Prolonged war may benefit extremists
From Our Special Correspondent, NEW DELHI, July 8Dr. Mazharul Islam. Head of the Bengali Department and Vice-Chancellor-designate Rajshahi University, told a Press Conference here today that if the fight against the West Pakistani colonialists became a very prolonged one the leadership of the freedom movement might pass into the hands of the extremists.
Dr. Islam, who was in Bangladesh till June 10 and had himself witnessed the barbarities perpetrated by the West Pakistani troops in Dacca and several districts said a new type of leadership outside the pale of the Awami League might take over the movement or the Awami League leadership, which he described as “liberal democratic,” might become extremist.
He was grateful to India for the burden she had taken upon herself by giving shelter to seven million refugees from Bangladesh. He was grateful for the help in various ways India was rendering to the freedom movement.
The West Pakistan military junta started on the night of March 25 a planned genocide to extinguish the light of Bengali culture and civilisation in Bangladesh and turn the country into a colony in every respect-economic, cultural and political.
There was hardly a family in Bangladesh which had not suffered grievously from the barbarities perpetrated by the West Pakistani troops. Dr. Islam estimated that 30 million people in Bangladesh had been made refugees. Of them, seven million had fled to India. The others were roaming the countryside and spending their days in hiding in Bangladesh.
No one would ever be able to find out precisely how many hundred thousand people had been killed. Countless villages alongside the metalled roads, railway tracks and rivers had been burnt and razed to the ground. Beside killing there had been raping on a mass scale, thousands of young women had been sterilised and taken to military camps.
The Bengalis were more determined today than three months ago to carry on the fight to a finish. They knew they would have to make much more sacrifice to achieve their goal. Non-co-operation of the people with the Army administration was continuing and the civil administration had coming to a standstill.
If proof of this was needed, it was available in the fact that the Army had not more than a mere handful of people as stooges. Among the intellectuals the four people the Army had been able to put forward as supporters of the military regime were Dr. Sajjad Hosain, who was one of Dr. Islam’s colleagues in Rajshahi University, Mr. Nurual Islam, a High Court Judge, Dr. Mohar Ali and Dr. Kazi Din Mohammad, university teachrs. They had no character at all and had all their life tried to make personal gain from their role of subsertence to those who wielded power.
The possibility of a settlement on the basis of the Awami League’s six points was no longer there. The Bengalis would not lay down arms until they achieved full independence and drove the last West Pakistani troop out of Bangladesh.
The West Pakistanis had tried to set Bengali Muslims against Bengali Hindus. They had failed. An understanding had been built between the two great communities over two decades of struggle against the West Pakistani overlords or demoractic right of the Bengali irrespective of religion.
The movement for assertion of Bangladesh’s sovereign rights had long passed the stage of communalism. The Bangladesh Government had given a slogan assurance that what the freedom struggle was aiming it was a secular democratic country where the Hindu would be equal citizens with the Muslims.
Once the goal was achieved he had no doubt, the Hindus along with the Muslims, who had sought shelter in India, would go back to their motherland. Every refugee would be given back his property.
Dr. Islam countered the mischievous propaganda that the Bengalis had killed many non-Bengali Muslims in Bangladesh it before the troops went into action against the Bengalis. He said if this had happened the correspondents of foreign and West Pakistan newspapers would surely have highlighted it. No report of this kind had been published in any newspaper any where. Even the principal West Pakistani butcher, Gen. Yahya Khan, did not allege this in his broadcast of March 26.
What he said, had happened was that without a warning the troops embarked on their genocide mission in the darkess of night on March 25. There was a sharp reaction to this and fighting began. The freedom fighters had killed some both Bengali and non-Bengali, who betrayed the liberation movement and sided with the occupation troops.
Dr. Islam gave gruesome details of what he himself had seen during his stay of two and a half months in Bangladesh after the troops began their activities. He said he was a close friend of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and was with him till late in the night of March 25. The Sheikh, who had a premonition of what was coming, advised everybody who might he in danger to go into hiding. The Sheikh himself was arrested at about 2 a. m. on March 26.
He had himself seen a number of bodies riddled with bullets or burnt in the Dacca University Halls and professors residential quarters and in the New Market which had been set on fire and completely destroyed.
He had seen a number of villages in Pabna and several other district, which had been burnt and where hundreds of people, men, women and children had been killed.
The Mukti Fouj was carrying on a brave fight. Some areas, including the Tangail District, was fully in their hands, Mukti Fouj contingents were getting querilla training and more and more of them were going into battle in difierent parts of Bangladesh. Despite the untold atrocities committed by the West Pakistanis, the people or Bangladesh were full of confidence in their ability to carry on the bitter war to a victorious finish.
Reference: Hindustan Standard 9.7.1971