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The War of Liberation

The Bangladesh Liberation War that lasted for roughly nine months, from 26 March until 16 December 1971...The war resulted in Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan...

Reasons for war

During the Partition of India, Pakistan, as a country, gained independence on 14 August 1947 following the end of British rule over South Asian countries...The division was made based on religion... Pakistan was created out of huge Muslim majority territories in the West and East, and India was created out of the vast Hindu majority regions in the centre...The Western zone was popularly (and for a period of time, also officially) called West Pakistan and the Eastern zone (modern-day Bangladesh) was called East Bengal and later, East Pakistan...The capital of Pakistan was established in Karachi in West Pakistan and then moved to Islamabad in 1958...

Economic exploitation

West Pakistan (consisting of four provinces: Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and North-West Frontier Province) dominated the divided country politically and received more money from the common budget than the more populous East...



Between 1948 and 1960, East Pakistan produced 70% of all of Pakistan's exports, while it only received 25% of import earnings...In 1948 (shortly after independence from Britain), East Pakistan had 11 textile mills while the West had 9...In 1971, the number of textile mills in the West had grown to 150 while that in the East had only gone up to 26...Furthermore, 2.6 billion dollars' (in 1971 exchange rates) worth of resources were transferred over time from East Pakistan to West Pakistan...It was widely felt in East Pakistan that much of the income generated by the east was diverted towards fighting wars in Kashmir...

Political differences

Although East Pakistan was the majority province in terms of population, political power remained firmly in the hands of West Pakistanis, specifically the Punjabis...Since a straightforward system of representation based on population would have concentrated political power in East Pakistan, the West Pakistani establishment came up with the scheme of "One Unit", where all of West Pakistan was considered one province...This was solely to counterbalance the East wing's votes... Ironically, after the East broke away to form Bangladesh, the Punjab insisted that politics in the rump West Pakistan now be decided on the basis of a straightforward vote, since Punjabis were more numerous than the other groups, such as Sindhis, Pathans, or Balochs.

After the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, political power began to be concentrated in the President of Pakistan, and eventually, the military... The nominal elected chief executive, the Prime Minister, was frequently sacked by the establishment, acting through the President...

East Pakistanis noticed that whenever one of them, such as Khawaja Nazimuddin, Muhammad Ali Bogra, or Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy were elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, they were swiftly deposed by the largely West Pakistani establishment...The military dictatorships of Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan, both West Pakistanis, only heightened such feelings...

Finally, when Sheikh Mujib's Awami League won a clear majority in the elections of 1970, the West Pakistan establishment refused to allow Mujib to form a government...This finally convinced the East that they would never get their rightful political rights in a joint Pakistan and that independence was the only way out...

Language controversy

   

Close ties existed between East Pakistan and West Bengal, one of the Indian states bordering Bangladesh, as both were composed mostly of Bengalis...West Pakistan viewed East Pakistani links with India unfavourably as relations between India and Pakistan had been very poor since independence...

In 1948, Mohammad Ali Jinnah declared in Dhaka (then usually spelt Dacca in English) that "Urdu, and only Urdu" would be the sole official language for all of Pakistan [3]...This proved highly controversial, since Urdu was a language that was only spoken in the West by Muhajir and in the East by Biharis...The majority groups in West Pakistan spoke Punjabi and Sindhi, while Bangla was spoken by the majority of East Pakistanis...The language controversy eventually reached a point where East Pakistan revolted...Several students and civilians lost their lives in a police crackdown on February 21, 1952...The day is revered in Bangladesh and in West Bengal as the Language Martyrs' Day...Later, in memory of the 1952 killings, UNESCO declared February 21 as the International Mother Language Day. The deaths led to bitter feelings among East Pakistanis, and they were a major factor in the push for independence...

21she February

The already tense situation was further aggravated by a tropical cyclone that struck East Pakistan in 1970....It was the most deadly and devastating cyclonic storm that caused the highest casualty in the history of Bangladesh the 1970 Bhola cyclone struck Bangladesh claiming nearly half a million lives.

Officially the death figure was put at 500,000 but it could be more...A total of 38,000 marine and 77,000 inland fishermen were affected by the cyclone...It was estimated that some 46,000 inland fishermen operating in the cyclone affected region lost their lives...More than 20,000 fishing boats were destroyed; the damage to property and crops was colossal...Over one million cattlehead were reported lost... More than 400,000 houses and 3,500 educational institutions were damaged...The maximum recorded wind speed of the 1970 cyclone was about 222 km/hr and the maximum storm surge height was about 10.6m and the cyclone occurred during high-tide...

The apathy of West Pakistan leadership and its failure in responding quickly was a further platform for the Awami League, that capitalised on this tragedy...The Pakistan Army failed to do relief work of any significance to alleviate the problem, which further antagonised the already estranged Bengali populace...

Political climax

The political prelude to the war included several factors...Due to the differences between the two states, a nascent separatist movement developed in East Pakistan...Any such movements were sharply limited, especially when martial law was in force between 1958 and 1962 (under General Ayub Khan) and between 1969 and 1972 (under General Yahya Khan)...These military rulers were of West Pakistani origin and continued to favour West Pakistan in terms of economic advantages...

Gen. Yahya's arrival in Dhaka in March, 1971

The situation reached a climax when in 1970 the Awami League, the largest East Pakistani political party, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a landslide victory in the national elections winning 160 of the 162 seats allotted for East Pakistan, and a majority of the 300 total seats in the National Assembly...This gave the Awami League the right to form a government...However, the leader of Pakistan People's Party, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, refused to allow Rahman to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan...Instead, he proposed a notion of two Prime Ministers...Bhutto also refused to accept Rahman's Six Points...On 3 March 1971, the two leaders of the two wings along with the President General Yahya Khan met in Dhaka to decide the fate of the country...Talks failed...Sheikh Mujibur Rahman called for a nation-wide strike...

On March 7, 1971, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman gave a speech at the Racecourse Ground (now called the Suhrawardy Udyan)...In this speech he mentioned a further four-point condition to consider the National Assembly Meeting on March 25:
1. The immediate lifting of martial law.
2. Immediate withdrawal of all military personnel to their barracks.
3. An inquiry into the loss of life.
4. Immediate transfer of power to the elected representative of the people before the assembly meeting March 25...He urged "his people" to turn every house into a fort of resistance...He closed his speech saying, "The struggle this time is for our freedom...The struggle this time is for our independence." This speech is considered the main event that inspired the nation to fight for their independence....

   
click here for the audio      

Military preparation in West Pakistan

General Tikka Khan was flown in to Dhaka to become Governor of East Bengal...East-Pakistani judges, including Justice Siddique, refused to swear him in...

MV Swat, a ship of the Pakistani Navy, carrying ammunition and soldiers, was harboured in Chittagong Port and the Bengali workers and sailors at the port refused to unload the ship...A unit of East Pakistan Rifles refused to obey commands to fire on Bengali demonstrators, beginning a mutiny of Bengali soldiers...

Between 10 and 13 March, Pakistan International Airlines cancelled all their international routes to urgently fly "Government Passengers" to Dhaka...These so-called "Government Passengers" were almost all Pakistani soldiers in civilian dress...

Violence of 25 March

On the night of 25 March, the Pakistani Army began a violent effort to suppress the Bengali opposition...Before this began, all foreign journalists were systematically deported from Bangladesh...Bengali members of military services were disarmed...The operation was called Operation Searchlight by the Pakistani Army and was carefully devised by several top army generals to "crush" Bengalis...
       

Although the violence focused on the provincial capital, Dhaka, the process of ethnic elimination was also carried out all around Bangladesh...Residential halls of University of Dhaka were particularly targeted...The only Hindu residential hall the Jagannath Hall was destroyed by the Pakistani armed forces, and an estimated 600 to 700 of its residents were murdered...The Pakistani army denies any cold blooded killings at the university, though the Hamood-ur-Rehman commission in Pakistan states that overwhelming force was used at the university...This fact and the massacre at Jagannath Hall and nearby student dormitories of Dhaka University are corroborated by a videotape secretly filmed by Prof. Nur Ullah of the East Pakistan Engineering University, whose residence was directly opposite the student dormitories...

Hindu areas all over Bangladesh suffered particularly heavy blows...By midnight, Dhaka was literally burning, especially the Hindu dominated eastern part of the city...Time magazine reported on August 2, 1971, "The Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead, have borne the brunt of the Muslim military hatred."

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was considered dangerous and, hence, arrested by the Pakistani Army...The Awami League was banned by General Yahya Khan...Other Awami League leaders were arrested as well, while a few fled Dhaka to avoid arrest..

On 26 March, the nation waged an armed struggle against the Pakistani occupation forces following the killings of the night of 25 March...The Pakistani forces arrested Sheikh Mujib, who, through a wireless message, had called upon the people to resist the occupation forces [source: The Daily Star, March 26, 2005]...Mujib was arrested on the night of March 25-26, 1971 at about 1:30 a.m. (per Radio Pakistan�s news on March 29, 1971) which means effectively on March 26, 1971...

       

On 26 March 1971, M A Hannan, an Awami League leader from Chittagong, is said to have made the first announcement of the declaration of independence over radio,

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman signed an official declaration that read:

Today Bangladesh is a sovereign and independent country. On Thursday night West Pakistani armed forces suddenly attacked the police barracks at Razarbagh and the EPR headquarters at Pilkhana in Dhaka. Many innocent and unarmed have been killed in Dhaka city and other places of Bangladesh. Violent clashes between EPR and Police on the one hand and the armed forces of Pakistan on the other, are going on. The Bengalis are fighting the enemy with great courage for an independent Bangladesh. May God aid us in our fight for freedom. Joy Bangla.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
25 March 1971

(Source: "The History of the Liberation Movement in Bangladesh" by J. S. Gupta)

A telegram reached some students in Chittagong...They realized the message could be broadcast from Agrabad Station of Radio Pakistan...The message was translated to Bangla by Dr Manjula Anwar... They failed to secure permission from higher authorities to broadcast the message...They crossed Kalurghat Bridge into an area controlled by East Bengal Regiment under Major Ziaur Rahman... Bengali soldiers guarded the station as engineers prepared for transmission...At 19:45 on 26 March 1971, Major Ziaur Rahman broadcast another announcement of the declaration of independence on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur which is as follows.

26 March 1971 is hence considered the official Independence Day and according to all Bangladeshi sources, the name Bangladesh was in effect henceforth. Certain sources, especially of Indian and Pakistani origin, continued to use the name "East Pakistan" until the following 16 December.

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