Historical Evidence — By Orya Maqbool JanMarch 6th, 2015 Opinion

The Bangladeshi witnesses appearing before the war crimes tribunal are revealing the true facts and telling how innocent Bengalis were befooled, deceived and led astray by those who were actually carrying out the massacre of people in East Pakistan

By Orya Maqbool Jan

Economics is a labyrinth whose sole objective is to befool the common people by entangling them in statistical intricacies. For instance, we are told that after adding the income of a billionaire and a hundred thousand impoverished people living in a country, we should divide the total income by a hundred thousand and one, in order to get the average income of the people living in that country. It is quite easy to hoodwink the common man with the help of such complex terms as global recession, inflation, deflation, supply and demand, etc. When this knowledge of economics is possessed by certain intellectuals, they use it as a deadly weapon in a ruthless and horrifying manner.

Pakistan is the only country in the world which came into existence in the name of Allah. But there are some so-called economic experts who leave no stone unturned in describing it as a failed state and the world’s worst country due to its poor economic performance. On such occasions, these (great) economic experts always quote the example of Bangladesh, which according to them, has become a progressive and prosperous country after breaking away from Pakistan, while Pakistan is sinking deeper and deeper into the quagmire of regression and degradation. While making such sarcastic remarks, they make a covert attempt to discredit the founding fathers of Pakistan who laid the foundation of this new state in the name of religion but failed to make it a developed country, whereas Bangladesh which was founded on the basis of Bengali nationalism, is a success story. Whenever I hear the statements of these “intellectuals”, my mind goes back to the year 1997, when a Bangladeshi driver in whose taxi I was traveling through the streets of Makkah, began to weep bitterly as soon as he came to know that I had come from Pakistan. At the end of his long woeful tale, he frankly remarked, “In 1971, we were not in a proper frame of mind, or to be more exact, our minds had been corrupted by others.”

Bengalis have been passing through turbulent times ever since they seceded from Pakistan. Previously, they had been living with dignity and honour in this country. Yet, whenever one tunes into any channel, one finds political analysts and economic experts vigorously attempting to prove that Bengalis were forced to break away from Pakistan because the people of West Pakistan had been systematically exploiting and subjugating them in the

name of religion

Similarly, I often recall my meeting with an illiterate Baloch chief in Chaghi. With reference to the above mentioned views of our “economic experts”, he had angrily remarked, “How can Bangladesh be more prosperous than Pakistan, when thousands of Bangladeshi cooks are working in the deserts of Balochistan for just three thousand rupees per month? Were so many

Bengali cooks working in this region and so many Bengali girls being smuggled and sold in this area before the creation of Bangladesh?”

Continuing his rhetorical outburst, he further said, “Now, the situation is that if a Pathan is unable to pay half a million rupees (the traditional amount of money paid by a Pathan to the family of the girl he wants to marry) he easily buys a Bengali girls by paying just Rs 20,000.”

“Did a similar situation prevail before the creation of Bangladesh?” he further asked and added, “If Bangladeshis have really become prosperous, why don’t they invite our poor Pakistanis to serve as cooks in their country?”

I feel myself utterly helpless whenever the above quoted questions of that Baloch chief flash across my mind. All I can say is that there are some people whose only mission of life is to defame Pakistan, without which they find it hard to have a peaceful sleep at night. I am at a loss to understand as to why these “illustrious” intellectuals and “eminent” economic experts are totally blind to those facts and figures which are quite sufficient to show the real face of Bangladesh to the whole world? Even after four and a half decades of its existence, Bangladesh is still listed as a country, from where millions of starving and poverty stricken people are migrating to other parts of the world. According to the 2001 census, the number of Bangladeshi migrants living in the Indian states of Bengal and Assam was 3,084,826. Quite interestingly, their presence in India was bitterly opposed by those whose own mother tongue was Bengali. In 1979, All Assam Students Union (AASU) orchestrated violent riots against them and in 1983, five thousand Bangladeshi migrants were butchered in the notorious Nellie Massacre. They as well as their killers were Bengali speakers and yet, they were killed only because they were Muslims. In 1985, the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed a peace accord with the insurgent groups which had been campaigning for the expulsion of Bangladeshi migrants from India. Nowadays, these Bangladeshi migrants are shifting to the Indian state of Kerala where they hope to get better wages. According to the Indian government and media, around 20 million Bangladeshis have so far illegally settled in India. Besides India, Burma and Nepal are two other countries where Bangladeshis like to go in the hope of a better life, only because the burden of poverty, hunger and starvation in their own country is simply unbearable for them. Have Pakistanis ever migrated to their neighbouring countries in such large numbers?

The true face of “prosperous” Bangladesh is evident from the statistics provided by various research organisations and committees. For instance, according to the third and fourth reports of the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 30 per cent of the women working as prostitutes in Calcutta are of Bangladeshi origin. Most of the Bangladeshi men living there as refugees are engaged in the smuggling of cows, oxen and other things from India to Bangladesh. So much is said about “prosperous” Bangladesh, without knowing or simply ignoring that each year, 15,000 Bangladeshi girls are sold in other countries of the world. A research organisation, ELSITLO reported that until 1998, 27,000 Bangladeshi girls had been smuggled out of the country to work in the cafes of Calcutta. According to a survey conducted by Ente Press, two hundred thousand Bangladeshi girls had been sold in different parts of the world till 1998. In 1997, the Reuters news agency reported that 200 Bangladeshi girls were being smuggled out of the country daily and only ten thousand Takas were paid to the mother of each girl. Most of these girls were about 13 years of age. According to a survey conducted by the

Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (BNWLA) there are about a million people around the world who, at some point of their life bought at least one Bangladeshi girl. Pakistan is also one of the countries where Bangladeshi girls are sold. Ninety-five per cent of the Bangladeshi girls working in Indian and Burmese coffee houses are regularly given steroids to make them look attractive to the customers. Women are not the only victims of this humiliation. Bangladeshi men are known all over the world for working as labourers at cheapest rates.

A UNHCR report released in 2012, revealed the fact that Bangladeshis living in Arab countries are willing to work even if their salary is half of what is paid to Indian and Pakistani citizens. The average income of a Bengali worker in the UK is 150 pounds. This average also includes the educated Bengalis, whose salaries are slightly higher. Bengalis have been passing through these turbulent times ever since they have seceded from Pakistan. Previously, they had been living with dignity and honour in Pakistan. Twenty million of them had never thought of migrating to India and 2 million of them had never felt the need for fleeing from their land to settle in Karachi. There is no mention of the smuggling of women from East Pakistan in any report published before 1971. Even then, whenever one tunes into any channel, one finds political analysts and economic experts vigorously attempting to prove that Bengalis were forced to break away from Pakistan because the people of West Pakistan had been systematically exploiting and subjugating them in the name of religion. This white lie was told and retold repeatedly till 1971 and even afterwards. But now, the Bangladeshi witnesses appearing before the war crimes tribunal are revealing the true facts and telling how innocent Bengalis were befooled, deceived and led astray by those who were actually carrying out the massacre of people in East Pakistan.

In his book “The Wastes of Time”, the ex-vice chancellor of Dacca and Rajshahi Universities Professor Dr. Syed Sajjad Husain has clearly narrated how the blood of innocent Bengalis was spilled and how their hearts were deliberately and cunningly filled with the feelings of hatred for their fellow countrymen. The honourable professor was not like our intellectuals and political commentators, who love to give their analysis while sipping bitter coffee and smoking costly cigarettes, sitting in the coffee houses of Lahore and Karachi. Instead, in his book, he has narrated the true story of poor, innocent, ordinary Bengalis who, in 1971, had no idea as to how cheaply their life, blood, dignity and honour were being sold in the name of freedom and nationalism. The book published in 1994 was written by Professor Dr. Sajjad Husain while he was imprisoned in Dacca Central Jail in 1973, for opposing Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. It is a collection of his memoirs relating to the dreadful events of 1971. In his preface to the book he writes, “If I can see this book in print before I die (I am now nearly 75) one of my wildest dreams will have been fulfilled. If history, a hundred years hence, proves my fears and apprehensions about my motherland to have been untrue, nobody will be happier in his grave than myself.”

The historical evidence presented by the author of this book has been before us as a vivid reality since its publication, but the problem is that the throat of our media is still soured by the intoxicating impact of the bitter coffee and its screen is still darkened by the toxic and prejudiced smoke of the cigarettes of our intellectuals.