Someone asked me about my memories of the 1971 Liberation War for the first time. Caught off guard, I hesitated to respond. Like many, I usually shy away from going into the complexities of the war beyond paying tribute to our leaders, soldiers, and the thousands of brave civilians who fought as part of the “mukti bahini” -- students, farmers, teachers, and countless others.
However, as I reflected on my own experience, I realized how personal yet underrepresented our war stories remain in global discourse. Even as a 10-year-old boy, my small act of defiance -- throwing a pebble at a passing enemy jeep -- was part of a broader, untold story of resistance and resilience.
Our problem is that we could never discuss the dispassionate story of our liberation. Most importantly, we could not offer an unbiased, properly scrutinized story of our liberation war to the rest of the world. Many during my audit days in Africa or Asia thought that the number of people killed in the war was seriously exaggerated. Many felt it was more of a war between the two superpowers -- America and Russia. Many more felt the creation of Bangladesh was nothing but the outcome of an age-old hatred between Pakistan and India. They strongly felt our country had become a playground for RAW and ISI.
I recently skimmed through three interesting books on Bangladesh’s independence: Dead Reckoning by Sarmila Bose, 1971 by Srinath Raghavan, and The Blood Telegram by Gary J Bass. I was also privy to two recent movies: Gunday in Hindi and Shongram, which British-Bangladeshi Munsur Ali made.
My friends didn’t like Sarmila Bose’s Dead Reckoning, and a few declined to give me a copy. They thought it failed to tell the true story of our liberation, that it leant towards the Pakistan occupying forces and, more importantly, favoured the Urdu-speaking Biharis in East Pakistan. The author instead thought the allegation of genocide and rape by the Pakistan army was seriously exaggerated; many historians ignored the atrocities against the Biharis in East Pakistan and considered the death toll of 3 million to be hollow and self-promoting.
Though I thought the book was not well-written and articulated, I agree with what Ian Jack said while writing: “A truth about Bangladesh’s war is that remarkably few scholars and historians have given it thorough independent scrutiny. Bangladeshis are prone to melodrama and self-pity.” While I could never prove to my English friend whether the death toll was three million or three lakhs, I emphasized with Sarmila Bose that “research [is] to be conducted by a credible team of international scholars in a systematic and verifiable manner.”
We could not offer an unbiased, properly scrutinized story of our liberation war to the rest of the world
It does not matter to me whether it was a political killing by the West Pakistan army or genocide. However, it is painful to see that our liberation war could not arrest the attention of international researchers as in the World Wars, Vietnam Wars, or even the Gulf War. Even people in the West don’t talk much about the 1971 killings nearly as much as they talk about Rwanda or other killings.
I quite liked the book 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh by Srinath Raghavan. The writer thought the 1971 war was a significant geopolitical event for India and Pakistan since its partition in 1947. The writer thought the war tilted the balance of power between India and Pakistan steeply in favour of India. He further believed the line of control in Kashmir, the nuclearization of Pakistan and India, the conflicts of Siachen glacier and Kargil, the insurgency in Kashmir, and the political travails of Bangladesh can all be traced back to the intense nine months in 1971.
Raghavan also contends that far from being a predestined event, the creation of Bangladesh was the product of conjuncture and contingency, choice and chance. He thought the breakup of Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh could be understood only in the broader context of the period: Decolonization, the Cold War, and incipient globalization. In a narrative populated by the likes of Nixon, Kissinger, Zou Enlai, Indira Gandhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, George Harrison, Tariq Ali, Ravi Shankar, and Bob Dylan, Raghavan vividly portrayed the prominent international cast that shaped the origin and outcome of the Bangladesh crisis.
In The Blood Telegram, we get to see Kissinger deliberately hiding the atrocities done by the Pakistan armed forces on the innocent Bangladeshis. The then US president, Nixon, had admired Yahya Khan and considered him a friend. While Kissinger may have privately not thought much of him, he saw in him a supremely useful instrument to pursue America’s geopolitical interests. The author correctly said: “The months of killings were sustained by schemes radiating from Washington.”
In the movie Gunday, apart from the touchy story of two kids, Bikram and Bala, torn from their families by the partition that created the nation of Bangladesh and unceremoniously dumped in Kolkata with few options, we also get to see the long-drawn Indian version of the liberation war. Most global stories about the war are about how the Indians perceived it. We could not do much about this.
The movie Shongram, by a Bangladesh-born British citizen, Munsur Ali, is a romantic drama set during the 1971 liberation struggle. A daring reporter in London (Asia Argento) interviews a Bangladeshi-Londoner named Karim (Anupam Kher) on his deathbed in 2013, who finally shared his account from four decades ago. While it nicely brought in the NBC news loops, Major Zia declaring independence on behalf of the great leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, what I liked most was the way the movie ended -- the editor throwing the Bangladesh genocide story into the bin as the story not yet marketable to the international community.
Unless Bangladesh’s significance grows on the global stage, its emergence's complete and accurate history may remain overshadowed by narratives that frame it as merely the result of an Indo-Pak conflict or a Cold War byproduct. The Liberation War's complexity, marked by its people's resilience and the unjust suffering they endured, deserves recognition beyond regional politics or international strategic games. It is a story of a nation's fight for dignity, identity, and survival. Until we present that story with objectivity and pride, it risks being lost amid more dominant global accounts. Only when Bangladesh’s narrative is understood as more than a political battleground will its rightful place in world history be secured.
Mamun Rashid is the founding managing partner of PwC Bangladesh & Chairman of Financial Excellence Ltd.