Indian journo's first-hand account of B'desh liberation war


PTI | New Delhi | Updated: 03-12-2021 16:25 IST | Created: 03-12-2021 16:25 IST
Indian journo's first-hand account of B'desh liberation war
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Veteran journalist Manash Ghosh, who covered Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, has come out with a gripping account of his ground zero experience with his book containing many hitherto unknown facts about the epochal event.

''Bangladesh War: Report from Ground Zero'', being released in the golden victory year of the war, also mentions how the charismatic Sheikh Mujibur Rahman or Bangabandhu, impelled by the ruling military junta's exploitative and discriminatory policies towards the Bengali people in East Pakistan, inspired them to wage a liberation war with India's support and win freedom.

The book begins by giving a proper context in which the war of independence can be evaluated. The Bengalis of East Pakistan were thoroughly disillusioned with the political leadership of the western wing of the country stemming from the complete alienation of the Bengalis in the east from the non-Bengalis in the west.

The catastrophic cyclone that hit East Pakistan in November 1970 acted as a trigger for the already seething masses that had borne persecution, humiliation and neglect for too long from their western counterparts.

The resultant violent political upheaval led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the Awami League in East Pakistan ultimately resulted in the creation of the People's Republic of Bangladesh.

Ghosh was a cub reporter at that time. A fortuitous turn of events ensured that he covered the Bangladesh War of Independence from the very beginning till the end when the Pakistan military surrendered in Khulna on 17 December 1971.

The author provides eyewitness accounts from various battlefronts like Jessore, Chuadanga, Pabna, the Ganga (near the Sarda police academy in Rajshahi), Garibpur and Khulna.

India's crucial role in the war has been analysed in great detail, including how Indian generals like Shahbeg Singh and Sujan Singh Oban transformed thousands of unlettered Bengali youth into dreaded guerrilla fighters who struck terror in the hearts of the Pakistan military and inflicted massive damage on military installations in East Pakistan.

Ghosh says the exemplary role of the firebrand Jana Sangha MP Atal Bihari Vajpayee in supporting Mrs Indira Gandhi's Bangladesh policy in Parliament showed that ''political parties having both leftist and rightist views and inclinations were not only united but also stood firmly behind'' the prime minister on the Bangladesh issue.

He also describes how the famous concert for Bangladesh in the US was conceived.

In early July that year, sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar visited Calcutta when he participated in a concert to raise funds for Bangladesh.

It was during his stay in the city that he learnt that the Pakistan military had burnt down the ancestral house of his father, Shyamsundar Chowdhury, in Mymensingh in East Pakistan.

More than saddened, he was incensed with the information and wanted to lodge a global protest, by holding an international musical concert in which the world's iconic musical stars would participate, and focus on the ongoing genocide in East Pakistan, the land of his forefathers. He shared his plan with some of his close confidants in Calcutta and all of them supported his proposed venture.

He then broached the idea to Beatle George Harrison, who immediately grabbed his guru's idea and approached legendary singers like Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to be the active participants of the concert.

Thus New York's Madison Square garden with a seating capacity of 21,000 hosted the August 1, Bangladesh concert.

''The lyrics of Harrison's theme song 'Bangladesh' were so moving and its tune so gripping that they were on everybody's lips in New York and elsewhere in America in the following days and weeks,'' Ghosh writes.

''What international diplomacy could not achieve for Bangladesh for the last four months, one night's concert did. It familiarised the world with Bangladesh's agony in an international outreach to get the world to stand by the Bengalis,'' he writes in the book, published by Niyogi Books imprint Paper Missile.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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