of Biharis and members of the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Arming the militias was part of a new program, a war of extermination aimed at killing entire parts of the East Pakistan’s population. We will discuss how the genocide developed in the next article of the series.

The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep6 - A Killing Frenzy

by Massimo Introvigne

Part 6 of 8

In the previous articles, we saw how the attempt by the Western Pakistani establishment to prevent the Eastern Pakistani party Awami League, who had won the 1970 national elections with an absolute majority, to form a government led in March 1971 to a military expedition against East Pakistan, which in turn proclaimed independence as Bangladesh.

Since resistance was stronger and more effective than expected, West Pakistan sent more troops and armed local collaborator militias. From the documents that have surfaced in the fifty years after the events, we know that the (Western) Pakistani Army after April decided that whole segments of East Pakistan’s populations should be physically eliminated. They were the East Bengal officers, soldiers, and police officers who had not accepted to cooperate with the Pakistani Army; the leaders and members of the Awami League party; the students and professors in Bengali-language universities, together with artists and other intellectuals; and the male Hindus, while Hindu women were raped, forced into prostitution, or forcibly married to Western Pakistani soldiers and collaborators.

We will return to the Hindus in the next article, not without mentioning that Christians were targeted too. For example, in the village of Rangamatia, which was predominantly Catholic, 90% of the houses were burned, and 14 devotees were killed. The church was looted, as were Catholic and Protestant churches in other parts of East Pakistan.

The other categories consisted of Muslims, and what happened in 1971 was largely a massacre where Muslims killed other Muslims, although many Western Pakistanis believed that Islam in the East was tainted by elements of superstition and syncretism. Pakistani media claimed that only “insurgents” and “separatists” were targeted, however, as the civil war progressed, all able-bodied Bengali men were considered as potential insurgents.

Also regarded as rebels were those who tried to escape to India, although many had taken no political sides and only wanted to flee the horrors of the war. Perhaps the single worst massacre was perpetrated in Chuknagar, where some 10,000 refugees were gathered in May 1971 preparing to go to India. On May 10, all were killed, including women and children.

The establishment in West Pakistan remembered that the Bengali identity and language had been powerfully promoted by intellectuals and artists. They were systematically hunted and killed. Novelists, playwrights, journalists, musicians, and visual artists were slaughtered en masse, but the killings extended to professors of science, law, economics, and medicine. Even when they understood the war was lost, Western Pakistanis soldiers and collaborators continued to kill intellectuals, believing this would deprive the future independent Bangladesh of its cultural leaders. College students, who had been crucial for the movement promoting Bengali language, were also systematically killed.

The victims of the genocide were overwhelmingly males, and some historians call what happened a “gendercide” targeting men rather than women. This does not mean that women did not suffer. Between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women were raped. To their shame, fundamentalist Muslim scholars in West Pakistan declared that the “insurgent” women were a “war booty” for the Western Pakistani soldiers and their collaborators.

International observers who entered East Pakistan in the last months of the war confirmed that thousands of women had been taken to “military brothels” and forced into prostitution. Others were forced to marry soldiers from West Pakistan or collaborators. At the end of the war, many of them were pregnant, as the same Islamic scholars had suggested that after being impregnated by “good” Muslims they would produce a generation of better believers. Bangladeshi called them “birangona,” “brave women,” and celebrated them as patriotic heroines, in an effort to avoid the stigmatization raped women might have faced in local culture.

The now declassified reports from U.S. sources started using in mid-1971 the words “selective genocide,” although later they simply mentioned a “genocide.” Still today, there are those who deny that it was a genocide, because it was never the intention of West Pakistan to kill the whole Bengali-speaking population, and “only” some specific categories were targeted. However, these categories were a significant segment of the Eastern Pakistani population, and the scale of the killings fully justifies the label of “genocide” according to current standards.

How many were killed? The first answer is that nobody knows. Mass graves continue to be discovered in the 21st century in places for which no records of massacres exist. In contemporary Bangladesh, the number of three million has become a standard reference and part of the national narrative about the nation’s birth. It may be exaggerated, just as the (Western) Pakistan’s official count of 26,000 was, as we mentioned in a previous article, ridiculously low. Immediately after the war, CIA reports assessed Bengali victims at 200,000. The number is still repeated today, but it was before scholars produced demographic studies and more mass graves were unearthed. American professor Rudolph Joseph Rummel (1932–2014), a leading scholar of genocides, estimated the victims at 1.5 million.

Equally controversial is how many Bihari Muslims, i.e., Urdu-speaking immigrants from the Indian state of Bihar, were killed by Bengalis during and after the war, after they had sided with West Pakistan and formed one of the most ferocious anti-Bengali militias. Here again, there are mythical numbers: 500,000 victims according to Bihari sources, which seems demographically impossible, and 1,000 according to the first Bangladeshi accounts. Scholars long assessed the figure at 20,000, until Rummel suggested they may have been as many as 150,000.

More precise, although in turn not uncontroversial, figures are available for those who escaped to India and asked to be identified as refugees. They were around six millions in mid-1971, and eight millions after the war ended. One million and a half decided to remain in India, the others returned to Bangladesh after independence. It was largely because of the refugees that the world took notice of the genocide.

The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep7 - Eradicating Hinduism

by Massimo Introvigne

Part 7 of 8

The movement for having the Bengali language recognized as an official language of Pakistan together with Urdu, and for autonomy and later independence of East Pakistan as Bangladesh was largely led by Bengali-speaking Muslims. Yet, in the 1971 genocide, no community was targeted more mercilessly than the Hindus. Western Pakistanis continued to slaughter Hindus even after some of their generals had admonished that this would eventually trigger what (West) Pakistan had tried in all possible ways to avoid, an Indian military intervention.

It was not a simple mistake. The roots of the ideology considering the Eastern Pakistanis “inferior” or “bad” Muslim was, as we saw in previous articles, the accusation that they were “crypto-Hindus,” and had included in their religious practices Hindu elements that had tainted their faith.

This was due, it was argued, to the cultural influence of Hindus, and to the fact that Eastern Pakistani Muslims were both “unorthodox” and “secular,” in the sense that they did not have strong feelings causing a rigid separation with the Hindus. Reforming Bengali-speaking followers of Islam into “good” Muslims required the elimination of the Hindus.

Even the Western Pakistani generals were aware of the fact that it was impossible to kill all the Hindus who lived in East Pakistan, who were more than nine million. This was, however, not necessary. It was believed that after a percentage would have been killed, the others would flee to India.

The argument was correct, as in fact two third of the eight million refugees who escaped East Pakistan were Hindus. What the Western Pakistanis did not consider was that, faced with such an enormous influx of refugees, even the Indian politicians most reluctant to go to war would conclude that an armed conflict was an easier solution than accommodating in India the whole Hindu population of East Pakistan.

A disproportionate number of Hindus, however, were killed in 1971. In that year, Hindus were some 20% of the East Pakistan’s population, yet it was estimated that they might have been 50% of those killed. American leading scholar of genocides Rudolph Joseph Rummel (1932–2014), whose statistics we mentioned in the previous article, wrote that in the eyes of Western Pakistanis and their fundamentalist Muslim collaborators “the Hindus among the Bengalis were as Jews to the Nazis: scum and vermin that should best be exterminated.”

The parallel with the Nazi persecution of Jews is made even more appropriate by the fact that the Western Pakistani army compelled Hindus to have a yellow “H” painted on their homes, thus designating those who lived there as targets for extermination.

The (Western) Pakistani Army took pride in not killing Hindu women, only men, although when columns of refugees en route to India were attacked, as it happened in the Chuknagar massacre mentioned in the previous article of this series, women and children were killed as well. In addition to the 10,000 victims at Chuknagar, this also happened in Jathibhanga on April 23, 1971, when some 3,000 Hindu refugees were slaughtered.

In the very first days of the genocide, Western Pakistani troops entered the Shankharibazar area of Old Dhaka, where the Shankaris, Hindu jewelers specialized in producing conch shell bangles, lived, and went into a killing frenzy slaughtering more than 200 men, women, and children. Hindu women, however, in most cases were not killed but massively raped, forced into prostitution, or forcibly married to Western Pakistani soldiers and local collaborator militiamen, just as it happened to their Muslim Bengali counterparts.

How many Hindus were killed, and how many Hindu women were raped, depend on the general statistics of the genocide, a matter of controversy. 100,000 Hindu women raped and 700,000 Hindu men killed appear as a reasonable estimate, although the precise numbers will probably never be known.

Other casualties of the genocide included Hindu temples and libraries that were assaulted and looted, leading to the irreparable loss of ancient cultural treasures. One infamous example was the demolition of the Ramna Kali Mandir, a Kali temple in Dhaka that dated back to the Mughal Empire. The ashram of the Hindu saint Anandamayi Ma (1896–1982), who was within the temple’s premises, was also destroyed. 85 Hindus were killed in the attack.

After the war ended and the independence was proclaimed, the majority of the refugees returned to Bangladesh. They were encouraged by proclamations that, while Islam was the official religion, the state will be secular, religious liberty will be respected, and the fundamentalist Muslim organizations that had sided with West Pakistan in the war will be banned.

Their hopes were short-lived. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975), the father of independent Bangladesh, believed in the possibility of a “secular Islam.” However, he was assassinated in 1975, and gradually Islamic fundamentalism reasserted itself as an important component of Bangladeshi politics and culture. Although the current Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, is Mujibur’s daughter, she has to mediate between different forces. The escalation of violence against Hindus in Bangladesh in October 2021 proves that the consequences of the genocide are still at work in Bangladeshi society.

The Bangladesh Genocide. Ep8 - The World Protests, India Intervenes

by Massimo Introvigne

Part 8 of 8

For those of my generation, “Bangla Desh” was first a song by George Harrison (1943–2001) and a concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden organized in 1971 by the same Harrison and his Indian friend Ravi Shankar (1920–2012), featuring such rock luminaries as Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, and Eric Clapton. Harrison was one of the two key figures who created in 1971 a global awareness of Bangladesh as a humanitarian catastrophe. The other was Anthony Mascarenhas (1928–1986). We all remember Harrison, and few remember Mascarenhas. However, without Mascarenhas, there might not have been Harrison’s concert, and history might have been different.

Mascarenhas was a Catholic from Goa whose family had moved to Karachi when he was a child. He was a journalist who became assistant editor of Karachi’s Morning News. He was sent to East Pakistan to cover the “pacification” of the region. A few days there were enough for him to come to two conclusions. First, the (Western) Pakistani troops were perpetrating a genocide. Second, neither the Morning News nor any other Pakistani newspaper would publish his articles if he would tell the truth.

He asked his wife, who was in Karachi, to book a ticket and go to London with their children as soon as possible. Then, he contacted the London Sunday Times and proposed an article on what was going on in East Pakistan. The article was published on June 13, 1981. It had a simple title, “Genocide.”

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1917–1984) later stated that it was Mascarenhas’ article that persuaded her that India should intervene in East Pakistan, and led her to “a campaign of personal diplomacy in the European capitals and Moscow to prepare the ground for India’s armed intervention.” By that time, Mascarenhas himself was safely in London, where he will have a long and distinguished career as a Sunday Times journalist.

Indira Gandhi mentioned Europe and Russia but not United States and China. The latter countries regarded Pakistan as a strategic regional ally, and a necessary balance against Indira’s cooperation with the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that American diplomats had alerted them about the genocide, President Richard Nixon (1913–1994) and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger were not prepared to give India even a silent green light to intervene, threatening on the contrary to support Pakistan.

Nixon and Kissinger believed that the American public opinion did not particularly care about East Pakistan. But as soon as Mascarenhas’ indictment of the (West) Pakistanis was published, Ravi Shankar, a musician who was himself from a Bengali family, went to see George Harrison and showed him the article. Although the event focused on the victims and the refugees more than accusing the perpetrators, who was responsible for the killings was clear.

The concert was held on August 1, and did not change only the history of rock music, of which it was one of the most memorable pages. On August 17, Senator Ted Kennedy (1932–2009), who was sensitive to the protests of his American Hindu constituents in Massachusetts, launched a virulent attack on the U.S. administration’s “support for a genocide,” which made the front pages of the main American newspapers.

Of course, the concert alone might not have changed the attitude of American media and public opinion, but the influence of popular culture should not be under-estimated either. Most American media felt the need to explain to those who had followed the concert what “the Bangladesh crisis” was all about, and published grim reportages about the killings. Although Kissinger, in particular, still wanted to protect Pakistan, by Fall it was clear that any military attempt by the U.S. to prevent India from entering East Pakistan would have been extremely unpopular with U.S. voters.

Historians debate whether India could have intervened before, thus saving hundreds of thousands of lives, since while the Indian government was considering its options, the genocide continued. In fact, we know from the journals of some of those involved that Indira Gandhi would have started war as early as April, but was told by her generals that it was not wise to attack in the monsoon season, and the army needed some months to prepare. Meanwhile, the Indian Army offered weapons, training, and logistic support to the Mukti Bahini, the militia of the Bangladesh independentists.

In November, preparations to strike were nearly completed on the Indian side, but there were still concerns about the United States’ position. In West Pakistan, crowds were gathering calling for a jihad against India that would have also settled the question of Kashmir.

Then, on December 3, Pakistan made a fatal mistake, the same Japan had committed thirty years before, in 1941, when it attacked the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor. At 5:40 p.m. the Pakistani Air Force launched “Operation Chengiz Khan,” whose objective was to destroy the Indian Air Force through a preemptive strike. Eleven Indian air bases were attacked simultaneously, while Pakistani artillery opened fire in Kashmir. Rather than by Pearl Harbor, Pakistanis later said they had been inspired by Israel’s Operation Focus, when the Israelis had destroyed the Egyptian Air Force at the start of the Six-Day War four years before, in 1967. However, Pakistan did not have an air force comparable to Israel’s. Some of the bombs they dropped dated back to World War II and did not even explode, and their planes had limited combat capabilities. In the end, only a few Indian aircrafts were damaged.

However, Operation Chengiz Khan was clearly an act of war, and it was easy for Indira Gandhi to tell the world that India had been attacked by Pakistan and was entitled to react. While the Indian Air Force attacked Pakistani bases in West Pakistan, the Indian Army, who had already entered East Pakistan to support the Mukti Bahini, launched a blitzkrieg that crushed the Western Pakistani troops and their allies in less than two weeks, while the Indian Navy blockaded East Pakistan by sea. Dhaka fell to the Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini on December 15. The following day, Major General Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi (1915–2004), the commander of Pakistani troops in East Pakistan, signed the Instrument of Surrender to Indian Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora (1916–2005).

There were calls in India to continue the war against West Pakistan, but on December 11 the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which had nuclear capabilities, had appeared in the Bay of Bengal. The Soviet Union, which supported India, answered by sending ships armed with nuclear missiles and a nuclear submarine. China, reportedly encouraged by the United States, moved troops to the Indian border, but they did not cross it and the Indian Army had in turn deployed eight divisions at the border with China, ready to fight.  Nobody, however, really wanted to start a world war for Bangladesh, nor did Indira Gandhi really want to continue the war. On July 2, 1972, a peace treaty was signed in Simla, where Pakistan recognized the independence of Bangladesh.

It was the end of the war and the genocide, yet there were aftermaths. Lamentably, entire ethnic groups such as the Bihari Muslims, which had supported Pakistan in the war, were persecuted in Bangladesh, with tens of thousands killed. Several collaborators were executed. However, the Pakistani politicians and officers most responsible for the genocide were never brought to justice.

A legacy of hatred remained, and explosions of sectarian violence in Bangladesh, where Muslim fundamentalists target the Hindu minority, have continued to this day. One contribution to understanding and confronting the situation in Bangladesh is spreading knowledge of what happened in 1971. This has been the purpose of our series.