March 26, 1971 – Beginning of Bangladesh Genocide & Bangladesh Independence Day

The Partition of India was the division of British India in 1947 which accompanied the creation of two independent dominions, India and Pakistan. It was set forth in the Indian Independence Act of 1947 which resulted in the dissolution of British rule.

The Dominion of India is today called the Republic of India. The Dominion of Pakistan today consists of both the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, created after the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971.

When India was divided, the new state of Pakistan represented a geographical anomaly, with two eastern and northwestern corners of the former Indian territory separated by 1,000 miles. East Pakistan and West Pakistan had vast differences not only in location, but also in culture and language.

East Pakistan was made up largely of Bengalis, or people from the geopolitical region in Asia that also includes West Bengal in India. (You can learn more about Bengali culture here.)

West Pakistan was part of the Punjab province, with Punjabi the dominant language. (You can learn more about Punjabi culture here.)

The majority in East Pakistan were Muslim, but West Pakistan viewed the Bengali Muslims in East Pakistan as “too Bengali” and their application of Islam as “inferior and impure”, believing this made the Bengalis unreliable “co-religionists.” West Pakistan began a strategy to forcibly assimilate the Bengalis culturally.

On 1 July 1970, West Pakistan was devolved and renamed “Pakistan” under Legal Framework Order No. 1970, which dissolved the “One Unit” and removed the term “West”, simply establishing the country as Pakistan. At first, the order had no effect on East Pakistan. But with the next year’s civil war, East Pakistan (eventually) became part of the new country of Bangladesh.

The genocide in East Pakistan began on March 26, 1971 with the launch of Operation Searchlight. This was a planned military operation ordered by the central government of West Pakistan and carried out by the Pakistan Army to curb the Bengali nationalist movement in the area of East Pakistan. The main phase of Operation Searchlight ended with the fall of the last major town in Bengali hands in mid-May. Bengali intelligentsia, academics and Hindus were targeted for the harshest treatment.

In fact, because of his ruthlessness, the chief of the Pakistani army, General Tikka Khan, was known as the “Butcher of Bengal” for his policies.

Millions of refugees fled East Bengal with bare belongings in search of safety. | Photo: Raghu Rai.

India came to the defense of the Bengali separatists, and war broke out December 3, 1971. Pakistan surrendered in the east 12 days later, and the Bengalis declared independence from Pakistan, establishing the new state of Bangladesh.

But before that, the war left an estimated 3 million dead and between 200,000 and 400,000 women of East Pakistan raped by the Pakistani army and Razakars (local Bengali collaborators). The actions against women were supported by Muslim religious leaders, who declared that Bengali women were gonimoter maal (Bengali for “public property”)

There is an academic consensus that the events which took place during the Bangladesh Liberation War constituted a genocide, and warrant judicial accountability.

The first report of the Bangladesh genocide was published by West Pakistani journalist Anthony Mascarenhas in The Sunday Times, London on June 13, 1971. In his article titled “Genocide,” he wrote, inter alia:

I saw Hindus, hunted from village to village and door to door, shot off-hand after a cursory ‘short-arm inspection’ showed they were uncircumcised. . . . . I have seen truckloads of other human targets and those who had the humanity to try to help them hauled off ‘for disposal’ under the cover of darkness and curfew.”

This article helped turn world opinion against Pakistan and decisively encouraged the Government of India to intervene.

As for the many women who were raped, as Nayanika Mookherjee reported in 2014:

In an internationally unprecedented move, the Bangladeshi government publicly referred to the women raped as birangonas (war heroines) to prevent them from being ostracised and absorb the large number of raped women into the new nation. Behind the extensive government programmes of rehabilitation lay the suffering of innumerable women and the choices they had been confronted with.”

Nevertheless, she continued:

While some women married caring, understanding men, others encountered the nightmare of being rebuked after marriage. Many others continue to live today with the husbands they had been married to when they were raped by the Pakistani army and Bengali collaborators, while being referred to as “shamed” by some (often due to politico-economic reasons) in their communities.”

Today, the Bangladeshis observe March 26, 1971 as their Independence Day. They chose the day when Pakistan declared war on its own people rather than December 16, the day the war ended with the defeat of the Pakistan Army.

The national flag of Bangladesh features a prominent red disc representing the sun rising over Bengal, and also the blood of those who died for the independence of Bangladesh. The green field stands for the lushness of the land of Bangladesh.