Bangladesh celebrates 37th Victory Day Today

Bangladesh celebrates Independence Day on March 26, and the Bengali reliving the horrific Operation Reflector initiated by the Pakistan Army on 25 March 1971 in a desperate attempt to eradicate the Bengali nationalist movement. 

Abul Bahar relives the fateful night of 25 March 1971 with the following words: 

Suddenly, Dhaka was paralyzed. Everything was quiet. The country shook with the heavy tread of the forces of evil. The ground was soaked in red and fragrant flower hasnahana was dominated by the stench of blood. 

Today, bloggers are energetic about the approximately 3 million people were exterminated in 1971. Some prominent bloggers have met the Bangladeshi Genocide Archive Bangladesh to raise awareness among netizens of the magnitude of the atrocities committed against the Bengali population of the Pakistani army with the help of Razakars. A new website to be launched by bloggers is Bangladesh 1971, it expects to connect the current generation of Bangladeshis with the life and times of those who fought for independence, while simultaneously maintaining pressure on the national consciousness for the perpetrators accountable. 

Why is it necessary today to relive the fight for freedom? Perhaps to avoid the 'Hollywoodization of the liberation war' as he puts Rasel. Also, Shamim clarifies why after all these years, remains essential to bring war criminals to trial. He says she is a sense of retribution but that this 'accountability' is needed as a future deterrent. It is also a necessary step to ensure justice and as a closure for the victims and the families who survive. 

Rabab writes that this Independence Day not only inspiration but feel a sense of hurt and disappointment when she sees around corruption and the victory of the separatist forces, who dreams of a united economically strong Bangladesh fading into despair. The blogger Shobjanta seems to share these wounds. But the feeling fades when listening attentively to the national anthem "Amar Shonar Bangla, ami tomay bhalobashi" (my beautiful Bengal, I love you).

Victory day 2009

Bangladesh gained independence after 9 months of a long and bloody struggle. India also commemorates victory over Pakistan on the same day in 1971 on Vijay Diwas. 

On the 16th of December millions of people in Bangladesh and Bangladeshis around the world will celebrate Victory day. On this day in 1971, the Pakistani army surrendered to the Indo-Bangladeshi High Command in Dhaka, ending a 9 month war of independence. Pakistani General AAK Niazi surrendered officially to the Allied forces commander General Arora. 

I as a Muslim, born in Britain whose parents are from Bangladesh do not celebrate this day nor regard it as a day of victory. How can their be victory and celebration when one Muslim country is divided and separated into 2 parts? 

Nationalism divides Muslims and keeps us weak while unity and regulation of society based upon Islam unites and strengthens us. 

InshAllah Pakistan will be re-unified again soon and millions of us East Pakistani Muslims make dua and work for unity again based upon the teachings of Islam and nothing else. 

Below is a poem which I wrote to mark this sad anniversary which I hope will inshAllah be the last.

Bangladeshi Independence day today 1971

The War for Bangladeshi Independence, 1971

On March 25, the Pakistan Army launched a terror campaign calculated to intimidate the Bengalis into submission. Within hours a wholesale slaughter had commenced in Dhaka, with the heaviest attacks concentrated on the University of Dhaka and the Hindu area of the old town. Bangladeshis remember the date as a day of infamy and liberation. The Pakistan Army came with hit lists and systematically killed several hundred Bengalis. Mujib was captured and flown to West Pakistan for incarceration.

To conceal what they were doing, the Pakistan Army corralled the corps of foreign journalists at the International Hotel in Dhaka, seized their notes, and expelled them the next day. One reporter who escaped the censor net estimated that three battalions of troops--one armored, one artillery, and one infantry--had attacked the virtually defenseless city. Various informants, including missionaries and foreign journalists who clandestinely returned to East Pakistan during the war, estimated that by March 28 the loss of life reached 15,000. By the end of summer as many as 300,000 people were thought to have lost their lives. Anthony Mascarenhas in Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood estimates that during the entire nine-month liberation struggle more than 1 million Bengalis may have died at the hands of the Pakistan Army.

The West Pakistani press waged a vigorous but ultimately futile campaign to counteract newspaper and radio accounts of wholesale atrocities. One paper, the Morning News, even editorialized that the armed forces were saving East Pakistanis from eventual Hindu enslavement. The civil war was played down by the government-controlled press as a minor insurrection quickly being brought under control.

After the tragic events of March, India became vocal in its condemnation of Pakistan. An immense flood of East Pakistani refugees, between 8 and 10 million according to various estimates, fled across the border into the Indian state of West Bengal. In April an Indian parliamentary resolution demanded that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi supply aid to the rebels in East Pakistan. She complied but declined to recognize the provisional government of independent Bangladesh.

A propaganda war between Pakistan and India ensued in which Yahya threatened war against India if that country made an attempt to seize any part of Pakistan. Yahya also asserted that Pakistan could count on its American and Chinese friends. At the same time, Pakistan tried to ease the situation in the East Wing. Belatedly, it replaced Tikka, whose military tactics had caused such havoc and human loss of life, with the more restrained Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi. A moderate Bengali, Abdul Malik, was installed as the civilian governor of East Pakistan. These belated gestures of appeasement did not yield results or change world opinion.

On December 4, 1971, the Indian Army, far superior in numbers and equipment to that of Pakistan, executed a 3-pronged pincer movement on Dhaka launched from the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura, taking only 12 days to defeat the 90,000 Pakistani defenders. The Pakistan Army was weakened by having to operate so far away from its source of supply. The Indian Army, on the other hand, was aided by East Pakistan's Mukti Bahini (Liberation Force), the freedom fighters who managed to keep the Pakistan Army at bay in many areas