Unveiling the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide— A Tragic Chapter in History

On 9 December 1948, the Genocide Convention provided the world with a legal framework to define and prevent genocide, reinforcing the principle of "never again." However, decades later, the effectiveness of this commitment remains in question. Experts argue that the term "genocide" is often applied too cautiously and too late, allowing atrocities to unfold with little international resistance. Even when genocides are acknowledged, global action is typically slow and insufficient, failing to prevent or stop mass killings. Justice, too, remains elusive, with only a handful of perpetrators ever facing trial.

Rachel Burns notes that since the convention’s ratification in 1951, only three genocides—Rwanda in 1994, Bosnia in 1995 (Srebrenica massacre), and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979—have been legally recognised and prosecuted under its framework. Meanwhile, numerous other atrocities, including the mass killings in Indonesia (1965–66), Guatemala (1960–96), and Saddam Hussein’s campaign against the Kurds in Iraq (1988–91), remain outside this legal recognition. Among the most egregiously overlooked is the 1971 genocide in East Pakistan, which continues to be denied its rightful place in the historical and legal record.

Robert Melson classifies the Bangladeshi genocide as a partial rather than a total genocide. In a total genocide, the goal is to completely exterminate an entire group. According to Melson, the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and the 1994 Rwandan genocide fall into this category.

A partial genocide, as he defines it, involves mass killings aimed not at total annihilation but at reshaping a group’s identity and political direction. In the case of East Pakistan, the Pakistani army did not seek to wipe out the entire Bengali population. Instead, it targeted key figures in the autonomy movement, sought to terrorise the wider population, and carried out large-scale massacres of Hindus, whom it viewed as a destabilising force in East Bengal. The ultimate goal was not complete destruction but the suppression of the movement for self-rule.

However, while this classification may seem logical at first glance, Donald Beachler critically re-examined it with scholarly depth and rigour. He challenged the reluctance to recognise the mass killings and horrors in Bangladesh as genocide, questioning why such large-scale atrocities have not been acknowledged in the same way as other genocides. Beachler’s analysis calls into question the criteria used to define genocide and highlights the need for a more thorough and unbiased evaluation of the events of 1971.

Was It Really a Genocide? The Evidence of Genocide Uncovered

Various sources document the systematic killing, rape, and destruction carried out by the Pakistani army—patterns that align with the definition of genocide. While eyewitness testimonies and journalistic reports may not serve as definitive legal proof, they provide compelling evidence that these atrocities were widespread and sustained throughout the nine months of military repression in East Pakistan. These accounts reveal that specific groups were deliberately targeted, including students, pro-independence politicians, intellectuals, Awami League activists, and the Hindu community, underscoring the calculated nature of the violence.

The military initiated its crackdown on the night of 25–26 March 1971 with Operation Searchlight, a brutal campaign aimed at crushing Bengali nationalism. One of its first targets was Dhaka University, a key hub of pro-independence sentiment.

On 29 April 1971, Ohio Republican Senator William Saxbe entered into the U.S. Senate record a letter from Dr Jon E. Rohde, a physician who had spent three years in East Bengal with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In this letter, written after his evacuation from Dhaka, Dr Rohde provided a firsthand account of the atrocities he had witnessed:

My wife and I watched from our roof the night of March 25 as tanks rolled out of the Cantonment illuminated by the flares and the red glow of the fires as the city was shelled by artillery and mortars were fired into crowded slums and bazaars ... On the 29th we stood at the Ramna Kali Bari, an ancient Hindu village of about 250 people in the center of Dacca Ramna Race Course, and witnessed the stacks of machine gunned burning remains of men, women, and children butchered in the early morning hours of March 29 ... At the university area we walked through .. . two of the student dormitories at Dacca University [were] shelled by the army tanks. All inmates were slaughtered. ... A man who was forced to drag the bodies outside, counted one hundred three Hindu students buried there ... We also saw evidence of a tank attack at Iqbal Hall where bodies were still unburied.

Dr Rohde’s assessment of the situation in East Bengal was as follows: ‘The law of the jungle prevails in East Pakistan where the mass killing of unarmed civilians, the systematic elimination of the intelligentsia, and the annihilation of the Hindu population is in progress.

Another American evacuated from Dhaka, Pat Sammel, wrote a letter to the Denver Post that was placed in the House record by Representative Mike McKevitt of Colorado on 11 May 1971. Sammel wrote:

We have been witness to what amounts to genocide. The West Pakistani army used tanks, heavy artillery and machine guns on unarmed civilians, killed 1,600 police while sleeping in their barracks ... demolished the student dormitories at Dacca University, and excavated a mass grave for the thousands of students; they’ve systematically eliminated the intelligentsia of the country, wiped out entire villages- I could go on and on. It’s hard to believe it happened.

Batchler highlights that reports of a massacre at Dhaka University were also recorded in interviews conducted by James Michener in Tehran. Americans evacuated from Dhaka recounted seeing Pakistani officials carrying lists with the names of Bengali professors marked for execution. Some also reported witnessing mass graves filled with the bodies of students who had been killed during the crackdown. These accounts further reinforce the scale and intent behind the violence.

In April 1971, Pakistani journalist Anthony Mascarenhas was granted access to tour East Bengal. His reports reveal that the government pursued a deliberate policy to eliminate the Hindus population by death or expulsion. Statements from Pakistani military officials in Bengal echoed the rhetoric of the Nazis, emphasising "purification" and the removal of undesirable elements from society.

According to Mascarenhas, senior government and military leaders in East Bengal openly declared their intent to crush the secessionist movement, even if it meant killing two million people and ruling the region as a colony for three decades. One officer went so far as to claim that Bengali culture had become indistinguishable from Hindu culture, justifying the need to "sort them out" in order to restore the land and its people to their "true faith." A major in the Pakistani army further reinforced this chilling mindset in his conversation with Mascarenhas:

This is a war between the pure and the impure ... The people here may have Muslim names and call themselves Muslims. But they are Hindu at heart. We are now sorting them out ... Those who are left will be real Muslims. We will even teach them Urdu.

Hindus were viewed as the rulers of East Pakistan and the corrupters of Bengali Muslims.

Mascarenhas reported that senior officers at the Pakistani army’s eastern command headquarters in Dhaka openly outlined the government's policy toward East Bengal. They viewed the Bengali population as untrustworthy and believed that West Pakistanis should rule upon them. The plan was to re-educate Bangladeshis along Islamic lines, forging unity between the two regions of Pakistan through religious ideology. Once the Hindu population had been eliminated—either through mass killings or forced expulsions—their properties were to be redistributed among middle-class Muslims.

While in Comilla, near East Pakistan’s eastern border with India, Mascarenhas witnessed officers actively searching for Hindus. Those captured were executed, while many others fled their homes in fear. Entire villages were set ablaze as punishment for even the slightest resistance. His reports from a ten-day tour of East Pakistan leave little doubt that the Pakistani army’s genocidal rhetoric was not mere propaganda—it was a brutal reality unfolding on the ground.

New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg documented the systematic targeting of Hindus in Dhaka, where many Hindu shopkeepers were murdered, and their businesses were handed over to non-Bengali Muslims and collaborators of the Pakistani occupation. Hindu temples were also demolished as part of the campaign to erase their presence.

However, the assault on Bengali identity extended beyond the Hindu community. Schanberg reported that automobile license plates in Bengali script were replaced with English ones, and Pakistani soldiers insisted that Urdu was a superior and more "civilised" language, urging Bengalis to abandon their own tongue.

The scale of the violence was staggering. A missionary informed Schanberg that, in a single day, over a thousand Hindus were massacred in the southern district of Barisal. Another described an incident in northeastern Sylhet, where a gathering meant for reconciliation turned into a massacre—Pakistani troops arrived, singled out 300 Hindus from the crowd, and executed them on the spot.

Further evidence of the Pakistani army’s genocidal intent emerges from A. M. A. Muhith’s account of his discussions with West Pakistani officials in May and October 1971. According to Muhith, these officials openly justified the killing of 300,000—or even 3 million—Bangladeshis if it meant preserving Pakistan in its original 1947 form.

Muhith also noted the dehumanising rhetoric frequently used by West Pakistani soldiers, who likened Bangladeshis to monkeys or chickens. Such language reflected not just deep-seated contempt but also an attempt to rationalise mass violence. General Niazi, the West Pakistani commander in East Bengal, reportedly dismissed the region and its people with a chilling remark, calling Bangladesh “a low-lying land of low-lying people.”

Interviews conducted in early April with foreign evacuees from Chittagong, East Pakistan’s second-largest city and main port, reveal that the Pakistani army’s campaign of violence extended far beyond the capital. As in Dhaka, the military specifically targeted the poorest communities, believing them to be strong supporters of independence. Entire districts of flimsy homes were set ablaze in a calculated effort to terrorise the population.

A Danish graduate student reported seeing 400 bodies floating in the river, while an American evacuee described witnessing scenes of looting, arson, and death at the hands of the Pakistani army. Over the course of 1971, nearly 100,000 young Bengali men underwent military training, either in East Pakistan or across the border in India, and took up arms against the occupation. In response to guerrilla resistance, the Pakistani army launched retaliatory operations, razing entire areas where insurgents had been active. These crackdowns were marked by widespread killing, burning, rape, and looting, further deepening the scale of suffering.

A key aspect of the Pakistani army’s campaign to terrorise the Bengali population was the widespread use of mass rape. Estimates suggest that between 200,000 and 400,000 women were subjected to sexual violence. Many were held in camps, where they endured multiple assaults each day. Some survivors reported being raped by as many as eighty men in a single day. For these women, the trauma was compounded by the societal emphasis on female chastity, leaving them ostracised and abandoned.

A post-independence initiative sought to find husbands for these women—who were honoured as national heroines—but met with little success. Despite the scale of the atrocity, the mass rape of Bengali women has received limited scholarly attention. Most accounts rely on Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will (1975), which devoted only eight pages to the subject. Bangladeshi scholar A. M. A. Muhith documented the mass rapes in his study of the 1971 crisis, asserting that 200,000 victims could be verified—excluding those who perished or remained silent out of fear and shame.

Reports from journalists, refugees, and aid workers confirm that the violence—both killings and rapes—was widespread across East Bengal and persisted throughout the entire nine-month military occupation. The humanitarian catastrophe was further underscored by the mass displacement of civilians. Approximately 10 million people fled to India, facing unimaginable hardship. Though the exact death toll from dislocation and deprivation remains unknown, the appalling conditions in which refugees travelled and lived undoubtedly led to significant loss of life. Observers estimated that Hindus made up between two-thirds and 90 per cent of those who sought refuge in India, highlighting the targeted nature of the violence.