You can read my previous articles on the 1971 War, here.
Introducing Operation Searchlight and the Bangladesh Genocide:
Over the past year, I have paid great attention – on this website – to the 1971 “South Asian Crisis”, with articles covering the military performances of the Indian and Pakistani Armed Forces, engagements between the two or comparing the strategies of the two at various junctures in the war. But, in truth, the India-Pakistan War was a very small part of the events that unfolded in East Pakistan in 1971, though it was certainly the most sensational. Between March 25th, 1971 – the start of Pakistan’s Operation Searchlight – and November 20th of the same year – the Battle of Garibpur; India’s first assault on Pakistani forces – a brutal and vicious war had been raging between the West Pakistani government and East Pakistani separatists.
For background on why the civil war started, please consult this article; an in-depth look at the causes for the war. The current article will focus only on introducing Operation Searchlight and will not provide a background for the war.
A consequence of this civil war, in which the Bengali and Bihari population of East Pakistan slaughtered each other, was a seemingly inevitable genocide. With the commencement of Operation Searchlight on the 25th of March, 1971, West Pakistani forces would conduct one of the worst genocides in the latter half of the 20th Century. Maj. Gen. Khadim Hussain Raja, was the General Officer Commanding of the Pakistani 14th Infantry Division right up until the start of war with India and he documents his division’s actions, as well as the actions of East Pakistan Command in general, with great detail in his book A Stranger in My Own Country. In it, by copying and reproducing directly the orders that East Pakistan Command had received from Pakistan Army HQ in Rawalpindi, he reveals the true scale of Operation Searchlight and the following genocide. The following are the objectives that East Pakistan Command had been set:[1]
- AL [Awami League] action and reactions to be treated as rebellion and those who support them or defy ML [Martial Law] action be dealt with as hostile elements
- Maximum number of political and student leaders and extremists amongst teaching staffs, cultural organizations to be arrested. In the initial phase rop political leaders and top student leaders must be arrested
- Operation must achieve a hundred percent success in Dacca. For that Dacca University will have to be occupied and searched
- EP [East Pakistani] troops to be neutralized [I.E the East Pakistani troops serving in the Pakistan Army, specifically the East Pakistan Rifles, East Bengal Rifles and the East Pakistan Police Reserves][2]
In truth, as Maj. Gen. Raja points out, Operation Searchlight was a refined version of a fairly crude plan made in January/February of the same year, Operation Blitz.[3] Despite the spate of negotiations between the West Pakistani government and Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League, it is now clear – with the weight of historical evidence – that the West Pakistani government had never intended for the diplomatic spat to have a peaceful solution. As Pakistan improved the plans for Operation Blitz, a new operation was born, Operation Searchlight. And, when on the 25th of March, Operation Searchlight was sprung into action, East Pakistan would be thrown into the clutches of genocide.
It is not the intent of this article to tell a story of that genocide, in which as many as 3 million Bengali civilians were killed or to produce an analysis of what the genocide meant for the people or nation of Bangladesh. Instead, this article seeks to give you – the reader – a tiny glimpse into the terror of that genocide. By consulting Lt. Col. Quazi Sajjad Ali Zahir’s multiple accounts of the event in Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo’s In Quest of Freedom: The War of 1971, Personal Accounts by Soldiers from India and Bangladesh and Yasmin Saikia’s interviews with survivors of the genocide, I will attempt to show why 1971 and the violence that besotted the Indian subcontinent in that year should not be forgotten.
A Small Note About Lt. Col. Quazi Sajjad Ali Zahir
Lt. Col. Zahir was an East Pakistani Bengali officer in the Pakistan Army’s 12 Field Artillery Regiment. As Operation Searchlight began to unfold, he quickly made his way to India where he became an officer in the Mukti Bahini, specifically Zulu Force, a battalion size unit of the Mukti Bahini.
The Murder of Major Abu Yusuf Mushtaq Ahmed, CO 9th Battalion, East Bengal Regiment[4]
When, in November of 1970, the decision was taken by the Pakistan Army to raise a new battalion of the East Bengal Regiment, Major Abu Yusuf Mushtaq Ahmed – often simply called Major Mushtaq – was selected as the new battalion’s commanding officer. Major Mushtaq was an exemplary Company Commander in the 4th Battalion of the same regiment and the decision to have him lead the new battalion therefore was simple for the Pakistan Army. However, there was another reason. He had been noticed by Pakistani officers as a “good soldier” and a man loyal to Pakistan; having served as the Adjutant of an Army College and a senior training officer at Pakistan’s Infantry School in Quetta. Not only was he a good officer, an exemplary company commander and a professional soldier, it appeared that he was a loyal Bengali.
His loyalty, however, would be put to the test with the launch of Operation Searchlight. Between March 25th and April 10th, he was allowed to visit his family only twice. He – and his battalion – was stripped of his personal weapon and was never again issued one. He was ordered to, for that duration, reside at the Officer’s Mess of Pakistan’s 13th Battalion, Frontier Force Regiment; a West Pakistani regiment. These orders, though they must have been humiliating, he followed without pause or question. The straw that broke the camel’s back, however, came on the 10th of April during a dinner party thrown by Lt. Gen. A. A. K. Niazi.
As Lt. Col. Zahir recounts:
“To the surprise of several officers, Niazi suddenly became abusive and started talking in Urdu. … [he was saying] he would change the map of this bastard nation and they [the Bengalis] should know who he is. His words were meant for the Bengali people and unfortunately in that gathering, a few Bengali officers were present. Niazi continued his outburst, saying that he would force his [Bengali] soldiers to lose their feminine attitude. Major Mushtaq, who was present at the meeting, could not tolerate Niazi’s harsh and uncalled for language. Fixing his eyes on the General, he said that such profanities against his people were unacceptable and demanded that he take back his words. There was a stunned silence in the room and an angry Niazi stormed out.”
On the morning of April 11th, Major Mushtaq was found dead in his room. His family was told he had shot himself. In truth, according to eyewitness reports of those who saw the body being buried, his throat had been cut from ear to ear. According to Lt. Col. Zahir, Major Mushtaq was the first Bengali soldier killed during the genocide.
Jharna Chowdhury and the Desecration of the Gandhi Ashram[5]
The Gandhi Ashram at Noakhali in Bangladesh, was built after the 1946-47 communal and religious riots there, which Mahatama Gandhi played a large part in helping to resolve. The Gandhi Ashram was, and still is, involved with helping the poor in rural Bangladesh, as well as looking after orphaned children. The staff at the Ashram were largely Hindus, even after independence. In March of 1971, Jharna Chowdhury was a social welfare worker working at Chittagong Medical College, taking care of children. With the commencement of Operation Searchlight on the 25th and the actions of the Pakistan Army against East Bengal Regiment soldiers in Chittagong, she – along with all the children she was looking after – were sent to the Ashram in the hopes that they would be spared the ravages of war and genocide. Here I reproduce Jharna Chowdury’s story as recorded by Yasmin Saikia. Please note, this contains disturbing recollections of war crimes.
“We were all dedicated to the ashram. We made a camp outside Chittagong and started staying there. Many people joined our camp. We took care of them. They killed our Dhirendra Lal Chowdhury along with five other people. We became leaderless. There were about four hundred people staying there.
We were all Hindus in this camp. It was not easy to get food, particularly the staples, rice and dal [lentils], were very hard to find. Since all of us in the camp were Hindu and our diet was the same, we were able to make arrangements and shared our food. My secretary and I arranged for rice, tomato, dal, and drumsticks. We made the dal with drumsticks and served them with rice. Camp life was not at all easy as there was hardly any food to feed the people. We had only one set of clothes with us. We had to stay there with very little because we did not know when we had to move again. This camp that I am talking about was about thirty kilometres from Chittagong. The chairman of the village gave us some rice. We somehow managed to stay alive by collecting food from different sources. During this time of crisis we became one single group, there was no division among the people who stayed in the camp.
We had many old people, women, and children with us. The women had duties. I used to wake them up at 4 a.m. They went to different villages to look and beg for food. Whatever we could gather, rice, dal, pumpkin, and so on, we collected and combined together. Sometimes we had very little, and by evening our stomachs would be empty. We had so little that one meal was all we could manage on most days. The food that we cooked was distributed equally. Everybody got to eat something whenever we had food, but there was not much.
On May 20 the members of the ashram were all taken away. There were five people from the ashram [left]: four of them died, and one was carried away by a fox. Later, I heard that one of them had died of starvation, and that the army killed the rest of them. No one was willing to break this news to me at first. My older brother gave me the news. I couldn’t believe it. The time was around 3 p.m., and the children and I were very hungry. I was thinking what should I do? Should I eat or complete the last rituals for the dead? The children were very hungry so I arranged for some food. A person from Chittagong helped us. He had also heard the news of what had happened in the ashram and came to visit us in the camp. I told him that I did not have any money, so I could not feed the children. He gave me fifty rupees. In those days, fifty rupees was a huge amount of money. I bought some laddos and divided it among the children. Then I arranged for an earthen pot. I put some rice, dal, and salt in the pot and boiled them together for the evening meal. I gave a small portion of it to the eighteen children who were with me. I also had some older boys who were studying for their school final exams. I gave them a little extra food. Then I sent the boys to bury the dead bodies. I could not allow them to burn the bodies because it would be obvious that it was a Hindu funerary ceremony and that would have attracted a lot of attention. The army would kill us.”
By May 20th, Jharna was the only adult left with the group; every other adult had been killed. The camp of refugees had been reduced from 400 to just 19; most had been killed by the Pakistan Army, others had attempted to escape to India and others still attempted to hide out in the forests of Bangladesh. Jharna would later be joined by her old secretary, who had somehow managed to survive. They, and the group of children, found sanctuary in the home of a local village elder. Jharna and her secretary, disguising themselves at various points as Muslims by wearing burqas or as Christians by wearing nuns’ outfits, would make several trips to Chittagong where they would later find out that they were the only two surviving members of their respective families.
It was only through maintaining these ruses that Jharna and her secretary (she does not provide her name) were able to survive the war. By the end of May of that year, Jharna had managed to arrange the evacuations of all the children under her charge. In June, she and her brother (who she later learned was alive), managed to escape to India. She closes by saying:
“During 1971 the whole place was in chaos. I was, as you have heard, involved in the social welfare of destitute women and children. It was a horrible time; everyone was torturing, killing, looting, and destroying everyone else. They were grabbing each other’s things, entering their homes, destroying their women; it was like hell. Some of my acquaintances, women of my age group, were also raped. Some were even killed. So many women lost their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Most of them were very troubled, lonely, desperate, and I was worried what they would do. Now, however, life has changed for them. If you meet them now, they look happy; they have settled down. So much time has passed. People have healed their wounds. I have also stopped thinking about 1971. It makes me feel badly when I think about those days, but generally I never think about it. I am talking about it after nearly thirty years.”
[1] Maj. Gen. Khadim Hussain Raja, A Stranger in My Own Country: East Pakistan: 1969-1971 (Oxford University Press; 2022), pp. 71-72
[2] This was done in multiple ways; some units were disarmed and arrested, others had their officers replaced and the units placed on admin duty, while others faced execution
[3] Raja, Stranger, p. 30
[4] Lt. col. Quazi Sajjad Ali Zahir, “Niazi’s First Victim”, in Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo (ed.), In Quest of Freedom: The War of 1971, Personal Accounts by Soldiers From India and Bangadesh (CLAWS; 2016), pp. 31-35
[5] Yasmin Saikia, Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh (Duke University Press; 2011), pp. 178-184
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