Genocide is genocide whether the victims are Bangladeshi Bengalis and non-Bengalis, Indian occupied Kashmiris, Indian Punjabis, Indian Gujratis, Indian Hyderabadis, or Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhalese. The bottom-line is that murder is wrong whether individual or on large scale and sponsored by states, regardless of ethnicity or religion.
However, if we want to talk about numbers of deaths in the East Pakistan genocide, the mythical numbers of millions propagated by the victors of the war, India and Bangladesh, are grossly exaggerated and have been challenged even by some Indian sources themselves and have been countered with as low as 26,000 by the Hamud-ur-Rehman commission of Pakistan for the toll of atrocities by Pakistan army. This is certainly less than the 60,000+ killed in Kashmir, 40,000 in Hyderabad, 10,000 in the Sikh uprising in the 1980s, 3,000 in the Gujrat massacre (conveniently called riots by Indians). Let’s also throw in the 100,000 killed in the Sri Lankan civil war and the dirty role played by India in the war by arming the Tamil terrorists in Sri Lanka and trying to keep the separatist movement in Tamil Nadu under control which also cost Ragiv Gandhi his life by a female Tamil suicide bomber. Also in denial are India and Bangladesh about the atrocities committed by Indian army and the Indian trained Mukti Bahni terrorists and mercenaries. The victims being Bengalis sympathetic to Pakistan, non-Bengalis like Biharis and West Pakistanis in East Pakistan.
The difference is that Pakistanis largely show remorse and realize the murder and mayhem caused by their army on the orders of their power hungry leaders and would like to apologize to Bangladeshis. And they should unequivocally apologize to Bangladeshis to lift the curse that hangs over them. Hopefully in turn the Bangladeshis will apologize for whatever bad they did.
On the other hand, Indians are mostly smug, sanctimonious and self-righteous, compelled by the chronic Indian hubris. This trait is considered quite reprehensible by the smaller neighbours of India. India to all its neighbours is a big bully rather than a benevolent big brother. Wonder why ?
One would have thought that the ‘saviour’ of Bangladesh would let it live in peace afterward. But on the contrary, Bangladesh now suffers from the same bully-ism of the saviour as the other neighbours - what with the similar themed dirty water games of the rivers and daily border killings of Bangladeshis by the Indian ‘security’ forces. That exposes the ‘good’ faith in which India helped Bangladesh gain its independence. The obvious supreme motive was to destroy and punish Pakistan. That policy goes on till date as proved by a former Indian army official’s recent statement about continual covert terrorist operations by RAW in Pakistan.
Iss himam main sab nangay hain, therefore the fake Indian sanctimony needs to be kept in check.
There is popular sentiment in Pakistan that all the culprits (leaders) of the three countries that played central (read dirty) roles in the East Pakistan debacle met befitting ends. Some of their progeny also met unfortunate ends.
Where Bangladesh is Pakistan’s shame, Pakistan is India’s shame. Pakistan is still paying for its sins. Wonder when will it be India’s turn to pay for its sins.
The blame for the creation of Pakistan and the large-scale violence and murder in 1947 also goes primarily to the majority leaders of United India. They utterly failed to address the concerns regarding the future status of the large Muslim minority in the independent and democratic United India. The racist majority leaders didn’t want to share power with the large minority.
The large scale massacres of 1947 were the direct result of the cutting up of the provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The formula of the two independent states in India was that the Muslim-majority provinces would be part of Pakistan in their entirety and vice versa. (Hence the historic map we often see showing all of Punjab and Bengal as part of Pakistan). That would have ensured that the independent and democratic Pakistan would not be an exclusively ‘Muslim’ state because it would have a large non-Muslim minority population. Just as the independent and democratic state of India would have a large non-Hindu minority population. There would have been reverse demographic parity in the two countries and result in two stable countries in the region. But no, the racist Hindu leaders would have none of that. They were okay with a large Muslim population living as perpetual minority in a predominantly Hindu India but would not bear having a large Hindu population living in a predominantly Muslim Pakistan. That is why they pushed to slice up the provinces that resulted in a truncated, weak and vulnerable Pakistan and caused the immense suffering and loss of life and property at partition. The second attempt to destroy Pakistan was achieved in 1971 by breaking up Pakistan in two and now working overtime to destroy what’s left by covert terrorist activities in Pakistan and sponsoring the separatists in Balochistan.
Unfortunately, killing of co-religionists for dominance and power and other differences is a common theme in human history and is not exclusive to one religion. More Christians have killed Christians than followers of other religions. The stark example is WW2. Similarly, more Muslims have killed Muslims than other people. I don’t know too much about the Hindu history of India but I am sure there are examples of this in Hindu history also. But it is clear that it is a matter of great shame and gravity in the case of East Pakistan, as Pakistan was founded upon the notion of Indian Muslim solidarity and protecting the rights of the Muslim minority of India. It is a shame that in the throws of greed and power and some help and instigation by enemies appearing as friends, they are willing to kill each other, forgetting what their religion teaches them.