1971 Bengali Hindu Genocide

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1971 Bangladesh genocide
Part of the Bangladesh Liberation War
Rayerbazar killing field photographed immediately after the war started, showing bodies of Bengali nationalist intellectuals (Image courtesy: Rashid Talukdar, 1971)
LocationEast Pakistan
Date26 March – 16 December 1971
(8 months, 2 weeks and 6 days)
TargetBengalis
Attack type
Deportation, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, genocidal rape
DeathsEstimated between 200,000[1] and 3,000,000[2][3][4]
Perpetrators
MotiveAnti-Bengali sentiment

The genocide in Bangladesh began on 26 March 1971 with the launch of Operation Searchlight,[5] as West Pakistan (now Pakistan) began a military crackdown on the Eastern wing (now Bangladesh) of the nation to suppress Bengali calls for self-determination.[6] During the nine-month-long Bangladesh War for Liberation, members of the Pakistani military and supporting pro Pakistani Islamist militias from Jamaat-e-Islami party[7] killed between 200,000 and 3,000,000[1][4][8] people and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women,[8][9] according to Bangladeshi and Indian sources,[10] in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape.[11][12] The actions against women were supported by Jamaat-e-Islami religious leaders, who declared that Bengali women were gonimoter maal (Bengali for "public property").[13] As a result of the conflict, a further eight to ten million people, mostly Hindus,[14] fled the country to seek refuge in neighbouring India. It is estimated that up to 30 million civilians were internally displaced[8] out of 70 million.[15] During the war, there was also ethnic violence between Bengalis and Urdu-speaking Biharis.[16] Biharis faced reprisals from Bengali mobs and militias[17] and from 1,000[18] to 150,000[19][20] were killed.

There is an academic consensus that the events which took place during the Bangladesh Liberation War constituted a genocide.[21] However, there are scholars who deny the killing was a genocide.[22]

Violence against Hindus

An article in Time magazine dated 2 August 1971, stated "The Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead, have borne the brunt of the Muslim military hatred."[23] Pakistan army eastern command headquarter officials in Dhaka made clear the government's policy on East Bengal. After the elimination or exile of Hindus, their property was going to be shared among middle class Muslims.[24] According to Colonel Naim Hindus "undermined the Muslim masses." He said Bengali culture to a great extent was Hindu culture and "We have to sort them out to restore the land to the people."[25]:144–145 In April 1971 at Comilla Major Rathore said to Anthony Mascarenhas on Hindus: "Now under the cover of fighting we have an excellent opportunity of finishing them off...Of course, we are only killing the Hindu men. We are soldiers, not cowards like the rebels."[25]:144

Hindus were alleged to have corrupted the Awami League. Pakistani soldiers repeatedly boasted that they have came "to kill Hindus" to US Consul Archer Blood. A witness heard an officer shouting to soldiers: "Why you have killed Muslims. We ordered you to kill only Hindus."[25]:145 US government cables noted that the minorities of Bangladesh, especially the Hindus, were specific targets of the Pakistani Army.[26][27] US consulates reported methodical slaughter of Hindu men in cities starting in the first 24 hours of the crackdown. Army units entered villages asking where Hindus live; it was "common pattern" to kill Hindu males. Hindus were identified because they were not circumcised. Sometimes the military also massacred Hindu women. There were barely any areas where no Hindu was killed.[25]:145 There was widespread killing of Hindu males, and rapes of women. Documented incidents in which Hindus were massacred in large numbers include the Jathibhanga massacre,[citation needed] the Chuknagar massacre, and the Shankharipara massacre.[28]

Senator Edward Kennedy wrote in a report that was part of United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations testimony dated 1 November 1971, "Hardest hit have been members of the Hindu community who have been robbed of their lands and shops, systematically slaughtered, and in some places, painted with yellow patches marked "H". All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad". More than 60% of the Bengali refugees who fled to India were Hindus.[29][30] It has been alleged that this widespread violence against Hindus was motivated by a policy to purge East Pakistan of what was seen as Hindu and Indian influences.[31] Buddhist temples and Buddhist monks were also attacked through the course of the year.[32] Lt. Colonel Aziz Ahmed Khan reported that in May 1971 there was written order to kill Hindus and that General Niazi would ask troops how many Hindus they had killed.[33]

According to R. J. Rummel, professor of political science at the University of Hawaii,

The genocide and gendercidal atrocities were also perpetrated by lower-ranking officers and ordinary soldiers. These "willing executioners" were fueled by an abiding anti-Bengali racism, especially against the Hindu minority. "Bengalis were often compared with monkeys and chickens. Said General Niazi, 'It was a low lying land of low lying people.' The Hindus among the Bengalis were as Jews to the Nazis: scum and vermin that [should] best be exterminated. As to the Moslem Bengalis, they were to live only on the sufferance of the soldiers: any infraction, any suspicion cast on them, any need for reprisal, could mean their death. And the soldiers were free to kill at will. The journalist Dan Coggin quoted one Pakistani captain as telling him, "We can kill anyone for anything. We are accountable to no one." This is the arrogance of Power.[34]

The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Sydney Schanberg covered the start of the war and wrote extensively on the suffering of the East Bengalis, including the Hindus both during and after the conflict. In a syndicated column "The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored", he wrote about his return to liberated Bangladesh in 1972. "Other reminders were the yellow "H"s the Pakistanis had painted on the homes of Hindus, particular targets of the Muslim army" (by "Muslim army", meaning the Pakistan Army, which had targeted Bengali Muslims as well). Bangladesh reported massacres occurring on a daily basis. One priest reported to Schanberg about the slaughter of over thousand Hindus in southern district of Barisal in one day. According to another priest, meeting was called in northeastern Sylhet district. Later troops arrived and from the gathered crowd selected 300 Hindus and shot them dead.[24]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Bass
  2. ↑ Samuel Totten; William S. Parsons; Israel W. Charny (2004). Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Psychology Press. pp. 295–. ISBN 978-0-415-94430-4. Archived from the original on 26 May 2019. Retrieved 10 October 2016.
  3. ↑ Sandra I. Cheldelin; Maneshka Eliatamby (18 August 2011). Women Waging War and Peace: International Perspectives of Women's Roles in Conflict and Post-Conflict Reconstruction. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 23–. ISBN 978-1-4411-6021-8. Archived from the original on 21 December 2019. Retrieved 10 October 2016.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Bangladesh sets up war crimes court – Central & South Asia". Al Jazeera. 25 March 2010. Archived from the original on 5 June 2011. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
  5. ↑ Spencer 2012, p. 63.
  6. ↑ Ganguly 2002, p. 60.
  7. ↑ Totten, Samuel; Parsons, William S. (10 September 2012). Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-24550-4. Archived from the original on 28 December 2020. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Women and Climate Change in Bangladesh
  9. ↑ "Birth of Bangladesh: When raped women and war babies paid the price of a new nation". 19 December 2016. Archived from the original on 6 April 2019. Retrieved 17 December 2016.
  10. ↑ Sisson, Richard; Rose, Leo E. (1991). War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh. University of California Press. p. 306. ISBN 9780520076655. Archived from the original on 27 February 2017. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
  11. ↑ Sharlach 2000, pp. 92–93.
  12. ↑ Sajjad 2012, p. 225.
  13. ↑ D'Costa 2011, p. 108.
  14. ↑ Tinker, Hugh Russell. "History (from Bangladesh)". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 11 June 2013.
  15. ↑ "World Population Prostpects 2017". Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. Archived from the original on 6 May 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
  16. ↑ Saikia 2011, p. 3.
  17. ↑ Khan, Borhan Uddin; Muhammad Mahbubur Rahman (2010). Rainer Hofmann, Ugo Caruso (ed.). Minority Rights in South Asia. Peter Lang. p. 101. ISBN 978-3631609163. Archived from the original on 24 July 2020. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
  18. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named MAR-1
  19. ↑ George Fink (25 November 2010). Stress of War, Conflict and Disaster. Academic Press. p. 292. ISBN 978-0-12-381382-4. Archived from the original on 19 April 2019. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  20. ↑ Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict: Po – Z, index. 3. Academic Press. 1999. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-12-227010-9. Archived from the original on 19 April 2019. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  21. ↑ Payaslian.
  22. ↑ Beachler, Donald (1 December 2007). "The politics of genocide scholarship: the case of Bangladesh". Patterns of Prejudice. 41 (5): 467–492. doi:10.1080/00313220701657286. S2CID 220344166. Some scholars and other writers have denied that what took place in Bangladesh was a genocide.
  23. ↑ "World: Pakistan: The Ravaging of Golden Bengal - Printout". TIME. 2 August 1971. Archived from the original on 11 March 2007. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Beachler, Donald (2007) 'The politics of genocide scholarship:the case of Bangladesh', Patterns of Prejudice, 41:5, 467 - 492
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 25.3 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Gerlach2010
  26. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named usconsulate_cable_march31
  27. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Blood9782
  28. ↑ Bose, Sarmila (2011). Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War. London: Hurst and Co. pp. 73, 122.
  29. ↑ U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XI, "South Asia Crisis, 1971", page 165
  30. ↑ Kennedy, Senator Edward, "Crisis in South Asia – A report to the Subcommittee investigating the Problem of Refugees and Their Settlement, Submitted to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee", 1 November 1971, U.S. Govt. Press, page 66. Sen. Kennedy wrote, "Field reports to the U.S. Government, countless eye-witness journalistic accounts, reports of International agencies such as World Bank and additional information available to the subcommittee document the reign of terror which grips East Bengal (East Pakistan). Hardest hit have been members of the Hindu community who have been robbed of their lands and shops, systematically slaughtered, and in some places, painted with yellow patches marked 'H'. All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad."
  31. ↑ Mascarenhas, Anthony (13 June 1971). "Genocide". The Times. London. The Government's policy for East Bengal was spelled out to me in the Eastern Command headquarters at Dacca. It has three elements: 1. The Bengalis have proved themselves unreliable and must be ruled by West Pakistanis; 2. The Bengalis will have to be re-educated along proper Islamic lines. The – Islamization of the masses – this is the official jargon – is intended to eliminate secessionist tendencies and provide a strong religious bond with West Pakistan; 3. When the Hindus have been eliminated by death and flight, their property will be used as a golden carrot to win over the under privileged Muslim middle-class. This will provide the base for erecting administrative and political structures in the future.
  32. ↑ "Bangladesh: A Bengali Abbasi Lurking Somewhere?". South Asia Analysis Group. 23 April 2001. Archived from the original on 13 June 2010.
  33. ↑ Jones, Owen Bennett (2003). Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. Yale University Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0-300-10147-8. Archived from the original on 13 December 2016. Retrieved 10 October 2016.
  34. ↑ DEATH BY GOVERNMENT Archived 18 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine, by R.J. Rummel New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994

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