By: Muhammed
Rafiquddin Choudhury (Rana Choudhury)
A short historical
Background of Bangladesh
The state of
Pakistan was born on August 14, 1947, with two detached parts, the East and
West Pakistan separated by 1100 miles. Parts of India were located between
those two parts of Pakistan. Eastern part was the most densely populated one
and the populations were ethnically known as Bangalee. Their language is called
Bangla (Bengali as termed in English). Western part of Pakistan was constituted
of four provinces; they were Sindh, Punjab, Southeastern Frontier and
Baluchistan. That Pakistan was created
after Mohammed Ali Zinnah’s Two Nation Theory, which divides the people of the
then Indian sub-continent into two nations 1. Muslim & 2. Hindu. Two Nation
theory was recognized by the British empire of that time, so they divided the
sub continent into two countries i.e., Pakistan for the Muslims and India for
the Hindus.
Besides same
religious belief, there were no reasons for the then East Pakistanis to be
within a same country with the then West Pakistanis. Life style, culture, food,
language, costumes, history and heritage, were completely different in the
people of the eastern and the western Pakistan. Besides that, during the 25
years of Pakistani history, it never developed to form a new Pakistani nation
in the world map. The concept of this Pakistani Muslim nationality was attacked
within a year after it’s birth in 1948, when Mohammed Ali Zinnah declared,
“Urdu would be the only state language of Pakistan”. The whole Bangalee nation
in the then East Pakistan woke up and protested against this declaration. The
people in the East Pakistan had to shed blood on February 21, 1957 to protect
their language, heritage, culture and identity. That is named the historical
‘language Movement’ and the background of ‘International Language Day’.
The “Pakistani” age
of the then 70,000,000 of the then East Pakistan was colonial age where
political right was a matter of dream, economic plundering was widespread,
autonomy was completely neglected and democracy was grounded. So, there were
many movements, where mass people spontaneously took part. At last a general
election was held in 1970. Awami League, under Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman secured majority seats in that election in both parts of Pakistan. But
Pakistani regime refused to hand over power to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Instead
of transferring power to Awami League, Pakistani Military Junta conspired to
crush the Bangalee nation in the east and launched the most barbarous campaign
against the east Pakistanis by killing, looting, raping innocent people and
driving them out of the country in the darkest night of 25th March
1971. That had led the Bangalee Nation to stand up for a fight against the
Pakistani Armed Forces that will later named as the Bangladeshi Liberation
War.
Part 1
In March 1971, I
was a B.A (Honors) student attending the University of Chittagong. In the month
of March, I was staying with one of my friends at the Agrabad Residential Area
of the City of Chittagong. At that time,
there were heavy tensions among the Bihari community and the Bengali and riots
started in different places of the city including the nearby areas of Agrabad. The Punjabi Police and Army took side with
the Bihari and started killing Bengalis.
The peace loving Bengalis of the then East Pakistan then took orders
from Bangabhandu Sheik Mujibur Rahman -- the father of the nation – to maintain
peace.
On March 6th,
my friend Mona, Kamrul & few others of my classmates and I started for
Dhaka to attend the historic public meeting ever held at the Race Course Field
at Ramna, Dhaka on the 7th of March. Bangabhandu Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman made the most enchanting announcement…” Ei barer shongram, muktir shongram, ei barer shongram, shadinotar
shangram. “ He ordered
all the Bangalis to fight against the Pakistanis with whatever weapons they
had. I realized that we had no choice
but to fight for our freedom. At that
time I was a member of the East Pakistan Chattro League. I had been asked by the Central Committee of
the Chattro League to return to my home sub-division – Moulvibazar—to organize
arms movement for our liberation. This
is to be mentioned here that in January 1971, I had qualified to be a Pakistan
Naval Cadet Officer. I was waiting to go
to the Naval Academy in Karachi, Pakistan.
On March 15th,
I with some of the other student leaders placed the flag of Bangladesh on top
of the Agrabad Radio Station Building, Chittagong. This caused a major threat
for me to stay in Agrabad as the Punjabis were going after me.
My father was a
Class 1 Government Officer of Cox’s Bazar subdivision at that time. I was not able to contact him in any way at
that time. The place I was at was very
unsafe as attack from the Biharis was highly expected at any moment. Almost all of the residents of that area had
escaped because of the fear of rioting.
Mona’s family and I were the only ones left.
On March 16th, Mona’s family and I headed for
Moulvibazar because we saw there was no hope of staying in
On the night of March 19th, I with the top-level
Moulvibazar student and youth Leaders, held a meeting in the classroom of the
On the night of the 20th March, Shopon Da and
some of the others were given the duty of making the bombs, and Shopon Da was
put in charge of that group. Our
pre-planned action to break into the Rifle Club was held on the 24th
March under my leadership. We recovered
15 Chinese .22 rifles with sufficient bullets.
We kept the arms and ammunition in a safe place at a nearby hill. Afterwards we returned to our homes.
On the 25th, the Pakistani President General
Yahya Khan made a speech. With his order
that night from all the cantonments the Pakistan Army started massive killing
in Dhaka and all parts of the then East Pakistan
The next morning of 26th March; we heard an
announcement that Moulvibazar will be under an unlimited period of curfew. The
Pakistani Army was expected to attack. They did attack and the whole
Moulvibazar Administration was then taken over by the Pakistani Army. The
S.D.O. and S.D.P.O of the Moulvibazar Subdivision at that time were West
Pakistanis. However, they were very much
peace loving and were liked by the Bangalees.
On that same day, the Muslim League Leader Inam Ullah, his relatives and
followers started destroying and taking over Hindu owned properties and
businesses.
My associates and I went in to hiding. On March 26th,
Major Ziaur Rahman made an announcement and urged to the public to fight along
with the Bengali Army, Police, EPR, Students and Public against the occupation
Pakistan Army. He made an official
declaration of war. My associates and I
heard it & we were highly inspired.
I heard two speeches by Ziaur Rahman and my associates heard them as
well. The first speech was made in
English. And he made the first
declaration of war as a Head of State.
Later he corrected his speech and said it in Bangla. That time he declared Bangabandhu Sheik
Mujibur Rahman as the Head of State, and on his behalf, declared the official
war. Two or three months later, I heard
from the members of the Awami League that in actuality, Bangbhandu Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman, had indeed declared a war on the night of March 25th,
through EPR wireless in Dhaka. However,
I hadn’t heard this myself.
The next day the curfew was withdrawn for a few hours. We went out to the town and saw leaders of
the Muslim League, and their relatives and followers running the businesses and
properties owned by the Hindus. We
learned that the then, MCA Azizur Rahman, Journalist Motiur Rahman Choudhury,
Awami League President B. Ghosh were arrested and severely tortured, especially
Motiur Rahman Choudhury (Editor, Daily Manab Jamin). The Hindus to save their
lives started to leave the town in the darkness of the night leaving behind
their land, property and memories.
The local leaders of the Awami League, after seeing the
worsening situation, held a meeting in a house in Ekatuna Union. They decided to gather up all the weapons
they had and carry out the order of Bangbhandu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and to go
and attack the Punjabi Army in Moulvibazar.
At the same time, our group was informed of the decision and agreed to
launch an ambush attack on the Pakistani Army.
We decided that action at midnight on the 28th at a bridge
near Sreemongal bus stand to ambush the Pakistani Army. In the meantime I was training my comrades on
how to use rifles. Because I was a
member of the University Officer Cadet Corps, I had learned how to use the
rifle. Every night I took my group to a nearby hill and started training
them. Because of the curfew we had to
be very careful.
On the morning of 27th March, when we received
our break again, we got out and saw that, the top local leader of Moulvibazar
Muslim League and few other Pakistani collaborators were arrested by the order
of the S.D.O. and S.D.P.O. They were
taken to local police station. We went to see them. After seeing this we
thought the country would soon get better.
However we were wrong. After we
returned, we saw Kanu Paul, a local leader was tied up behind a jeep almost
hanging from his neck. The Punjabis were
driving the jeep around town as a sign of threat. He was screaming and crying but no one could
help him. This made us really sick
mentally and wanted to launch the attack on that night. However we were unable to do that as we were
waiting for a central order from
On the morning of the 28th, a group of Bengali
under the leadership of local Awami League came to the northern shore of
As per our plan on the mid night of 28th March,
we came to the bridge near Sreemongal bus station to attack the Pakistani
Army. We were waiting for hours under
the bridge. We had rifles and hand-made
bombs, petrol bombs. Shaheed Abdul
Mukit, M.A. Muhaimin Saleh, Nasir bhai, Shopon Da, Azibur, Abdul Malik-brother
of Shaheed Mukit, Shaheed Abdus Shahid, Shaheed Kripesh Kar Ranu, Abdu Mumen,
Harunur Rashid Bhai were with me. While
we were waiting for the Pakistanis, they didn’t arrive. About 1,000 yards in front of us was the
Circuit House and the S.D.O’s Bungalow.
Past that was the Parzatan Rest House, the HQ of the Pakistanis. They were staying at the Tourist Rest
House. At about three in the morning, a
jeep arrived from behind us. We
recognized the jeep as S.D.P.O’s. We saw
the S.D.P.O and his family were in the jeep with some of their luggage. They went into the SDO’s bungalow and after a
few minutes along with two other Jeeps, they went towards the Pakistani Army
Campus. We waited until 4 AM. We had to leave before sunrise so as not to
be identified. We went towards the
nearest shelter in the Vocational Training Institute. On our way, we met some day laborers on their
way to work. They told us that the
Pakistani Army had left the town. We did not have any kind of transport at that
time. We went to search the house of SDO and found a Jeep there. My friend
Shaheed Abdul Mukit knew how to drive Jeep. We went to SDPO’s house to search
the house and found a Pistol. After that we went to Pakistani’s camp, a tourist
rest house and found eleven dead bodies. Of those some were women, who were
probably raped and killed. We find the unconscious body of Kanu Paul and rushed
him to the local hospital but the local Asst. Surgeon pronounced him dead.
Later we went to the local Police Station to collect
weapons, but there were no weapons left. Hundreds of 3§3 rifles were taken back
by the Punjabi armies and destroyed. We went up to Sherpur to look for the
Punjabis but found none.
(To be continued at Part 2)