Oct 9, 2007
The continuing rape of Bangladesh
Video: War of Bangladesh, Video Montage. Via YouTube.
[Mashuqur Rahman, USA.]
In September Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad delivered a speech at Columbia University amidst much protest. The protests stemmed from his views on the Holocaust. Under questioning Ahmedinejad conceded that the Holocaust had indeed happened, but he was calling for further “research” to “approach the topic from different perspectives.” In doing so, Ahmedinejad was engaging in the modern form of Holocaust Denial. Ahmedinejad’s “different perspectives” were on display last year when he called for a conference on the Holocaust. At the time, his spokesman declared, “I have visited the Nazi camps in Eastern Europe. I think it is exaggerated.”
Modern Holocaust Denial has three key elements. The Deniers argue that the Nazis did not kill five to six million Jews; that the Nazis did not have a systematic policy of killing Jews; and, that the genocide was not carried out in extermination camps. Ahmedinejad and others call for further “research” to investigate one or more of these key elements. Their goal is to diminish the genocide by, first, questioning its extent and then by arguing that whatever killings took place were part of the normal savagery of war and not as a result of any systematic campaign by the Nazis. Holocaust Denial is anti-Semitism in the cloak of “scholarship.” Over a half century after perhaps the most well-documented act of genocide in the history of mankind, Holocaust Deniers still persist in trying to diminish its horrors.
Holocaust Denial is an example of the phenomenon of genocide denial that crops up to challenge almost every accepted case of genocide. The genocide committed by the Pakistan army during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 is no exception. Because of the scale of the atrocities in 1971 against a civilian population of 70 million people it has proved impossible for genocide deniers to claim that the atrocities did not occur. Instead, they have focused on two tactics used to try to deny the Holocaust: that the scale of the genocide was not that great, and that the Pakistan army had no systematic policy of genocide.
Most estimates of the 1971 genocide put the death toll between 300,000 and 3 million Bangladeshis dead, with between 200,000 to 400,000 women raped. R.J Rummel, in his book Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, puts the death toll at around 1.5 million. According to Gendercide Watch:
The number of dead in Bangladesh in 1971 was almost certainly well into seven figures. It was one of the worst genocides of the World War II era, outstripping Rwanda (800,000 killed) and probably surpassing even Indonesia (1 million to 1.5 million killed in 1965-66).
Susan Brownmiller, in her book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, puts the number of women raped by the Pakistan military and their local collaborators, the Razakars, between 200,000 and 400,000. She writes:
Rape in Bangladesh had hardly been restricted to beauty. Girls of eight and grandmothers of seventy-five had been sexually assaulted … Pakistani soldiers had not only violated Bengali women on the spot; they abducted tens of hundreds and held them by force in their military barracks for nightly use.
On March 25, 1971 the Pakistan army unleashed a systematic campaign of genocide on the civilian population of then East Pakistan. Nine months later a defeated Pakistan army left in its wake one of the most concentrated acts of genocide in the twentieth century.
After the Bangladesh Liberation War the government of Pakistan produced a report on the actions of the Pakistani army during 1971 known as the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report. While the report acknowledged that the Pakistani army had indeed committed atrocities in Bangladesh, it downplayed the extent of the atrocities and denied that there was any systematic policy of genocide:
31. In the circumstances that prevailed in East Pakistan from the 1st of March to the 16th of December 1971, it was hardly possible to obtain an accurate estimate of the toll of death and destruction caused by the Awami League militants and later by the Pakistan Army. It must also be remembered that even after the military action of the 25th of march 1971, Indian infiltrators and members of the Mukti Bahini sponsored by the Awami League continued to indulge in killings, rape and arson during their raids on peaceful villages in East Pakistan, not only in order to cause panic and disruption and carry out their plans of subversion, but also to punish those East Pakistanis who were not willing to go along with them. In any estimate of the extent of atrocities alleged to have been committed on the East Pakistani people, the death and destruction caused by the Awami League militants throughout this period and the atrocities committed by them on their own brothers and sisters must, therefore, be always be kept in view.
32. According to the Bangladesh authorities, the Pakistan Army was responsible for killing three million Bengalis and raping 200,000 East Pakistani women. It does not need any elaborate argument to see that these figures are obviously highly exaggerated. So much damage could not have been caused by the entire strength of the Pakistan Army then stationed in East Pakistan even if it had nothing else to do. In fact, however, the army was constantly engaged in fighting the Mukti Bahini, the Indian infiltrators, and later the Indian army. It has also the task of running the civil administration, maintaining communications and feeding 70 million people of East Pakistan. It is, therefore, clear that the figures mentioned by the Dacca authorities are altogether fantastic and fanciful.
33. Different figures were mentioned by different persons in authority but the latest statement supplied to us by the GHQ shows approximately 26,000 persons killed during the action by the Pakistan Army. This figure is based on situation reports submitted from time to time by the Eastern Command to the General Headquarters. It is possible that even these figures may contain an element of exaggeration as the lower formations may have magnified their own achievements in quelling the rebellion. However, in the absence of any other reliable data, the Commission is of the view that the latest figure supplied by the GHQ should be accepted. An important consideration which has influenced us in accepting this figure as reasonably correct is the fact that the reports were sent from East Pakistan to GHQ at a time when the Army Officers in East Pakistan could have had no notion whatsoever of any accountability in this behalf.
[Emphasis added.]
The Report’s estimate of 26,000 dead stands in stark contrast to every other study of the death toll, which put the death toll between 300,000 to 3 million. The Report was an attempt by the Pakistani government and army to dictate the narrative before the true extent of the genocide became evident to the world. The Pakistani Report has nonetheless stood as the document of last resort for most 1971 genocide deniers.
[Sarmila Bose.]
Following up on her 2005 paper denying the extent of the 1971 genocide published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Sarmila Bose has now published a paper denying the extent of the rapes of Bangladeshi women by the Pakistan army and the Razakars. In her paper entitled “Losing the Victims: Problems of Using Women as Weapons in Recounting the Bangladesh War” she states in the introduction:
That rape occurred in East Pakistan in 1971 has never been in any doubt. The question is what was the true extent of rape, who were the victims and who the perpetrators and was there any systematic policy of rape by any party, as opposed to opportunistic sexual crimes in times of war.
At the very beginning of her paper, she lays down the two tactics familiar to all genocide deniers: she questions the extent of the rape and questions whether there was any systematic policy of rape. Ms. Bose argues that claiming “hundreds of thousands” were raped trivializes “the possibly several thousand true rape victims” of the war. She however does not offer a good explanation as to how she reached the “several thousand” number other than saying that so many rapes would not be possible by the size of the Pakistani army in 1971. She also, unsurprisingly, quotes the passage from the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report that I cited above to support her assertion that so many rapes could not have occurred.
To try to bolster her argument that the Pakistani forces in Bangladesh could not have raped so many women, she claims:
The number of West Pakistani armed forces personnel in East Pakistan was about 20,000 at the beginning of the conflict, rising to 34,000 by December. Another 11,000 men — civil police and non-combat personnel — also held arms.
…
For an army of 34,000 to rape on this scale in eight or nine months (while fighting insurgency, guerrilla war and an invasion by India), each would-be perpetrator would have had to commit rape at an incredible rate.
[A Pakistan stamp depicting the 90,000 PoWs in Indian camps. This stamp was issued with the political aim of raising the POW issue at a global level in securing their release.]
The actual number of Pakistani forces at the end of the war, and taken PoW by the Indians, was 90,368, including over 54,000 army and 22,000 paramilitary forces. It is not unreasonable to conclude that a force of 90,000 could rape between 200,000 to 400,000 women in the space of nine months. Even if only 10% of the force raped only one woman each in nine months, the number of rapes are well over “several thousand” claimed by Ms. Bose. Since Ms. Bose does the math in her paper, I will do the macabre calculation for the total force here. To rape 200,000 Bangladeshi women a Pakistani force of 90,000 would have to rape 2 to 3 women each in nine months. Not only is this scale of atrocity possible by an army engaged in a systematic campaign of genocide, it also has parallels in other modern conflicts (for example, the rape of between 250,000 to 500,000 women in Rwanda within 100 days).
Ms. Bose also paints a picture of the Pakistani military as a disciplined force that spared women and children. She writes:
During my field research on several incidents in East Pakistan during 1971, Bangladeshi participants and eyewitnesses described battles, raids, massacres and executions, but told me that women were not harmed by the army in these events except by chance such as in crossfire. The pattern that emerged from these incidents was that the Pakistan army targeted adult males while sparing women and children.
[Blood Telegram.]
However, her “field research” is contradicted by all available evidence. From the early days of the war, women and girls were targeted for rape and killed. On March 30, 1971 the American Consul General in Dhaka, Archer Blood, sent a telegram to the State Department recounting the Pakistani atrocities in Dhaka. In it he wrote:
Major atrocity recounted to him took place at [R]okeya Girls
[...] posted at E-Bangladesh] [...]
[...] posted at E-Bangladesh and [...]
Excellent analysis… I wish you guys are also fair and analytical like this when you report on political news.
I have been reading your pieces for a while now, and I think they are brilliant. Thank you for such incisive and analytical writing. You should consider putting them together in print form, in a book.
I dug little bit about Sarmila Bose and it is surprising to know that she is the niece of Netaji Shuvash Chandra Bose. I think this is an insult to his great legacy. Thanks Mash for the post.
I would like to say few words for Ms. Sharmila through E-Bangladesh:
1. Ms. Bose, I think you are very lucky that you were not here in Bangladesh during 1971.
2. Ms. Bose, you should ask yourself and your morality before writing such things against humanity.
3. History cannot be changed by someone’s effort. It has its own path. The world knows what crime was committed by Pakistan army in 1971. The brutality of Pakistan army was so excessive that you could find the proof at the records of any new agencies of any where. Not only that even Pakistani human rights workers admit the crimes committed by the Pakistan army. I think Ms. Bose can ask them why the Pakistani human rights workers did so.
4. Ms. Bose could also go to the Indian army officers and diplomats of that time to ask about the real scenario of Bangladesh. Please ask any of the persons from the Indian army who were in the battle field.
5. If any one says that what Pakistan army did in 1971 was a crime against humanity, then what term can you use for Ms. Sharmila’s writings?
6. Ms. Bose, the sacrifice, the lives of the people we lost in 1971 gave birth to our country. Bangladesh fought against one of the most equipped armed forces of the world and won victory. We are born to fight against any brutality or immorality. Please turn your eyes to the actual history.
E-Bangladesh, thank you for posting the article of Mr. Mashuqur Rahman.
Mr. Mashuqur Rahman, no words are enough to thank you and again it is people like you who make us proud.
Why did this issue come up in the first place after so many years? Pakistanis and their local collaborators are war criminals. Our history is well documented and the facts are established truth. I don’t care what Bose does or who she is. Bengalis from both sides of a fenced border have a twisted mind and excel in the bad habits of “poroninda, porocharcha and porosrikatorota.” I am sure a sinister circle including the Pakistan army is behind her financing the disinformation cyber-campaign. Ask her to mind her own business. Indian intelligence agencies should see if she is a paid ISI agent trying to smear the joint Indo-Bangla war to liberate Bangladesh in 1971.
Gendercide addressed this barbaric atrocity of Pakistan Army and Bangladehsi Rajjakar’s, very well:
http://www.gendercide.org/case_bangladesh.html
I am very sad and angry that rajjakrs became ministers in our country.
Sadeek and all, thank you for reading this post and for your support of our heroines of 1971. Those who have lived through the time or studied the genocide committed by the Pakistan army in Bangladesh are not easily susceptible to forays into genocide denial. However, the Bangladesh genocide, though written about and studied at great length in South Asia, is not that well known in the West.
So in the West is where 1971 genocide denial can do the most damage by trying to create a revisionist history. It appears that papers like the one by Sarmila Bose are aimed at those that are not familiar with the genocide. The best way to counter these attempts is to make sure the facts of the genocide are distributed widely.
It is vitally important for Bangladeshis to preserve the history of our struggle for independence. To fail to do so would be a dishonor to the memory of those who died and to those survivors who were tormented by the Pakistani army and the Razakars.
Beyond all our political back and forth, how we preserve our past will define who we are in the future.
Mash:
Another “excellent” writing. It’s sad to see people like Sarmila Bose trying to contradict the facts of our liberation war, especially the women victims. As another commenter mentioned, I also believe that the Indian Government should investigate this “shady” woman. Finally, the Bangladesh Government should lodge an official protest. If its so easy to jail our journalists and cave in to the demands of illiterate mollah’s, then why is it taking so long for them to protest this? Shame on Bose for vouching for the Pakistanis who carried out a genocide in Bangladesh. Mash, kudos for your response against Bose’s propaganda!
SB’s campaign can well be a personal stunt aimed at collecting some coins and she is undoubtedly successful if her plan was to attach her name with a controversy.
However, I smell something sinister as she describes how she interviewed Pakistani officers, fellows of Captain Ataullah, who fought in Bhurungamari in 1971.
As far as I read the picture, Pakistan army is not that much famous for allowing, cooperating with researchers working on war crimes committed by its members. Maybe till they are sure about a favorable outcome from the research.
Still, SB managed to track down these officers and interview them. That clearly establishes her extra-special ties with the Pakistani establishment that must have helped her with classified war-time logs and liaisons. Worth digging how she managed that level of access.
Also, as pointed out by a commenter, SB apparently did not see it fit to go and do some interviews with the Indians, for their version of the story.
As Mash mentioned, the H Rahman Commission report was clearly an early attempt to dictate the narrative. We have reasons to believe that that kind of covert/overt campaigns are still being engineered.
Now this was a good and informative read. The only thing I have to say concerning this whole topic , is what I’ve been telling to many others, “The biggest mistake after 1971 was the “mass-forgiveness” act, where we let go of everyone and anyone.”
And as for Sarmila Bose, it seems that she only read reports and books, and talked with officers of the Pakistan’e army that were stationed here during the war. How does she expect them to actually confess of what they truly did? What she should have counted on is the various honest eye-witness accounts of the people of Bangladesh who survived the war.
Anyways, thanks to Mash for this brilliant article.
Mrs. Bose is married to Alan Rosling, a British man. He is the Executive Director of Tata, one of India
Sharika:
Thanks for your info. It’s sheer corporate greed to rape Bangladesh’s economy even if it means bowing to notorious rapist war criminals like Nizami for greed-driven selfish interests! Tata should explore huge gas reserves in Indian Northeast or Burma to fuel its gas guzzling megalomaniac steel industries! Please keep your dirty environment-unfriendly sooty hands off Bangladesh! Pakistan, I am sure has nothing to do with it.
Sharika, thank you once again for helping me solve the jigsaw puzzle.
Thanks Mash bhai for re-collecting the issue. Thanks Sharika. For as long as we live, we must tell our children the history of our survival. If 90,000 were POWs, one can conjecture as to how many more were present in East Pakistan to do their dirty deeds.
A fantastic critique of a highly disturbing article.
It is astonishing (in a terrifyingly morbid way) to me that even within a time frame of living social memory, that some pseudo academics should attempt to re-create history in such a way! She is right about one thing, people do not readily wish to admit that they are victims of rape, be they Bengali or of any other cultural background, so why would she think so many people would choose to make it up? And the author is unfortunately correct, there is little knowledge of the “genocide” of Bangladesh during the liberation war, and article such as Bose’s are incredibly dangerous, I would urge the author to take his work to wider academic fields, they are much needed!
It is really a brilliant analysis. Thanks to the writer. History will remember Sharmila Bose, for her attempt to write a commissioned and distorted history.
Great analysis Mash… kudos to you. I came across the article by Ms. Bose a while ago… gave it a cursory glance and left it at that thinking “yet another one of those revisionists crap”! I still stand by that judgment — and you only solidified it. Thanks again.
Sharmila Bose is also the sister of the Indian scholar Sugata Bose who with his partner, the Pakistani scholar, Ayesha Jalal teaches at Tufts University in Boston. Both are well-known academics in the US circuit, but it will not be surprising if Sharmila Bose, who had bypassed Indian and Bangladeshi evidence, is fed into the Pakistani system via Ayesha Jalal (whose work recurrently covers Pakistani nationalism).
I find comparing the rape of Bangladesh with the Jewish “holocaust” insulting. The latter was indeed blown out of all proportion by vested quarters who reaped full harvest from it, and are still being compensated by both the winners and losers of the Second World War. Read the “Holocaust Industry” written by a Jewish historian of repute named Norman Finkelstein, whose mother was a survivor of a camp. Bangladesh never received any compensation from anybody , not even a “sorry” from Pakistan or its Israel-loving ally — the USA, who allot the highest foreign aid each year for a few million people in Israel. In fact, Finkelstein’s mother has said, “If so many Jews are being compensated, who did Hitler kill?” Think also of Chechnya, Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia, Thailand, Philippines and India, where Muslims have been/are being massacred. Think also of Sudan, where non-Muslims are being eliminated.
Thanks for this brilliant analysis. I am so proud of you. It’s unbelievable that this paper of Bose has actually been published. It is so clearly biased with regard to the evidence that is presented. The accounts are primarily of the Pakistani army. I mean come on… who in their right mind will admit to raping women? Moreover, it is highly insulting that she discredits the account of the victims just because they are illiterate. They may be speaking more of the truth being illiterate than Bose is with “all her education.” But people like this will always remain. Looking for ways to seek publicity because their work is not of a caliber to be appreciated without the added “push.” But Mash, as a literature major I truly appreciate your analysis and level headed critique. Keep up the good work.
I am an associate professor in the Institution of Business Administration, University of Dhaka, and am verily disturbed by the writing of Ms. Bose, because during the war of Liberation of Bangladesh, I was a student of class 5. I have a clear memory of what transpired at that time. Starting from the night of the 25th, we were residing in a house in Shahjahanpur, and witnessed the thousands and thousands of bullets being shot at the Rajarbag police line by the Pakistani army, and subsequently, during the various operations carried out by them, the only fear amongst adult men was to protect their daughters and wives from the atrocities committed by the Pakistan Army.
In our own household, during the long months of August and September, when four of my uncles were killed by the army, in our village home, everybody who initially fled to the village, returned to Dhaka, and were staying with us in our Shahjahanpur residence. Every time the Pakistani Army would retaliate after the Muktibahini’s blowing up of the railway tracks, adult male head of our families used to hide female cousins and sisters, and our whole neighbourhood would do the same, because they all shared the same fear of their female relatives being raped. The little boys and elder men stayed in the houses. Young men and women, were sent away in the dead of the night, to be hid.
Sharmila Bose, I ask you, without ever living through the horrors of the war of Liberation, what gives you the right or the privilege to deny them? Did you fight in the war? Were you present as it all happened? Did you experience the destruction and carnage? Millions today, who have lived through it, are alive to the tell the tale. Come interview us. We’ll give you the truth.
Clearly, Sarmila Bose’s paper is the product of some terribly shoddy research/research methodology. From what I’ve read I don’t think it would have been accepted even as an MA thesis by any self-respecting British university. It’s all the more surprising because her brother such a clever academic.
we want proper punishment of our war criminals wheather they are our relative or not.
my dear Bangladeshi brothers ;
the rape of 20000 women during the 1971 war is the biggest factually fictious figure that the present generation of bangladeshis have been made to believe upon….the sole purpose of this propaganda is to instill the hate for pakistan in the hearts of bangalis….something that indians and some influential hindus living in bangladesh have been putting their efforts on….
i dont deny that there were not any cases of rape …but the figure of 20000 is simply exagerated and has nothing to do with reality…..there is no doubt that there were mistakes and blunders done by west pakistanis when they mistreated their bengali brothers…and we really regret that we have geographically separated…..
i hope my comment is posted
who is Sharmila Bose? i know shje lives in the UK, is a west/bengali…. why is she riskinh her education and name in doing this.. anyone with 1/2 a brain can find the simplest evidence that will make the “Sharmila Bose” look dumb!
what is her gain?
Any animosity towards Pakistan is due to the decisions and actions of Pakistani leaders in 1971 and subsequent failure to acknowledge and account for the atrocities that were committed, including mass rape. Bangladesh is pyschologically scarred by the events of ‘71 - this research merely adds insult to injury.
Ahhh…Islam the religion of Peace(Trademarked ) strikes again….killings,beheadings,child-porn and slavery,….crimes ? Not at all folks,step right up and witness the glory that is Islam…we have perversions and sins for everyone under the sun…wanna fuck your own dirty hairy daughter? No problem,send us $59.99(all funds in US dollars) and we will arrange for a fatwa especially for you to allow this…..