An Old, Old Story
It was a wet and gloomy Saturday morning in Columbus, Ohio, but March
25 of 2017 had begun rather brightly for me. Rising at the crack of dawn, I had
watched Bangladesh defeat Sri Lanka convincingly in a one-day cricket match in
Colombo. Tamim Iqbal had scored a century and our bowlers had stifled the Sri
Lankan innings. It was a powerful and mature performance that I (and millions
of Bangladeshis) have come to expect from our cricketers in recent times. I was
happy.
With the wonderful feeling of weekend relaxation mixed with the
euphoria of a Bangladesh cricket victory, I watched the news on television. Reports
of White supremacist attacks on immigrant and especially Muslim communities
were on the rise in the United States (U.S.) during the early days of the Donald
Trump presidency. Although his campaign rhetoric and the subsequent election
victory are likely to have emboldened the anti-immigrant segments of the U.S. population,
I did not feel particularly concerned. Of course, there was the possibility of stray
attacks by an overzealous individual or by a small group, but I did not feel that
our lives were at-risk from the threat of organized large-scale attacks.
The possibility of being victims of targeted attacks, in fact, is a
novel theme for non-White immigrants in the U.S. I have lived here since the
late 1990s, staying in student housing, low-rent apartments, blue collar middle-income
areas, and in relatively affluent suburbs. While their overall characters differed
a lot, the diverse neighborhoods held one constant for me – I never felt the
threat of targeted attacks. My sense of safety was undisturbed even during the
immediate post-911 days.
Thinking along these lines – how immigrants from the Middle East and the
Indian subcontinent are exposed to greater risks in the U.S. these days – it suddenly
dawned on me that in 1971, millions of Bengalis in the erstwhile East Pakistan perhaps
were in a situation somewhat similar to ours. While Bengalis experienced street
violence, disrupted social lives, and a pervasive sense of uncertainty
regarding the fate of the country during the early months of 1971, I do not
believe that they considered indiscriminate killings of unarmed masses by the
Pakistan Army as a realistic possibility.
What were the last thoughts of the people who were killed at work, at
home, in bazars, schools, and fields? Did people feel like herds of
slaughter-bound animals when forced off public buses to form lines by the roadside?
How deep was the sense of inadequacy when their wives and daughters were
assaulted in plain sight? The degradation of human life was complete under the
ruthless operations orchestrated by the Pakistan government. From my vantage
point, almost half a century later and from a different country, what happened
on March 25, 1971 in East Pakistan, and continued over the following nine
months seems like an impossibility.
How many people do you think were
killed in 1971? It cannot be three million. It is impossible. Sheikh Mujib
confused the concept of a million – thought it was 100,000 (lakh). His mistake
has created this myth. The post-liberation first government should have taken a
count. It is their fault that we do not know the actual number of people who
died in 1971.
How many times have I heard these statements from Bangladeshi
expatriates in the U.S? The exact words may have varied in minor ways but the
inherent message has always been very consistent. Three million people cannot
have died in 1971. It is bound to be much lower. During my Dhaka days, I was
aware that some acquaintances and relatives shared similar sentiments. However,
the question was not a frequent topic of conversation in my social circles. As a
Bangladeshi expatriate in the United States, I have, however, come across the
question far too many times.
I used to feel rather awkward
facing the question. On the one hand, my gut reaction was to ask why some of us
were so intent in establishing that the Pakistani armed forces and their local
collaborators had not killed as many Bengalis. We were the victims and not the
perpetrators of a genocide. Why were we trying to present a less severe picture
of the massive crime committed against our people? On the other hand, I could
not provide effective counters to their assertions. I was aware that there had
never been a comprehensive census of the deaths, and three million was indeed a
very large number – a staggering 4.0% of the pre-independence population of 75
million. Consequently, while I disliked immensely their questions regarding the
validity of the commonly cited three-million count, I could not provide
reasonable counter arguments that were based firmly on reliable documentation.
Thankfully, I do not suffer anymore any awkwardness when faced with the
question. I am no longer bogged down by my thoughts on how accurate or realistic
the three-million count is as I have come to recognize what the question actually
represents. It has taken me a long time but now I am aware that the questioning
of the three-million death count has never been about establishing accurate
historical records. On the contrary, it has always been about playing down the
brutal treatment of Bengalis by the Pakistan authority, an attempt to establish
that the horrors of 1971 did not happen.
Why are those expatriate Bangladeshis – I’ll refer to them as deniers in
the rest of the piece – so intent on drawing a picture that sharply contrasts the
1971 experience of Bengalis in East Pakistan? I suspect that a majority of them
had been deeply affected by the breakup of Pakistan. They are likely to have
been strong believers in the original argument for Pakistan – that Muslims needed
a separate state to survive the competition from the more educated Hindus in
the aftermath of British withdrawal from an undivided India. I also believe
that they had identified themselves (and the rest of the Bengali Muslims) as an
integral component of the Muslim population in the sub-continent, and the breakup
of Pakistan, in their view, had seriously weakened the strength of the Muslims.
From this perspective, it was not the liberation of Bangladesh but the breakup
of Pakistan that hurt them more. However, while the above possibly explains
their anguish at the breakup of Pakistan, it does not tell us why they want to
show that the horrors of 1971 did not happen.
Are they interested in developing a stronger bond with Pakistan? Are
they looking forward to rejuvenating the Muslim-Bangla spirit, doing away with
the remnants of secularism that was once proposed as a pillar of our democracy?
I do not know the answers to these questions. However, it seems logical that any
attempts to strengthening of ties between Bangladesh and Pakistan or to
embracing only the religious (Muslim) aspect of the Bengali-Muslim identity
must resolve the issue regarding the 1971 genocide of Bengali Muslims by (Pakistani)
Muslims. How does one go about it? One can repent and ask for forgiveness.
Alternatively, one can just spread the rhetoric that no significant violence
against the civilian population ever took place in East Pakistan. The
expatriate Bangladeshi deniers are doing exactly that.
My conjectures on the motive of the deniers are essentially that – my conjectures.
Nevertheless, the conjectures are formed by my observations on the characteristics
and comments of the deniers. I have found a remarkable degree of similarity among
the deniers regarding their political views in general, and their opinions of Bangladesh
and Shiekh Mujibur Rahman, the father of the nation, in particular.
Although most of the deniers have had little expressed interest in U.S.
foreign or domestic policy issues (with some exceptions) prior to 2003, the
year President George W. Bush invaded Iraq, they have always held strongly
conservative views on societal questions. Interestingly, their mostly religious
(Islamic) stance on issues such as the same-sex marriage coincides almost
perfectly with the same of the right wing religious fringe of the Republican
Party. It is perhaps not surprising that most of the deniers had supported the
Republican Party purely on social orthodoxy, and an overture by George W. Bush
to the Muslims in the U.S. had prompted some of them to even campaign for him during
his 2000 presidential bid.
When it comes to Bangladesh politics, the deniers appear to be mostly
apolitical. They do not admit to supporting any of the two mainstream parties –
Bangladesh Awami League or the Bangladesh Nationalist Party – and also pointedly
refuse to be drawn into the common war of words that characterizes partisan Bangladesh
politics.
In spite of their stated neutral position regarding Bangladesh
politics, the deniers, however, have been vocal against the International Crimes Tribunal (Bangladesh).
In opposing the trials, they usually offer the following arguments. First and
foremost, they argue that we should forget our respective roles in 1971 and
move the country forward since this is not the time to create divisions among
ourselves based on what had allegedly happened almost half a century ago. They
maintain that the trial of war crimes is not a pressing issue for Bangladesh,
and the government should instead focus on more recent crimes. They also argue
that Bengali collaborators of the Pakistan Army did not do much wrong in 1971. Finally,
they question the trials themselves, characterizing them as an effort by the
Awami League government to shore up its support, and claim that significant procedural
shortcomings and a lack of transparency render the trials farcical.
The same group of people also show a marked disrespect to Bangladesh
and to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. They sometimes claim that there has not been any clear
gains from the independence of Bangladesh and we would have been better off
staying with Pakistan. Some of them also refer to the nine months between March
25 and December 16 in 1971 as the period of gondogol (loosely translates into chaos). Although there are instances of the use of
the term in Bangladesh right after independence, this colloquial expression has
disappeared from the vocabularies of the most of us. Finally, the deniers also
claim that Sheikh Mujib had never wanted an independent Bangladesh; rather, he
was interested in being the prime minister of Pakistan.
While I recognize that raising doubts about the three-million
death-count is an effective tool used by the deniers to discount the atrocities
committed by Pakistan, I do care about having accurate counts of the number of
victims in 1971. In my view, preserving the truth is important for academic
reasons but mostly because it works as a deterrent for future acts of
atrocities. Accordingly, we should try to obtain accurate counts of the number
of victims and back it with reliable documentation. An important point in this
connection, however, needs to be kept in mind. Once we do have the numbers,
will the questioning go away?
A quick consideration of the persistent questioning of the number of victims
of the holocaust, the largest case of genocide in recorded human history,
suggests not. Close to six million Jews died between 1939 and 1945, according
to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). USHMM states that no
one master list of the dead exists anywhere in the world; the numbers were
compiled from a wide array of sources including wartime reports generated by Nazi
authorities, and from postwar demographic studies on population loss during the
war. The
presence of detailed records backing the estimates, however, does not prevent neo-Nazis
in Europe and the U.S. from questioning the numbers; the former Iranian president
Mahamoud Ahmadinejad had even called
the holocaust a
hoax.
Suppose we overlook the potential non-favorable response of the deniers
for the moment, and focus on obtaining accurate counts of the dead in 1917.
Suppose we settle on a much smaller number. There have been alternative
estimates from studies that have relied on newspaper reports, anecdotal
evidence, or results from small-sample surveys; we could draw a range of alternative
estimates of between 50,000 & 500,000 from these studies. It should be
clear that all such estimates are open to questions. However, let us accept,
for the moment, one of them to be more accurate – say the 500,000 number. Now,
what does the reduction in the estimated number, from three million to only
half a million, accomplish? The 83.3% reduction in the estimated number of
deaths could be used to state that Pakistani forces did not kill 333,333
individuals per month on average, as implied by the three-million total death
count; rather, the correct average should be 55,556 per month. Alternatively, the
same reduction in the estimated numbers imply that the average number killed
per month in each of the 19 old districts of Bangladesh is not 17,544, as
implied by the three-million count, but only 2,924 if we follow the 500,000
count. One can clearly see the futility of the exercise. It is only a change in
numbers, not a change in reality.
While the words of deniers continue to insult the sacrifice of our
people, their rhetoric on the death-count is perhaps less powerful today,
especially among young men and women who were born after the end of military
rule in Bangladesh in 1991. However, I strongly believe that the rhetoric has
had a lasting and harmful impact on the generations born before them, particularly on those who
grew up between 1975 and 1990. Now in their 40s and 50s, these individuals had
lived in a vacuum during their formative years, knowing little of the history
of independence from Pakistan as successive Bangladesh governments had blacked
out the struggle for independence from key institutions including text books
and the media. Consequently, the idea that “three-million people did not die”
or “Pakistani atrocities did not happen” was easier to spread among them.
I sincerely hope that the deniers acknowledge that their anguish of
being on the wrong side of history in 1971 do not grant them the liberty to
belittle the sacrifice of Bengalis. I also hope that they understand that their
efforts to make light of Pakistani atrocities in 1971 mimic those of the apologists
of the Gujarat massacre in 2002, or of the Myanmar administration that is
currently trying to cleanse the country of its Rohingya population. I hope that we can
all accept that great injustice was done to the people of Bangladesh by the
Pakistan government. Just like injustice is currently being done to helpless
people in corners of Africa, Asia, and the Middle-East. As individuals, we do
not have the power to right these wrongs. However, we can at least be cognizant
of the crimes and not create artificial rhetoric for winning political points.
