The most incredible, calculated thing since the Nazis in Poland
Try and guess the time and the place of this account:
OVER the rivers and down the highways and along countless jungle paths…an endless unorganized flow of refugees with a few tin kettles, cardboard boxes and ragged clothes piled on their heads, carrying their sick children and their old. They pad along barefooted, with the mud sucking at their heels in the wet parts. They are silent, except for a child whimpering now and then, but their faces tell the story. Many are sick and covered with sores. Others have cholera, and when they die by the roadside there is no one to bury them.
…when they can, (they) put a hot coal in the mouths of their dead or singe the body in lieu of cremation. The dogs, the vultures and the crows do the rest. As the refugees pass the rotting corpses, some put pieces of cloth over their noses.
The column…never ends, day or night. It has been four months since civil war broke out…and the refugees still pour in. No one can count them precisely, but officials (estimate) that they come at the rate of 50,000 a day. Last week the estimated total passed the 7,500,000 mark. Should widespread famine hit…as now seems likely…the number may double before the exodus ends.
Hundreds of thousands of these are still wandering about the countryside without food and shelter. Near the border, some have taken over schools to sleep in; others stay with villagers or sleep out in the fields and under the trees. Most are shepherded into refugee camps…housed in makeshift sheds of bamboo covered with thatched or plastic roofing.
Life has been made even more miserable for the refugees by the…rains, that have turned many camps into muddy lagoons. Reports Dr. Mathis Bromberger, a German physician “There were thousands of people standing out in the open here all night in the rain. Women with babies in their arms. They could not lie down because the water came up to their knees in places. There was not enough shelter, and in the morning there were always many sick and dying of pneumonia. We could not get our serious cholera cases to the hospital. And there was no one to take away the dead. They just lay around on the ground or in the water.”
…
Says one doctor: “The people are not even crying any more.”
Perhaps because what they flee from is even worse. Each has his own horror story of rape, murder or other atrocity…One couple tells how soldiers took their two grown sons outside the house, bayoneted them in the stomach and refused to allow anyone to go near the bleeding boys, who died hours later. Another woman says that when the soldiers came to her door, she hid her children in her bed; but seeing them beneath the blanket, the soldiers opened fire, killing two and wounding another. According to one report…50 refugees recently fled into a jute field near the…border when they heard a…army patrol approaching. “Suddenly a six-month-old child in its mother’s lap started crying,” said the report. “Failing to make the child silent and apprehending that the refugees might be attacked, the woman throttled the infant to death.”
…
The evidence of the bloodbath is all over…Whole sections of cities lie in ruins from shelling and aerial attacks….naked children and haggard women scavenge the rubble where their homes and shops once stood….a city of 40,000, now looks, as a World Bank team reported, “like the morning after a nuclear attack.”
…Estimates of the death toll in the army crackdown range from 200,000 all the way up to a million. The lower figure is more widely accepted, but the number may never be known. For one thing, countless corpses have been dumped in rivers, wells and mass graves…
Feel like reading more?
…
Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead, have borne the brunt of the Moslem military’s hatred. Even now, Moslem soldiers in East Pakistan will snatch away a man’s lungi (sarong) to see if he is circumcised, obligatory for Moslems; if he is not, it usually means death. Others are simply rounded up and shot. Commented one high U.S. official last week: “It is the most incredible, calculated thing since the days of the Nazis in Poland.”
From a TIME Magazine report dated August 1971. Read the full report here.
let bygones be bygones.
we should look ahead to a better and peaceful future.
rgds/sridhar
Comments of people like in #1 is the #1 reason of the plight of Hindus. Maybe when his lungi gets opened up someday in his own country, he will cry bapu mujhe bachao or ask the lungi opener to open up one more lungi of neighbour Hindu because bapu said one is not enough so ask for two and feel contended by making others feel like you.
Holy cows from heaven will fall as we look forward to better future or maybe pray with a new document on secularism… Like these days FTI document on secularism.
#2 is right. We should start thinking of protecting ourselves. Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists, Jains and all Non-muslims should unite. Another partition and it will be the end of Hindus and secularism in India. Then all this development and economic progress will be history.
It’s a three way contest by the way these days… The monolithic religion of barbarians still evolving mentally ie Christians and Muslims vs Native Faith of the nation. And we have seculars who advocate that practicing philosophy/ religion of barbarians is galaxy ahead than the faith of this nation.
The statement of VHP with slight modification stands true in this present world
The world is divided into Seculars or Christians and Mohhamedeans who view the natives with faith native to this nation as a fine piece of flesh to feast upon.
Shantanu, thanks for the article.
“If you choose to ignore history you will be condemned to repeat it” is often quoted saying. When it hits near Sridhar he may realize. This is a distressing piece that needs to be given wide publicity. Whole of India are being raped by monolithic barbarians slowly and steadily.
@Rohit: I find your use of “lungi” a bit offensive. After all we are one. It is time we shed our north-south or rather even state, language divide. We are one. They, the secular fanatics and their sponsors, want us to become divided on all the possible ways viz. north-south, language, state, area, caste and what not to weaken our resolve.
People like me too do not agree with the likes of Sridhar. What is after all past. When it starts ? Can we forget the very recent ones viz. denial of the minimum rights to hindu pilgrims at Amarnath during pilgrimage season ? If somebody hits him, the moment the action is over, it become bygone. Will he forget ? We learn history so as not to repeat the mistakes. After partition of our country, they got majority full rights in Pakistan and minority special rights in India. Hindus got decimated in Pakistan (Bangladesh too) and India provided all help to them to increase their folk from high birth rate, infiltration from their land of the pure to the impure land now love jihad. The new opium of the masses is not religion per se, but “Indian Secularism” slowly injected into the people from day one leading to a precipice and final doom.
Dear KVS Subramanian,
My statement in no way means what you are interpreting. My statement means who do not have sympathy for a fellow man tortured due to mistakes of idiots and fools of past are not worthy… They are worse than the guy who subjected the man to inhumane treatment. Please read into message… The person who was tortured and I are from totally different place. My beliefs are not founded, bounded by region/ geography/ religion/ language. My beliefs are my own and my friends are from all over India, encompassing all regions, religion and languages. I am from a place where people of all regions of India merge and it is a small place, not a big place like Mumbai or Delhi.
But still, sorry if I made you feel offended in any manner.
To all those who have responded to my comments, i would only request you to refer to my comment at # 5 there (my full name given there – sridhar krishna) to understand where i stand or any of my earlier postings .
https://satyameva-jayate.org/2009/09/24/explaining-afpak/
with due respects to all your comments i would still stand by what i said – let bygones be bygones.
and to repeat my earlier comment in the context of “Afpak” as a reply to Toon India’s comment that only “peaceful means can be taught only by peaceful means not the other way round” – Emperor ashoka had the largest army despite his “peaceful nature”.
I still stand by my earlier comment “we should look ahead to a better and peaceful future.” – achieve that by strengthening yourself.
and as a tambram born and having lived in DK land (tamilnadu) all my life i can understand what it is to be hated and discriminated. but i still do not want to develop hatred against my neighbour
with warm regards,
sridhar
“While the Hindu elaborates his argument, the Moslem sharpens his sword” – Winston Churchill
Sridhar, what you say makes sense only if the enemy shows civilized nature. 2000 years are proof enough for the true nature of these nendrathals.
i take the liberty of cutting and pasting an “Express editorial” on this subject. the link is http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=49844
the last lines “It is better to face up to history, as American democracy does, than sweep it under the carpet, which seems to be our preferred option. Alas!” are in direct contrast to what i have been saying – let bygones be bygones.
New Delhi, July 1: The abusive language used by President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger — the references to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as a ‘witch’ and a ‘bitch’ and to Indians in general as ‘bastards’ — on the eve of India’s liberation of Bangladesh do not come as a surprise for those familiar with that tragic presidency which had ended unceremoniously with the Watergate scandal. Nixon, drunk on power as well as alcohol, had nastier things to say about his political opponents as well as cabinet colleagues and close aides. India’s liberation of Bangladesh during December 1971, in the teeth of American opposition, looks even more satisfying today as we learn the discomfiture it caused Nixon and Kissinger.
The signing of the landmark Indo-US defence pact and the release of 1971 White House transcripts at about the same time highlight one of the great truisms of international relations. For states, there are no permanent friends or adversaries; they only have interests to pursue. India’s liberation of Bangladesh took place amidst a rejigging of Asian balance of power. Nixon and Kissinger were enlisting Communist China’s support in the containment of Soviet Russia. Pakistan was the conduit. As America, China, Pakistan ganged up, India moved into the Soviet orbit. Now as the US confronts a rapidly rising China and a failing Pakistan, New Delhi is a natural partner and the key to a stable balance of power in Asia. No one makes this argument better than Kissinger, the architect of the US tilt towards Pakistan in 1971 and the Sino-US entente.
Like Kissinger, India must move on. But the release of White House tapes should at least shame us into revising our archival policy that refuses to release any official documents for academic study or public use. The US this week has released on the internet the volume, ‘Documents on South Asia 1969-72’, and had— earlier this year — published ‘South Asia Crisis, 1971’, which deals solely with the period March-December 1971. India has released no papers of substance since the time of independence. It is better to face up to history, as American democracy does, than sweep it under the carpet, which seems to be our preferred option. Alas!
Dear Sridhar,
Nice to know your thought process which is learning lessons from history and not repeating the same mistakes. Your first comment, limited, sounds like a secular statement of seculars. My apologies for comment # 2 directed towards you. I hope we may share good exchange of ideas in future at this place.
Regards,
Dear All: Thanks for the comments…Sorry that I will not be able to respond before Monday…still travelling…
In the meantime, a somewhat related Tehelka article on the plight of Hindus in Pakistan:
Goodbye To The Hindu Ghettos by Nisha Susan
dear all,
a must read in this context.
i said – let bygones be bygones.
but i am still adding details basically because we should not limit ourselves to discussing about a hindu muslim riot / slaughter and who killed more. the issue has to be seen in the global geopolitical context with Nixon – Kissinger playing a major part in what happened in east pakistan.
the link is an archive of declassified NSA documents where the genocide is detailed especially by the US embassy in dhaka.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB79/
but then remember Indira gandhi intervened, despite the threatening presence of the seventh fleet in bay of bengal and did what she could within the short period of time available.
Important factors:
Indira gandhi faced humiliation at the hands of Lyndon B Johnson, who used India’s dependance on food import to devalue Indian Ruppee.
His hatred against India was because Indira Gandhi refused to support the Vietnam war.
Indira Gandhi ushered in the “green revolution” and the consequential improvement in indian agricultural output helped us get out US clutches under PL 480.
soon Nixon took over and was secretly parleying with peking. Yahya Khan was propped up by the chinese and Nixon was worried that supporting India would affect his position with the chinese.
it was under these circumstances that terror was unleashed in east pak. therefore the west (read US) was tilting towards pak. under these circumstances Indira did brilliantly to bring the situation under control.
the long range planning in building indian agriculture, the strengthening of the Indian army post the chinese loss and the swift and precise attack on east pak, the hoodwinking of Nixon are the lessons that i would like to take from this exercise.
Millions were killed, raped rendered homeless countryless. do you want to cry over it or strengthen (y)ourselves.
Which was why the Afpak post was needed. this post i felt would shift the focus on Hatred rather than the future.
Looking forward to a better and peaceful future.
with warm regards,
sridhar
– the c
> i felt would shift the focus on Hatred rather than the future.
This is not about Hatred. You are hasty in your assumption that Shantanu’s post and others who are being supportive of the post are focussing on the hatred aspect instead of it being yet another constant reminder to the sufferings we have endured over 2000 years and how we can(?) prepare ourselves to defend against this barbarism. Yes, this too has to be seen in a geo-political context considering that Islam and Christianity ( and/or systems that have evolved with roots in them ) are just political ideologies in the garb of religion!
Just yesterday I sent this post to one of my co-workers and you know what, he commented exactly like you did and further added that he is “not an anti-muslim”. I was dumbstruck! Here I am sending a link about sufferings of Hindus at Islamic Terrorists showing how “anti-Hindu” they were/are and he shuts his eyes, pretends nothing and worse implies that I am anti-muslim. It seems like most Hindus don’t have the courage even to face the Truth let alone act upon it. These are the sundry seculars.
Bygones can be bygones if and ONLY if such a thought process begins to sprout in the minds of these barbarians. I don’t see that happening. Every day stories all across India and surroundings are ample evidence to the contrary. Like Rohit said, I agree with rest of your thought process, though you were first comment didn’t really capture it.
@ VoP
To be frank, on reading the post my immediate reaction was a sick feeling. which was why i immediately wrote the first comment in a terse and short manner.
again this immediate reaction was what prompted me to say we should focus on the future and not “on the past”. it was really meant for me more than anybody else reading my comments.
with warm regards,
sridhar
@ my earlier comment.
to clarify the sick feeling – it was against the perpetrators and not against the victims.
rgds/sridhar
dear all,
may be this reply is tangential to what santanu had in his mind when he posted it.
but i would chance posting it. for similar reasons i would state the story that i have to say before i raise the questions (bear with me!):
I would not know how many of you have heard the name “Neerja Mishra”. She was a 23 year old chief flight purser in the Pan Am flight 73 that took off from Bombay on the 5th of september 1986. as it was taking in passengers in karachi, its first stop, 4 armed got in and hijacked the flight. Neerja Mishra warned the flight crew who got out of the cockpit and ran away. Trapped without a crew, the hijackers shot a few people and ran away in the choas created. Neerja was one of them.
She was an Indian Passport holder, so the US govt did not care about her. We as a notion also forgot her. Try Googling Neerja Mishra you will not find her. add the words “Hijack” you will get all of 6 links.
one of the links – the US Department of Justice sentence on the hijackers
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/dc/Victim_Witness_Assistance/files/sentg_memo.pdf
on the other hand try Googling “Kalpana Chawla”. See the difference for yourself.
i feel we are carried away by the western and the indian main stream media and either support them or oppose them. we do not have an agenda of our own.
This blogsite has developed a critical mass and is poised at the point where shantanu should focus on taking off from here.
I will also spell out why i said this in the context of the “East Pakistan” post.(I u’stand shantanu is tied up temporarily but still he is the only person who could do this)
Hindus and other minorities (Ahmediyas, Christians) are persecuted in Pakistan and Bangladesh, without any major protest against them.
shantanu could have posted this to highlight that.
this is the reason i compared “Neerja Mishra” and “Kalpana Chawla”. Neerja Mishra fell to the bullet of a terrorist in pakistan when US wanted pakistan support to fight russia in afgan.
A rhetoric question.
The link i have provided in comment 14 above provides documents from the National Security Archive of the US government. they clearly show that Nixon and Kissinger turned a blind eye to Yahya Khan’s Genocide in East Pak. So they are equally culpable. Would Teesta and Angana Chatterji take it up and bring them to justice like they are doing in the case of Modi.
rgds/sridhar
*** COMMENT DELETED ***
*** NOTE by Shantanu ***
Rohit: This comment was off-topic. I have deleted it. As I have requested of others elsewhere, pl. don’t use this blog to simply post random comments/thoughts. That does not help the discussion at all.
There is usually a post for most things you want to say or a discuss. I hop you can make an effort to find the relevant thread and post your comment there.
A short clip of ex-PM the Late Indira Gandhi answering a question on BBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PihzQ-SGus8
Excerpts from The genocide we and the world forgot by Vivek Gumaste:
When we can raise your voice for 2,000 Muslims killed in Gujarat, we must cry from the rooftops for 2.4 million Hindus killed in 1971 or the 250,000 Kashmiri Pandits forced out of their homes in Kashmir.
…Public memory is short and fleeting. Events register momentarily like a blip on a radar and are then consigned to some dark corner of our cerebral galaxy. The brain needs to be bombarded with repetitive stimuli or jolted by a single moral turpitude of seismic proportions to evoke a strong and sustained response. In the absence of such reinforcement, a thought fades away from ones mind and that is the unfortunate tragedy of the Bangladesh genocide.
To ascertain the etiology of this amnesia or selective attention deficit we need to delve deeper into the details of this gory chapter of South Asia. In a massive military operation, code named Operation Searchlight aimed at crushing Bengali aspirations of autonomy, the Pakistan army in March of 1971 unleashed a deadly reign of terror that killed about 3 million Bangladeshis and forced another 10 million to seek refuge across the border in India.
Estimates of the actual numbers vary from a ridiculous low 26,000 put out by the Pakistan government (Hamood-ur-Rahman Commission) to a high of 3 million circulating in the international media.
…The official position from Bangladesh concurs with the figure of 3 million.
R J Rummel in his book, Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (ch.8) concludes: “Consolidating both ranges, I give a final estimate of Pakistan’s democide to be 300,000 to 3,000,000, or a prudent 1,500,000.” Even this figure of 1.5 million places this massacre high up in the list of notable world genocides. While the number killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (in excess of 2 million) may top the Bangladesh genocide, it was carried out over a period of 4 years in comparison to the nine-month deadly rampage of the Pakistan army: a chilling testimony to the awesome brutality of this massacre.
Who bore the brunt of this genocide? Was it the Bengali Muslims? Were the Bengali Hindus selectively targeted? Or did both communities suffer equally? It is important to know the actual distribution of the casualties for therein may lie the clue to the big unanswered question: Why were the guilty not brought to book?
The killings were not random acts of response to a mass uprising but a meticulously crafted strategy of selective victimisation as Rummel indicates in his book: “In East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) [General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and his top generals] also planned to murder its Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They also planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India…”
A report in the Sunday Times, London (June 13, 1971) corroborates the existence of such a diabolical blueprint: “The government’s policy for East Bengal was spelled out to me in the Eastern Command headquarters at Dacca. It has three elements: 1. The Bengalis have proved themselves unreliable and must be ruled by West Pakistanis; 2. The Bengalis will have to be re-educated along proper Islamic lines. The — Islamisation of the masses — this is the official jargon — is intended to eliminate secessionist tendencies and provide a strong religious bond with West Pakistan; 3. When the Hindus have been eliminated by death and fight, their property will be used as a golden carrot to win over the under privileged Muslim middle-class. This will provide the base for erecting administrative and political structures in the future.”
In a report submitted to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (November 1, 1971) Senator Edward Kennedy further confirms this persecution of Hindus: “…Hardest hit have been members of the Hindu community who have been robbed of their lands and shops, systematically slaughtered, and in some places, painted with yellow patches marked ‘H’. All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad.”
An article in Time magazine dated August 2, 1971 titled Pakistan: The Ravaging of Golden Bengal categorically concluded: “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.”
…
In the senate judiciary committee report, Kennedy indicates that 80 percent of the refugees were Hindu, that is 8 of the 10 million; a figure in line with the Time magazine report that suggests that three-fourths of the refugees were Hindu.
The percentage figures follow the same pattern when we look at the people killed. Shrinandan Vyas in an article in The Hindu titled Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan uses population statistics from the Bangladesh ministry of planning, bureau of statistics to extrapolate the number of Hindus killed by the Pakistan army: a mind-numbing figure of 2.4 million equivalent to 80 percent of the overall total of 3 million emerges.
While this is not an attempt to underplay or trivialise the sacrifices of Bangladeshis as a whole (Muslim intellectuals were also killed in large numbers), it cannot be denied that the Hindu community of Bangladesh accounted for an astronomically disproportionate share of the dead and paid a price that was more than its due.
A crime like genocide usually involves established institutions like governments or nations. For the criminals to be brought to book one needs a dedicated champion like the legendary Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal or a driven community who share a commonality with the victims and will not let the perpetrators to rest. The Hindu community has neither.
Logically it would fall upon the Bangladesh government to relentlessly pursue the executors of this horrific massacre. After some half-hearted attempts in the immediate post -1971 period, the Bangladesh government has relegated this issue to a back burner. Why they have done so is intriguing?
…Could India with its famed free and secular media have played a key role? Yes it certainly could have. And should have. But did not.
in my opinion, the key is funding. without adequate funding Hindu resergence will not happen. we need to get the Hindu leadership to start acting together and get united. We need to promote the excellent work being done by the RSS. We need to open schools and hospitals in rural India. We need to start working and defending our turf. We need to take out our fingers and get going…else we should be prepared to live as secondry citizens in our own country.
I like in Kolkata and am witness to the conversion of our locality to a mini bangla desh…the area is suddenly full of bangladeshis…who I am sure will get the national id card and vote for the trinimul congress and the lot….. God help us,.
Courtesy my friend, Sanjay:
This is not the best made documentary, but it at least gives you a realistic perspective on the attitude of the West.
8 million refugees had crossed over into India – and India was paying $1M/day (in those days) out of her own pocket to feed and shelter them.
Indira Gandhi’s cries for help fell on deaf ears.
Worth a look
Placing this link here for the record:
Blood In The Water By SALIL TRIPATHI, 1 November 2014