3 Million Killed in Bangladesh

Source: 3 Million Myth by Dr. M. Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury

Many myths have been formed around the creation of Bangladesh. Among them is the fiction that the defeated Pakistan Army savagely killed three million people and raped three hundred thousand women during their less than nine months unsuccessful fight to preserve the integrity of a united Pakistan.

Recalling this ‘heinous’ Pakistani crime with suave moral indignation was made into a national ritual. Not only the beaten Pakistan Army but also the subverted Pakistan came to be portrayed as inherently evil and her dismemberment a triumph of civilized values over barbarism. No less a figure than the ‘Father of the Nation’ was made to consecrate the lore. With his stamp of authority behind it, his grateful children were implicitly compelled into faithfully repeating it. Not to accept it as ‘the whole truth, nothing but the truth’ with unquestioning faith was to fall short of being a ‘Bengali patriot’. In those hallucinatory days of ‘liberated’ Bangladesh, the premium for such a terrible shortcoming was not merely dear, but potentially fatal. The ‘permanent disappearance’ of Zahir Raihan, the celebrated writer and film director, who showed the audacity of forming and heading ‘The Buddhijibi Nidhan Tayithanusandhan Committee’ (The Fact Finding Committee on the Killing of Intellectuals), in January 1972 [1] was a calculated warning to all doubting Bangladeshis. Understandably, the sceptics kept quiet and the scoundrels and the credulous joined the chorus masters in singing the saga of three million ‘martyrs’ and three hundred thousand ‘heroines’.

Once the ‘Father of the Nation’ had fallen into disrepute and even came to be accused of treachery to the Bangladeshi nation’, some of the deified artefacts adorning the liberationist altar came to be seen as mendacious. But not this nor any other Pakistani crime; at least not officially. The successive masters of Bangladesh have shown no interest in exonerating Pakistan from any charges, however undeserved they might have been. Instead, by keeping them alive they skilfully played politics by veering on the sides of the accused and the accuser all at once. Alongside the dubious opportunism of the occupants of power, the dwindling band of the conscious keepers of the ‘Bengali spirit of liberation’ have continued their efforts to keep the myth alive through a more vociferous recital.

Yet, over the years, questioning voices were heard. These were not from the much maligned ‘pro-Pakistanis’ alone, but also from among the unimpeachable ‘liberationists’ and their ‘Indian comrades’, including the highest Indian most generals who gave Bangladesh its ‘Caesarean birth’. Some of the latter have, of course, their own fiction to sell.

Curiously, those in Pakistan have remained indolent. There was no attempt to refute any of the vile accusations, including this very loathsome charge. Instead, there appeared to be a misplaced hope that apologetic smile to any and every charge would help in taking the heat out and once sobriety was restored and goodwill regenerated, the time would arrive for the truth to come out. Despite its many attractions, such a stand back posture has helped in perpetuating the falsehood and possibly retarding the restoration of the brotherly relationship between the peoples of Pakistan and Bangladesh. [2] For the intention of the mythmakers was to harbour hatred.

In order to create a healthy relationship between the two peoples it is essential to admit, and where possible to take measures to amend, all past mistakes committed by either people and their leaders. However, it is imperative that such steps should be taken on both sides with fidelity to truth and not on opportunism or contrived facts and unfounded myths.

Like many other myths of its kind, the fiction of three million dead and three hundred thousand women raped was not politically innocent; and it is time to recognise this both in Pakistan and in Bangladesh. Not to do so would be a disservice to truth and damaging to the interest of the people of both countries, especially the people of Bangladesh. This would be so, for any further credence to such a poisonous myth would perpetuate the psychic isolation and the splintered Muslim self-view of the people of Bangladesh in their geopolitically island-like setting. This would not serve their enlightened national self-interest, nor their independence. Instead, this would help those in and outside their

BEHIND THE MYTH OF THREE MILLION is a re-examination of a sad chapter in the relationship of the people of Pakistan and Bangladesh and exposes its utterly contrived nature as well as the motive behind such inventiveness. I am one of those whose family were reported among the casualties of Pakistan Army’s action in Dhaka on the night of 26 March 1971. Some of my personal friends within the ‘liberationist’ camp even had a condolence meeting for me in their Indian safe heaven! I am not alone in having been counted as dead. Countless other people could tell a similar story of their own. Some have even found their names engraved in the commemorative plaques solemnly dedicated in memory of the fallen heroes of the Bangladesh War. [3] Being one of many such ‘reincarnated’ beings, I feel duty bound to help remove the myth which is of no service either to my fellow countrymen or to history. Yet, mindful of the requirement of objectivity I have chosen to confine myself to published works and recorded sources and have analysed them with the utmost fidelity to the truth. The ultimate judgement lies with the reader and it is my hope that they would find the pages that follow both interesting and informative.

In putting facts over fiction, I risk ruffling the feathers of those who for all manner of reasons have allowed themselves to be beguiled. Even if a few of them start considering the facts and begin rethinking their position, I shall consider my efforts worth-while. For those who in their blinkered disposition refuse to distinguish facts from fiction and continue to follow the pied pipers of the ‘spirit of liberation’ fame, who have – to my mind and I hope many would agree with me – no better function other than leading the Muslim Nation of Bangladesh towards its national suicide, I can only pray for divine guidance.

February, 1996

(Dr. M. Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury)

By Twitter Handle FIDATO (

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Today is the 50th Independence Day of Bangladesh. The claims of a Bengali genocide and three million dead during 1971 war are regularly repeated by South Asia’s academia. Let’s examine what the Bengali and western scholars have written on the veracity of this claim.

Richard Sisson and Leo Rose carried out a detailed research on the birth of Bangladesh in their book “War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh”. On the figure of three million killings by Pakistan army, the authors have shared an interesting account:

M Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury, a native of Sylhet and a Bengali nationalist was a teacher at Dhaka University. He participated in the separatist cause. He left Bangladesh in 1973 for London and shared his story in his book ‘Behind the Myth of Three Million’. He writes in the Preface:

Serajur Rahman who is a journalist and broadcaster with BBC Bangla Service at the time, wrote an article for The Guardian in 2011 in which he explained the genesis of the three million figure.

 

The Purbadesh editorial claimed the killing of three million and two hundred intellectuals on December 22, 1971. On previous day, the same editorial had asked, ‘how many people of Bengal have been killed’? Within days, the Soviet daily, Pravada, claimed the fictitious figures.

Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury has given the accounts of Jauhuri, William Drummond, Peter Gill and Abdul Muhaimin who was a long time friend of Sheikh Mujib on the myth of three million killings in his book.

 

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 of Biharis by Mukti Bahinis. Mujib was furious:

 

William Drummond explains why Mujib ur Rehman raised the fallacious claim of a genocide and killings of three million Bengalis.

Sarmila Bose writes in her book ‘Dead Reckoning’ that the claim of three million dead has been repeated in South Asian and Western academia without any verification. The authors who have added this figure in their books have not provided a single reference.

After the fall of Dhaka, the newspaper reports were claiming the unearthing of ‘mass graves’. In a striking parallel to Kissinger’s comment in April 1971 about Bengali claims of a thousand bodies when fewer than twenty could be found, Drummond wrote in June 1972:

The Hamoodur Rehman Commission is often cited in the Pakistani academia by people who time and again repeat the fabricated claims of three million Bengali killings by the Pakistan military. Sarmila Bose shared the commission’s findings in ‘Dead Reckoning’:

Lt Gen 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 Pak army had ‘simultaneously fought within the country and at the borders’

A genocide is a systematic elimination of a racial group. Bengalis were never targeted as an ethnic group by Pak army. Political killings took place while fighting an Indian sponsored insurgency. There were many Bengali Razakar who were fighting the Mukti Bahinis.

More than 100,000 men, women and children were killed during the ‘Awami League’s reign of terror’ which started on 1 March 1971. The killing of Biharis and West Pakistan was clearly a genocide as per the UN definition. Shiekh Mujib defended the heinous crimes of Mukti Bahini:

 

Is there a comparison between the 1971 conflict in East Pakistan and the real Holocaust? Sarmila Bose explains in the last few pages of his book ‘Dead Reckoning’:

 

 

Sarmila Bose further writes that when Pakistan army came for Mujib on 25 March 1971, soldiers arrested him. When Bangladesh army came for Mujib on 15 Aug 1975, they killed him and his family including his wife, two daughter in laws, three sons- the youngest a child of ten.

Qutubuddin Aziz, in ‘Blood and Tears’, has documented 170 eye-witness accounts of the ‘atrocities committed on Biharis and other non-Bengalis’ across 55 towns, covering ‘110 places where the slaughter of the innocents took place’.

Mukti Bahini killed 100,000 Biharis (according to the ‘Chronology for Biharis in Bangladesh’) to 150,000 Biharis (‘Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict’). Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury shares some heart wrenching accounts in his book:

 

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1. Zahir Raihan was a Marxist who was said to have been disillusioned while in Calcutta and did not believe that the ‘intellectuals’ found murdered in Dhaka on the eve of 16 December 1971- who included his elder brother Shahidullah Kaiser- could have been killed at the behest of the Pakistan Army as has been alleged. The rumour has it that he also had incriminatory photographs of questionable activities of the Awami League leaders in India. While gathering information about the killing he was kidnapped in Dhaka in broad day light and was never seen again. There is no doubt that he was killed by either those who were at risk of being exposed or those who did not like the truth behind the killing of the intellectuals to come out.

2. For a cogent argument on this point cf. Syed Sajjad Husain, The Wastes of Time: Reflections on the Decline and Fall of East Pakistan, Notun Safar Prokashani, 44 Purana Paltan, Dhaka -1000, 1995: 265-84

3. Jauhuri, Tirish Lakher Telesmat (The Riddle of Thirty Lakh), Asha Prokashani, 435 Elephant Road, Dhaka -1217, 1994: 74