1971 War

[Ali_Syed]

Re: 1971 War

@mo293

Joli, Shak, Ali.. good response.. Just an FYI such discussion when presented with facts can cause quite a bit of takleef to certain segment of Pakistanis for whatever reasons.. However there was an article published back in the 2000s by a BD writer, luckily I saved it but you may still find it floating on the net.. Below are some of the excerpts.

“Bangladesh Gets No Sympathy for 1971”

Bangladesh govt. crudely and arbitrarily made up the number of deaths during the 9-month period of 1971. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, when released from Pakistani prison in Januray 1972, stated the death toll to be 1 lakh in London airport, 1 million in New Delhi airport and 3 million when landed in Dhaka. (Some people suggest that Sheik Mujibur Rahman confused million as English for lakh. But that is a different story). Obviously the number was not based on facts. Later, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman formed a commission to make a survey of the killings and come up with the real number. The commission, after an exhaustive work, came up in 1973 with a death toll number, which was a 5-digit number. The results were published in newspapers briefly. The govt., in an apparent attempt to save it from a big embarrassment, hushed up the commission report and a high level decision was made to continue with the 3 million number publicly. (This is possible only for politicians of third world).

. A death toll of 3 million over a period of 8 and a half months (266 days) means over eleven thousand people were killed everyday on an average! There is hardly any mechanism that any army can employ to kill that many people in one day (may be except by nuclear bombs) for so many days in a row. It is not possible for any force to kill that many people individually or in groups when the whole population was against the army. (Carpet bombing in Vietnam did not kill nearly as many people as someone would expect). Also, 1971 was in very modern time, and communication was quite developed then.

And there is a lot more that you can find and read in this article.

I have two issues with the numbers quoted, firstly how many people were actually killed? the 3 million mark is simply not possible. I can go along with the theory that Mujib mistook lac for million, but whenever he might have discovered his mistake, he should have clarified. If it was not possible for him, then the subsequent regimes could have corrected the historical error. Not doing it just gives the impression that they lied and are still carrying on with it. How many people were killed by Mukti bahini and other Bangladeshi groups? We just assume that there was no reaction from the other side.

Anyhow it is an unfortunate part of our history, hence Pakistanis shy away from it (not carrying out any research as to what really happened) giving an open field to Bangladeshi nationalists.