- Bangladesh's 1971 origin stems from a denied election and military crackdown by Pakistan
- Operation Searchlight in March 1971 targeted Dhaka University and Hindu neighborhoods
- The 1970 election victory of Awami League in East Pakistan triggered military repression
As Bangladesh prepares to vote on February 12, the elections have inevitably drawn the nation's focus to its origins. Bangladesh was born out of a denied election, a military crackdown, and one of the gravest mass atrocities of the twentieth century.
On the night of March 25, 1971, Dhaka changed forever. Pakistani troops moved into the city under what was called Operation Searchlight. Students and professors at Dhaka University were lined up and shot. Political activists were hunted. Hindu neighbourhoods were targeted. Something that began as a political crisis ended in mass violence that spread from the capital into towns and villages across East Pakistan.
How The Bangladesh Liberation War Started
The conflict started months earlier, with an election. In Pakistan's first general elections in 1970, the Awami League, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won an outright majority driven almost entirely by votes from East Pakistan.
Instead of transferring power, the military government in West Pakistan delayed the assembly, imposed martial law, and arrested Mujib. Civil disobedience followed and the army responded with force.
‘Genocide' In Bangladesh
Much of what the world knows about those early months come from an article published far from South Asia. On June 13, 1971, The Sunday Times in London ran a report titled “Genocide”. Its opening scene followed a young Bengali man, Abdul Bari, trembling as Pakistani soldiers prepared to shoot him. The journalist was Anthony Mascarenhas, a Pakistani reporter who had been taken on a guided military tour meant to show the army's “success” against Bengali rebels.
Mascarenhas, though, saw something else. He witnessed villages burned, civilians executed, and officers discussing daily body counts in mess halls. He later wrote of “kill and burn missions”. Unable to publish in Pakistan under military censorship, he fled to London, helped his family escape in secrecy, and went public.
The article shocked international audiences and eventually led to India's military intervention.
By December 1971, Pakistan and India were at war. Within weeks, Pakistani forces surrendered. Bangladesh became an independent country. The independence came after nine months of violence that left scars still unaccounted for.
How Many Died In 1971 Bangladesh War
How many people died remains disputed. Independent researchers estimate between three to five lakh deaths. Bangladesh maintains the figure is three million, according to a written statement by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2022.
What is less contested is the scale of displacement and trauma. Around a crore people fled to India. At least two lakh women were sexually assaulted, according to Bangladeshi and international accounts. Intellectuals, writers, doctors, journalists, were targeted in the final days of the war. Rape was used deliberately, with women and girls kidnapped and abused in military-run camps.
American diplomats in Dhaka sent urgent cables warning Washington of mass killings and moral failure. Those warnings were ignored. Cold War alliances prevailed. Pakistan remained a key US ally and a conduit to China while India's alignment with the Soviet Union further complicated global responses.
The Guinness World Records lists the 1971 Bangladesh mass killings in one of the top five genocides of the 20th century.
