54 years ago, Dacca (now Dhaka) witnessed its darkest historical event at midnight of 25 March. In a surprise move, Pakistan military personnel carried out a brutal massacre on unarmed Bengali civilians of Dacca in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The attack launched on this fateful day was called (by Pakistan army) a ‘military operation’ to ‘restore order’ and ‘safeguard national integrity’ of Pakistan. In reality, it was a premediated attack to throttle the rising demands of economic and political autonomy of East Pakistan, which was reflected in the December 1970 National Assembly election mandate with Awami League of East Pakistan gaining a resounding victory. With Bengali nationalist sentiments at its peak, the election mandate was a clear call of East Pakistan’s aspiration to be free of exploitation and ostracization of ethnic Bengali population because of their distinct language and cultural identity that the West’s political and military elite perceived as ‘inferior’ and ‘un-Islamic’.
The 1970 election was Pakistan’s first democratic experience whose verdict made Awami League the country’s largest political party and the right to govern whole of Pakistan. The problem began from here. West Pakistan’s political and military elite refused to accept this mandate that will shift the country’s administrative and military power, so long concentrated in West Pakistan, to the Eastern province. Therefore, via deliberate delay of the commencement of National Assembly’s first meeting, military General Yahya Khan and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) hatched a conspiracy to deny Awami League of their democratic right to govern. The conspiracy was to give an impression among people of Pakistan that the country is undergoing a ‘political crisis’, a threat to ‘national integrity’ because of Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman pushing for Six-Point plan. Buying time on the pretext of political negotiations, General Yahya Khan, who favoured Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, secretly transferred soldiers to East Pakistan throughout March of 1971 after imposing a martial law and orchestrated a surprise fortnight-long military operation, what came to be known as Operation Searchlight.
The planning of this operation was drafted by Major General Khadim Hossain Raja and Major General Rao Farman Ali on 22 February 1971 in Dacca and finalised by General Tikka Khan of Pakistan’s eastern command on 20 March who was delegated the task of leading this operation. The scheme of operation divided East Pakistan into two zones—first zone comprising the city of Dacca and its suburbs, led by Brigadier Jahanzeb Arbab; the second zone covering the rest of East Pakistan under control of Major General Khadim. General Tikka Khan personally took the responsibility to supervise both these zones. Stationed at the martial law headquarters in Dacca, Tikka was assisted by Major General Rao and Major General Khadim. The plan was executed from Major Rao’s control room in the martial law headquarters, under whom was placed the 57 Brigade (32 Punjab, 18 Punjab, 12 Baluch, 13 Frontier Force, 31 Field Regiment, 13 Light Action Regiment and three Commando Company). Moreover, crews of 29 Cavalry and six tanks from the Rangpur Cantonment were deployed in Dacca. The main targets of the military operation were areas where Awami League maintained its core influence—Dhaka University area, Rajarbag Police Line and East Pakistan Rifles (EPR) headquarters in Pilkhana, slums adjacent to railway-lines, Old Dacca residential areas, Nawabpur (Hindu-dominated area), offices of Ittefaq and the People (periodicals) and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s residence.
Following Sheikh Mujib’s historic 07 March 1971 speech in Dacca that called upon Bengalis to observe civil disobedience against Islamabad’s one-sided decisions, General Yahya Khan banned the Awami League and ordered for Mujib’s arrest. Any channels of communications (both domestic and international) via television, radio, telephone, tele-printer services were decided to be disconnected during the operation, foreign journalists were expelled from East Pakistan (only three managed to hid themselves in Dacca) and a curfew was declared from 11 pm on 25 March. Instructions were laid out to soldiers on which houses to demolish or which household members to be killed, and were even given assurance of not being held accountable for anything they do in this operation.
Operation Searchlight was launched at the midnight of 25 March 1971. Although claimed to be a ‘military solution to political crisis’, Operation Searchlight in actuality, had much broader sinister objectives. It aimed to suppress, via brutal means, any trace of Bengali nationalistic sentiments and mass revolt and create an atmosphere of panic among ethnic Bengalis by means of military terror so that no one dares to demand for autonomy. Thus, following General Tikka Khan’s order of “Matti, Matti, Admi Nehi” (We want land only, not the people), Pakistan army launched a massive coordinated strike in Dacca that subsequently spread to almost all major cities of East Pakistan. The military operation soon took the nature of a genocide, earning Tikka Khan the name ‘Butcher of Bengal and Balochistan’.
The first assault was in Dhaka University area that was believed to be Awami League’s intellectual power-wing and the very life of Bengali’s resistance movement. A combined unit of Punjab and Baluch regiments launched this attack using all military weaponries, from rocket launchers to mortars. Moving hall to hall of the university premise, soldiers carried out indiscriminate firing on students and teachers (including, family members), killing more than 200 students and 10 teachers. Simultaneous attacks by use of heavy weapons and tanks were launched in Rajarbag Reserve Police by 32 Punjab Regiment, killing 2,000 Bengali policemen. The 22 Baluch Regiment launched offensive at the Pilkhana headquarter of East Pakistan Rifles (EPR), met with resistance throughout that night. Pakistani soldiers managed to overpower only when a tank unit joined to assist them, killing 700 of the 2,500 Bengali EPR personnel stationed there and taking many under captive who were tortured before being killed. The Rajarbag Reserve Police and EPR were targets of the operation because they were believed to be Awami League’s main source of armed power. In Hindu-dominated areas of Old Dacca, a unit of Pakistani soldiers demolished houses, set them to fire and arbitrarily shot at civilians, carrying out a large-scale genocide and slaughtering around 700 Bengali Hindus that night.
Pakistani soldiers not only targeted students, intellectuals and activists that were the source of Bengali’s spirited resistance and leadership but also innocent civilians who were perceived to be loyalists of the Awami League. Slums adjacent to railway lines were burnt down and destroyed, those escaping the fire were indiscriminately shot. Shopkeepers, market employees, rickshaw-pullers sleeping on the roads were shot dead at midnight when they were asleep. At the early hours of 26 March, offices of periodicals The People and Daily Ittefaq, perceived as supporters of Bengali nationalist movement, were set ablaze, killing around 400 panic-stricken people who took shelter at the latter. Overnight, Dacca was turned into a site of mass-graves with corpses lying on roads, reflecting the plight of ethnic Bengalis of East Pakistan living under colonisation of West Pakistan. In Operation Searchlight, around 7,000 innocent lives were mercilessly persecuted at the hands of Pakistan army, a first in post-WWII history of military’s onslaught on its own civilians.
Operation Searchlight became the first act of genocide by Pakistan army, that carried on for nine long months, a genocide of about three million ethnic Bengalis in East Pakistan. Shortly before Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s arrest, the call for independence of Bangladesh was declared via a telegram on 26 March, thus, beginning the relentless struggle for liberation by ethnic Bengalis against the barbaric acts of Pakistan army, that ultimately culminated into Bangladesh’s independence in December 1971.
Dr. Ankita Sanyal is working as Associate Research Fellow at ICPS, New Delhi. She has been a doctoral student in the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
