Re: East Pakistan - Is this Gora reliable?
Respected Brother
Assalam-o-Alaikum
I fully respect your point of view, but I have a humble submission to make. In my opinion, it is not 101% true. The actual figures are considerably less. I admit, there were incidents of excesses, but not to that extent as were later highlighted and propagated by the Bangali and Indian Press. Fully acknowledging the sentiments of my Bengali Muslims Brothers, I really feel for them but if you go back a little, than you would realise the element of exageration in it.
Before the war, Indian Govenment rumoured that 10 million refugees had crossed over from East Pakistan to India. To this John G. Stoessinger, in "Why Nations Go To War', page 133 wrote, 'If this figure is correct, then the mass movement of humanity over eight months of 1971 was the most intensive regionally concentrated large-scale migration in the history of man". One does'nt have to be a mathmatician to note that it is an exageration.
Similarly, on the basis of this hyper inflated figure of refugees, a more preposterous calculation was made. It said that a war with Pakistan to end this refugee crisis would be cheaper for India in terms of national exchequer. Why? Becuase the Bengali refugees would cost India, 900 million $ in one year, which would be 13 times more than the cost of the entire Kashmir war with Pakistan in 1965. Again an extremely exagerated figure.
After the propaganda of refugees, exagerated figures of casualties were propagated. Before going on to the casulaties, just read the following lines;
Firstly, in November 1970, there was a massive cyclone in East Pakistan where rougly 0.5 to 1.0 million people perished.
Secondly, in November 1971, a cyclone hit Indian Bengal killing roughly 20 to 30 thousand people.
Thirdly, the number of dead by Pakistani attrocities was always speculative in Bengali History and never accurate, with extreme variations in different accounts.
Fourthly, vague terms like millions, scores, genocide etc were used without any clear cut number of casualties.
Fifthly, everything was potrayed in an out of proprtion way with exagerations in number of casualties, refugees, and losses.
It is quite strange that a hype of millions and millions of Bengalis, mercilessly killed by Pakistanis is alleged, but no concrete evidence was given. So much so, at many occasions the pictures of those unfortunate people, who died in cyclones, were displaced in different forums as victims of Pakistani attrocities.
I once again admit that there may have been a number of excesses, but exageartions should be avoided.
Wassalam.