On the 16th of December 1971, the struggle of the Bengali people and the unforgettable valour of the Indian Army broke the shackles of Pakistani Islamist suppression and East Pakistan’s transformation into Bangladesh became inevitable. On this historic day, Pakistan ultimately called for a unilateral ceasefire and surrendered its entire four-tier military to the triumphant Indian Army.
A nation born of a genocidal campaign waged against its Bengali citizens by Pakistan’s Islamist army. India was at the vanguard of this liberation, intervening militarily, sheltering and feeding millions of refugees, and coming to the rescue in a crisis that claimed up to three million lives and a slew of atrocities. It was a victory not just a military triumph for India but a victory for the Bengali people who fought for their freedom, culture and dignity.
Operation Searchlight and Pakistan’s bloodlust
In 1970, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the Awami League won 167 seats in East Pakistan’s provincial legislature, demanding greater regional autonomy due to Islamic interference. Despite being united by a common faith, resentment between West and East Pakistan grew. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) opposed Rahman’s demands, leading to a civil disobedience movement in 1971. President Yahya Khan declared martial law and arrested Rahman and other leaders.
On the 25th of March, 1971, the Pakistan Army launched Operation Searchlight, a brutal crackdown on East Pakistan’s nationalist movement. The genocide and rape of the Bengali people of the then East Pakistan was spearheaded by former Army chief General Yahya Khan. Even as per the conservative estimates, over 200,000 Bengalis were killed and in a deliberate campaign of genocidal rape, Pakistani military personnel and the Razakars raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women and girls.
When the Indian Army reached the barracks dedicated to mass rapes they had found multiple women chained, stark naked, and each in different stages of pregnancy.
— Neena Rai (@NeenaRai) December 16, 2024
They were not allowed to wear any clothes because they might commit suicide with any piece of cloth either by hanging… pic.twitter.com/qFkeCUL9V0
The people of East Pakistan had faced discrimination, be it in the political representation, governmental and other institutions due to these being concentrated in West Pakistan and dominated by West Pakistanis, budgetary discrimination despite East Pakistan forming 55% of the population, with most drastic being discrimination based on linguistic and cultural lines. While the partition of India on Islamic lines makes it clear that Islamists hated Hindus and other non-Muslim communities, the crux of the blatant disdain of the West Pakistani Islamist government and the army towards the Bengali Muslims was deeply embedded in their hatred for Hindus and their culture. In addition to seeing Bengalis as ‘non-martial’ [read cowardly] people, the Pakistani Islamists opined that the Islam of Bengali Muslims was not ‘pure’ enough due to their connections with the Bengali Hindus, their culture and traditions etc. You see, the Islamists not only hate Hindus but anyone in the Islamic fold they deem not ‘Muslim enough’.
Bangladesh’s journey from resisting the atrocities of its genocidaire Pakistan to romanticising the same
Fast forward to 53 years later, and the political landscape of Bangladesh has turned ironic, if not tragic. The country whose independence India had conferred through military intervention now harbours increasing hostility towards India while cuddling up to Pakistan, the very state responsible for unspeakable violence against its own population. One question the ‘apolitical’ people, especially Indians ask is why despite helping Bangladesh in attaining freedom and lending continued support, the Bangladeshi Muslims hate Hindu-majority India. While an average Bangladeshi Islamist will give a vague response like India asserting its supposed ‘control’ over Bangladesh, economic disparities, ‘border disputes’, water-sharing issues and whatnot, the factual answer to this lies in the fight against the very ideology. Bangladesh is a culmination of. While the Bengali people with the help of India could get rid of Pakistani Islamists in 1971, Islamic extremism in Bangladesh could never really be eradicated. The Urdu-speaking Islamists were replaced with Bengali-speaking Islamists. It can be understood from the fact that since Bangladesh’s liberation, the governments there have ‘legally’ confiscated the lands of Hindus by arbitrarily declaring them “enemies”.
The Islamist political outfits like the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) have historically antagonised India, its contemporary demonstration was seen in the ‘India Out’ campaign and its threats of ‘conquering’ Kolkata in 4 days. The Jamaat and its student wing Chhatra Shibir were also directly involved in targeted attacks on Hindus and their temples since the undemocratic ouster of Sheikh Hasina on the 5th of August 2024. One of the first few decisions of the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government was to lift the ban on this Islamist outfit.
Pakistan’s founding ideology, which was premised on an autonomous Muslim identity separate from Hindu-majority India, has evolved into a broader narrative in which antagonism towards India is a fundamental aspect. Pakistani political leaders and “Ghazwa-e-Hind” enthusiasts frequently use this animosity to gain public support, divert attention away from internal issues, and justify the military’s enormous control over civilian affairs. Now the Bangladeshi Islamists have taken a page from the playbook of Pakistani Islamists to instigate an already in “jihad” mode Islamist populace into not only persecuting Hindu minorities in Bangladesh but also justifying its hatred for the Hindu-majority India while turning completely oblivious to Pakistan’s unspeakable atrocities against Bangladeshis even as Pakistan has in five decades never apologised for the horrors it unleashed.
As noted Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen pointed out, India went all out to support Bengali freedom fighters, from providing weapons and training to food and shelter, however, Bangladesh which now has clearly slipped into the hands of Islamists is harbouring hatred against India and limerence for Pakistan.
The India where 17,000 soldiers lost their lives saving Bangladesh from its enemy Pakistan is now supposedly an enemy.
— taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) December 6, 2024
The India that gave shelter, food, and clothing to 10 million refugees is now supposedly an enemy.
The India that provided weapons and trained freedom fighters…
Earlier this month, the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) in Dhaka directed all its missions abroad to facilitate visas for Pakistani citizens and those of Pakistani origin. Meanwhile, the Yunus administration said that it would stop visa services from one of its missions in India’s Tripura’s Agartala. On one hand, Bangladesh is strengthening ties with its erstwhile oppressor Pakistan and on the other, it is straining ties with its liberator India.
Ironically, Jamaat-e-Islami, which was opposed to the creation of Bangladesh has now become so mainstream and powerful in the country that its Chhatra Shibir ‘activists’ who participated in the violent anti-Hasina protests appeared on the Victory Day posters published by the Yunus government. It is a matter of national shame that JeI ‘activists’ are now being made the face of the Bengali freedom struggle even as the Jamaat itself assisted the genocidal Pakistani army in killing and raping millions of their fellow countrymen. But there is no scope for Bangladesh to even realise its fall and collective shame given its conscience died the day, the Islamist mobs began destroying the legacy of Mujibur Rahman on one hand and attacking Hindu minorities on the other. If the geography allowed, the Islamists in Bangladesh would have merged the country with Pakistan by now.
Islamic groups like Jamat-e-Islami in Bangladesh have long advocated a pan-Islamic identity, one that is sharply in contrast with the secular and nationalist ideals on which Bangladesh’s foundation should have been laid given its people were liberated from horrors of Islamic extremism and barbarism. However, the Pakistan-sympathising Jamat and BNP, who now are more powerful than ever, want its people to see its liberator India as an enemy and its genocider Pakistan as a close ally and natural friend due to the ‘shared’ Islamic identity. Why would Pakistan ever apologise for the brutalities it inflicted on the people of erstwhile East Pakistan when the Bangladeshi people are themselves cuddling up to their genocidaire?
While the Sheikh Hasina government sought to hold accountable those like Jamat-e-Islami who collaborated with Pakistan armed forces during the 1971 genocide, the recent drift and mainstreaming of Jamaat and other Pakistan sympathising entities in Bangladesh, forget accountability for past war crimes, now Pakistan and Bangladeshi Islamists will shamelessly forge deeper ties, villainise India as a Hindu oppressor while persecuting Hindu minorities just as Islamists in Pakistan do without a smidgen of shame.
For India, the outcome of the rise of Islamists is disappointing and a matter of serious concern. India’s sacrifices for the oppressed Bengali people during the 1971 Liberation War are eclipsed by the current weft and warp of the anti-India narrative peddled by the interim Islamist regime in Bangladesh. India is Bangladesh’s major trading partner and ally, however, the growing hostility driven by Islamists is a disconcerting trend. The case of Bangladesh stands as a cautionary tale for India how Islamic supremacist ideology trumps humanitarian alliances and how a country governed by Islamists can turn apathetic to the sufferings and pain of its own people. It is a cruel irony that a founded on the imperative to end Islamist tyranny is now grappling with similar elements of fanaticism and violence.
With Bangladesh falling into the hands of Islamists, with its leader downplaying Islamist violence and mollycoddling the genocidaire of its own people while antagonising its liberator, Bangladesh’s future is bleak and it is becoming everything it fought against. From destroying the legacy of Mujibur Rahman, straining ties with India to abandoning Joy Bangla, a slogan that symbolised the Bangladeshi freedom struggle, Bangladesh is becoming East Pakistan all over again all because even as it got liberation from Pakistan it could liberate itself from Islamist ideology which was the very root cause of the Bengali genocide.
