Commemorating the 51st Anniversary of the Bengali Genocide
Today, on December 16, we commemorate the 51st anniversary of the end of the Bangladesh Liberation War and the sacrifices of the people of East Pakistan, who fought for a Bengali homeland and a right to exist. Hindus for Human Rights owes it to the people of Bengal to tell their stories from 1971. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our Bangladeshi partners to ensure that these truths are protected.
In 1947, India was violently divided into India and Pakistan with two bloody scars running through Punjab and Bengal. In Pakistan, comprising western and eastern halves, religious and ethnic nationalism shaped the country's political identity. The political establishment in West Pakistan insisted that the country should become an Urdu-speaking republic with a strong military. However, in the more populous East Pakistan, Bengalis insisted on preserving their linguistic and cultural identity through the Bengali Language Movement. In 1970, Pakistan held its first elections, in which Sheikh Mujibir Rahman and his Bengali nationalist party, the Awami League, won a majority of seats. When the election’s outcome became apparent, Pakistan's military dictator, General Yahya Khan, refused to relinquish political power, not just to the Awami League, but even to the civilian political parties of West Pakistan. Instead, the Armed Forces of Pakistan, under the direction of General Khan, launched a genocidal campaign, named Operation Searchlight, on March 25, 1971 with the express purpose of crushing the Bengali nationalist movement. According to the Bangladesh government, this operation led to the deaths of 3 million people.
In collaboration with anti-nationalist forces, including the East Pakistan Wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan and the al-Badr militia, the Pakistan military prepared lists of targets, including students, public intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, and Bengali Hindus. These groups were seen as agitators, or the backbone of the Bengali Language Movement and, later, of the Bengali nationalist movement.
On the first night of Operation Searchlight, the Armed Forces of Pakistan slaughtered more than 200 students and 10 teachers at Dhaka University. A key component of the genocide included similar massacres at universities throughout East Pakistan. One list of intellectuals was directly connected to the mass torture and murder of more than 200 public figures in the Rayer Bazaar Masscre on December 14, 1971. This episode is now remembered as Martyred Intellectuals Day.
Hindus were also specifically targeted by the Pakistan Military. As Senator Ted Kennedy wrote in a Senate report on November 1, 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.” United States General Consul Archer Blood warned of the specific targeting of Hindus in his repeated telegrams to Secretary Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon. Those warnings fell on deaf and racist ears. Instead, Nixon and Kissinger recalled Blood from his post.
However, West Pakistan’s genocide was fueled by a fundamental racism against the Bengalis of East Pakistan. During the Pakistan government’s Hamoodur Rahman Commission’s evaluation of the aftermath of 1971, leaders of Pakistan’s military admitted, “There was a general feeling of hatred against Bengalis amongst the soldiers and officers including Generals.” From the very beginning of Pakistan’s creation, Bengalis were never treated as equals, and even Pakistan’s founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, pushed for the denial and erasure of the Bengali language from East Pakistan.
Through the horrors of 1971, Bangladesh finally won its hard-earned liberation, and Bengalis in both West and East Bengal united in a cultural identity that transcended faith and nationality. The residents of East Pakistan - from the Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, and Adivasi communities - put aside their differences and threw off the yoke of a genocidal military dictatorship.
The unity among Bengalis in India and Bangladesh also helped inform Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's support for the Liberation of Bangladesh. The people of West Bengal and Northeast India provided East Pakistan's 10 million refugees a safe place to hide from the war's violence.
We are horrified, then, to see Hindu nationalists today weaponize the pain of the Bengali genocide for their own ends. Many groups have focused specifically on the pain that Bengali Hindus have faced at the expense of other Bengali groups who were also targeted in 1971. They portray the Bengali genocide as a genocide against Hindus rather than a genocide against Bengalis, and imply that Bangladeshi Muslims must have done the killing. And they do all of this without the consent or input of Bengali Hindus. The implications have dangerous real world effects for all the groups whose stories these Hindu nationalists are trying to co-opt.
First, this narrative attempts to divide Bengalis in West Bengal along religious lines. West Bengal, unlike many other states in India, has long resisted the electoral rise of Hindu nationalism, and the mainstream politics of the state are rooted in Bengali identity. And all the while, the national Hindu identity that Hindutva forwards – masculine, hierarchical, vegetarian, and Hindi-speaking – is antithetical to the features of many Bengali Hindu identities – feminine, inclusive, non-vegetarian, and non-Hindi-speaking. Religious nationalism is hard to defend among a community that knows too well the high price people must pay for these projects to succeed.
Second, the Indian government, which has refused to welcome Rohingya refugees into India, also uses its vilification of Bangladeshi Muslism to justify this act. Instead of providing refuge to those currently fleeing genocide, the Indian government insists that these refugees are actually illegal immigrants, and many of them from Bangladesh.
Finally, and most alarmingly, this narrative allows the Indian government to scapegoat Muslims who fled East Pakistan after a genocide. Indian Home Minister Amit Shah has called Bangladeshi Muslims an infestation, and the Indian government has made no secret of its xenophobia towards these refugees. When the Indian parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act and when the state of Assam passed its National Registry of Citizens, they wanted to “weed out” the Bangladeshi Muslims. Any Indian Muslims who would become stateless are, according to these Hindu nationalists, actually Bangladeshi. The Indian government wants to use people who fled a genocide to justify its marginalization of the world’s third largest Muslim community.
Hindus for Human Rights has a duty of care to our Bengali community members, our Bangladeshi partners, and the people of Bengal, on both sides of the India-Bangladesh border, whose families were directly affected by the horrors of 1971. We stand resolutely against any attempt to deny the genocide of Bengalis or any attempt to obfuscate and weaponize these stories for ideological gain.
