1971: A different perspective

Daily Times, December 18, 2005
Indian scholar sifts 1971 fact from fiction
By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: A vast proportion of information put out on Bangladesh in 1971 is “marred by unsubstantiated sensationalism,” while West Pakistan and the Pakistan Army in particular have remained defensive and in a state of denial about the killings, according to Sarmila Bose, a Washington-based Indian academic.

This and other findings are contained in the revised version of a paper she presented at a State Department conference on the 1971 South Asian crisis in June this year.

She writes, “No rape of women by the Pakistan Army (was) found in the specific case studies (that her research involved). In all of the incidents involving the Pakistan Army in the case studies, the armed forces were found not to have raped women. While this cannot be extrapolated beyond the few incidents in this study, it is significant, as in the popular narrative the allegation of rape is often clubbed together with allegation of killing. Rape allegations were made in prior verbal discussions in some cases and survivors of the incidents testified to the violence and killings, but also testified that no rape had taken place in these areas. While rape is known to occur in all situations of war, charges and counter-charges on rape form a particularly contentious issue in this conflict. The absence of this particular form of violence in these instances underlines the care that needs to be taken to distinguish between circumstances in which rape may have taken place form those in which it did not.”

According to Ms Bose, while the Bangladeshis are more voluble about the birth of their country, they have done less well at systematic historical record-keeping. She also found a cultivation of “an unhealthy ‘victim culture’ by some of the pro-liberationists” as people are instigated at the national level to “engage in a ghoulish competition with six million Jews in order to gain international attention”. These tendencies, she points out, hamper the systematic study of the conflict of 1971 and hinder a true understanding of a “cataclysmic restructuring in modern South Asian history”. She writes that the 1971 civil war was fought between those who believed they were fighting for a united Pakistan and those who believed their chance for justice and progress lay in an independent Bangladesh. “Both are legitimate political positions. All parties in the conflict embraced violence as a means to the end, all committed acts of brutality outside accepted norms of warfare, and all had their share of humanity. These attributes make the 1971 conflict suitable for efforts towards reconciliation, rather than recrimination that has so far been its hallmark,” she adds.

Ms Bose writes that it was not a simple “West vs East” conflict. Most political leaders in West Pakistan, barring Bhutto, were amenable to transfer of power to the Awami League. Biharis and some Bengalis were opposed to the breakup of Pakistan. Violence was not the means adopted by only one side. According to her, “Due to the successful emergence of Bangladesh it is sometimes overlooked that in 1971, the defence of the unity and integrity of Pakistan was a legitimate political position, indeed the ‘patriotic’ political position, as opposed to the secession proposed by pro-liberation Bengalis.” Pro-liberation Bengalis came to see Pakistan as a “foreign occupier” while the loyalists were considered “traitors”.

Ms Bose writes, “It is likely that, even after discounting exaggerations, the armed forces and loyalist Bengalis may be responsible for a greater proportion of casualties, due to greater fire power and a longer period of holding the ‘upper hand’, following military action on March 25. However, pro-liberation Bengalis also adopted violence as the means to their end and their leadership did not uphold or enforce a principled stand against violence towards unarmed people and political opponents, presumed or real. In many areas, pro-liberation Bengalis’ violence towards perceived opponents abated only upon arrival of the army and resurfaced as soon as the war ended. The culture of violence fomented by the conflict of 1971 forms the context of subsequent events in Bangladesh.”

Ms Bose says that East Pakistan in 1971 was “simultaneously a battleground for many different kinds of violent conflict – military rebellion, mob violence, guerrilla warfare, conventional battles, death squads, civil war within Pakistan and between Bengalis, and full-scale war between Pakistan and India”. The conflict lasted for a year, involving multiple combatant parties and different levels of conflict. To ascertain the truth, it would be necessary to undertake an “institutional effort of national proportions,” that Bangladesh has not made, she adds. Her research is based on case studies from various Bangladesh districts and accounts obtained from both perpetrators and victims. The case studies, she cautions, are “representative” of the conflict not “comprehensive”. She collected her data during visits to Pakistan and Bangladesh during 2003-05. It has been her effort to reconcile fact with fiction.

Ms Bose writes that the movement led by Shaikh Mujibur Rehman was “openly and proudly armed and militant”. The March 1 call for a general strike by Mujib following the postponement of the National Assembly session led to “widespread lawlessness” during that month, with the government of Pakistan effectively losing control of much of the province. There was a “parallel government” run on Mujib’s decrees. There was arson, looting and attacks by Bengali mobs on non-Bengali people and property, some with casualties, the worst cases occurring in Khulna and Chittagong. Most of these attacks were on civilians and commercial properties, but some were directly on the army which remained “curiously unresponsive under orders”. The army had difficulty buying food and fuel and was “being jeered and spat at” while the curfew was being violated. While the Awami League was unable or unwilling to control a population it had incited, the regime failed to respond appropriately to attacks on life and property.

However, with the launch of ‘Operation Searchlight’ on March 25, the “extraordinary restraint” shown by the army was reversed, Ms Bose writes. In the attack on Jagannath Hall at Dhaka University, the officer in charge, Brig. “Bobby” Jahanzeb Arbab, admitted “over-reaction and over-kill by the troops”. There was resistance but it was a “very unequal one”. Gen AAK Niazi, whom the author interviewed, condemned Gen Tikka Khan’s handling of the situation, comparing it with the Jullianwala Bagh massacre by the British in 1919. While some soldiers were gun-happy, others showed care and concern for the injured students. Several faculty members and male members residing in the same buildings were dragged out and shot. She found that there was no specific list of Dhaka University staff that the army wanted liquidated.

In one documented case, however, the soldiers had a name. The haphazard nature of the military action resulted in certain university professors being killed and political leaders either escaping to India or being taken alive. She rejects as “entirely false” Anthony Mascarenhas’s claim in the Sunday Times that 8,000 people were killed by the army in Shankaripatti. Only 14 were killed.

The military action was followed by a wave of mutiny by Bengali officers and men in the army and police forces, but the pattern of violence varied from place to place. In Mymensingh, many West Pakistani officers were killed, their women assaulted and those trying to escape lynched by the assembled population. Elsewhere, Bengali mobs slaughtered Biharis and West Pakistanis until the army arrived to secure the area. A large number of Bihari men, women and children were killed at the Crescent Jute Mills in Khulna on March 27-28. This vicious cycle of Bengali-Bihari ethnic violence continued even after Bangladesh’s establishment, she adds.

Ms Bose writes that when the army moved to re-establish the writ of the government, the initial resistance was sporadic and disorganised and overwhelmed by the army’s superior force. One Pakistani officer confessed adopting a policy of “prophylactic fire” on the advice of Gen Tikka Khan, though the general denied giving such advice. In this case, any villages that came in the way of this particular column were burnt down. Throughout April and into May, the army continued to bring rebel-held territories under control. There were killings in some areas, but not in others. In one village, where the moving troops had been fired upon, all the men were gathered and shot. Their bodies were set on fire. Another column secured a village without killing anyone. “The difference underlines the need for a deeper probe into the disregard for human life or due process that characterised mass killings,” the academic writes.

The Hindus were vulnerable during the civil war, even at the hand of their fellow Muslim villagers. In Chuknagar, a Khulna village, a large number of them were killed by an army patrol from Jessore. Women and children were not harmed. After the soldiers left, the locals indulged in rampant looting. As monsoon passed into autumn, young Bengali men trained in Indian camps returned on a programme of sabotage. Many were captured or killed; others survived. “In the absence of any political dialogue, the war dogged on at multiple levels,” Ms Bose writes. She narrates an incident on October 13 hear Kishoreganj in Mymensingh where an army unit rounded up adult men from neighbouring villages and, for reasons that remain unclear, lined them up in two queues and gunned them down with mounted light machine guns. Residents from a particular village were spared.

Ms Bose writes that in the final days of the war, several professionals, professors and doctors were picked up from their homes in Dhaka by Al Badr loyalists of the army and were then blindfolded and killed. Several of the bodies were found at a brick kiln. She states that “a direct link to the army is hard to establish” as the men were picked up by Bengali members of Al Badr. Some have held the late Maj Gen Rao Farman Ali responsible, a charge he denied. There were revenge killings after December 16, both of non-Bengalis and loyalist Bengalis, even a public lynching before the cameras. Some were bayoneted. Another mass killing of Biharis took place in Khulna in March 1972, when Mujib had already taken power.