HISTORY: THE FALL OF DHAKA FROM BIHARI EYES
They were in a frenzy, shouting ‘Joy Bangla, kill the Biharis, kill the traitors’. As I looked on, they entered a building that stood very close to the right of ours. On the top floor of that building lived Mr Yahya, a Bihari, with his family. The mob went straight to his flat, broke open the door, locked his wife and children into a room and dragged out Yahya Sahib.
They started to beat him savagely and then pushed him towards the stairs. I then saw the mob emerge from the staircase and on to the road. Yahya Sahib appeared a bloody mess. He could hardly stand on his legs. Soon he fell to the ground. The mob was now kicking him like a football. They kicked him from the road on to the open grassy space in front of our building.
The beating and kicking carried on until he finally died. I saw some of them jumping on his dead body. Then, with a mighty roar, this bloodthirsty, demonic mob headed towards our building and into the entrance of the staircase.
Seeing all this terrified me so much that I completely lost my nerve and started to weep. My father (may Allah rest his soul in peace in heaven) became angry with me. He slapped my face hard and said, “Stop weeping. I won’t have my son dying like a coward. If we are to die then, we try to face death bravely. They will have to kill me first before they can touch you. Ask Allah for His help. Only He can save us.”
The din had become deafening by now and the stairwell was reverberating with loud shouts, banging, screams and shrieks. We all had our eyes fixed on the door, expecting it to burst open any moment, and then my mother said, “They are now at Mujib’s house.”
Mujib Sahib was another Bihari who lived with his family on the first floor, directly below Mallu Bhai’s flat. The mob had broken into his flat, locked his wife and children in a room and started beating and whipping him in another room. There was laughing and jeering from the crowd as Mujib Sahib screamed in pain and his family wailed loudly. This continued till he fell unconscious.
When my father went to see him later, he appeared as good as dead. He bled all over; his arms, legs as well as some of his ribs were broken. The mob had left him for dead and moved out of his flat.
The violent mob needed to climb only two short flight of stairs to break into our second-floor apartment. But then a miracle happened.
Inexplicably, the mob just went down and left the building. We were spared, as if Allah had just rewarded my father’s implicit faith in Him.
Waving their sticks, rods and whips, the crowd moved to another part of the colony, to beat more Biharis to death.
In the ensuing comparative lull of the night, from the distance, I could hear the shrill voice of some Bengali woman shouting, “O, Biharis, why do you cry now? Why don’t you call your supporters, your beloved Pak Army, to come to your help? Why don’t they come to save you from our wrath. Where are they now? They have left you to be killed and now we will kill you all!” The taunts floated in the night air for a long time, adding to our misery and despondency.
Around noon the next day, we heard the fire of automatic weapons. We were terrified when, a little later, there was a knock on our door. My father opened the door and found it was Mr Mannan, our Bengali neighbour who lived on the ground floor flat directly below Mujib Sahib’s flat.
He whispered to my father that some Mukti Bahini had arrived in the colony and they were arresting all Biharis. He had come to offer help. He wanted to hide us in his house to escape arrest. We went to his house. His family treated us well and we stayed there till night when the Mukti Bahini finally went away. Coming back to our house, we learnt that some Mukti Bahinis, led by another Bengali neighbour, Haji Abdul Bari (who lived in the flat on the first floor directly below us and adjacent to Mujib Sahib’s flat), had broken into our house to arrest us. Haji was livid to find the menfolk absent but the Mukti Bahinis were quite happy to ransack the house and steal whatever cash, jewellery and other valuable items they could lay their hands on. That day the Mukti Bahini arrested around 400 men and boys from our colony. Even five-year-olds were not spared. They took their prisoners to Ramna Police Station. Some of the “prisoners” returned after three or four days but some never came back. Whether they were thrown into jails or killed is anybody’s guess.
In the suburb of Dhaka lay the colonies of Muhammadpur and Mirpur. These were perhaps the only colonies in East Pakistan with a Bihari majority. The first units of Mukti Bahini reached Mirpur in the wee hours of December 17. They were heavily armed with mortars, machine guns and field guns. They were stopped at Mirpur bridge by the Bihari Razakars (volunteers) guarding the bridge. The Mukti Bahini fighters knew that there was no Pak Army there and it was merely a bunch of poorly armed Razakars resisting them. They repeatedly called the Razakars to surrender but the Razakars held the bridge for about three hours and kept fighting till their last man was killed.
The Mukti Bahini fighters finally entered Mirpur section numbers 1 and 2 and promptly started firing their field guns on the houses. After blowing up some 30 houses, they announced that, to save their lives, everyone had to go to the Eidgah ground as they are going to destroy all the houses. There being no other option, everybody ran helter-skelter to the ground. When the ground was filled with men, women and children, the Mukti Bahini opened machine gun fire from all sides on them. Among the countless massacres of that terrible time, this was another one.
An Indian Army unit arrived at Mirpur in the afternoon. They stared aghast at the grisly scene. The entire ground was strewn with thousands of dead bodies and the green grass was now shiny red. This prompted them to call in reinforcement and take over control of Muhammadpur and Mirpur. In truth, it was not massacre at just one or two places. It was mass killing of non-Bengalis, the Urdu-speaking people nicknamed Biharis. These people had been living in East Pakistan since 1947, some had settled in the area even earlier. They lived amongst the Bengalis like brothers, amicably, without any discrimination. So what happened all of a sudden that generated this tidal wave of hatred against them, all over the country? The explanation is simple.
Shaikh Mujibur Rahman’s party, the Awami League, had won a majority of seats in the 1970 general elections of Pakistan. They had full rights to form a government and rule over Pakistan. However, the military leadership of Pakistan and the political leadership of West Pakistan combined together to deny transfer of power to the Awami League. This infuriated not only the Awami League but the entire population of East Pakistan. The Awami League announced that, as protest to this gross injustice, March 23 celebrations would not be held in the province and all private and public buildings would hoist black flags. Anyone who hoisted the Pakistani flag would be declared a traitor and punished severely. They particularly asked the Bihari community to show their solidarity with Bengali people by not hoisting the Pakistani flag for that act, they felt, would mean that they were enemies of Bengali people. The Biharis argued that they were Pakistanis. They had migrated here because of Pakistan. They had great faith in the Pak Army and were confident that the army would protect them and soon control the situation. They did not pay heed to the warning given by the Awami League. At Mirpur, they raised a huge Pakistani flag atop the public water tank which could be seen fluttering in the air from a mile around.
The flag sent a clear message to the Bengalis that Biharis were patriotic Pakistanis and would not support them in their endeavour to secede from Pakistan. The lines were thus drawn, lines which proved to be bloody and indelible.
Consequently, a majority of the Bihari community perished in the massacres conducted by the bloodthirsty Mukti Bahini. Of the survivors, some managed to flee to West Pakistan while the unlucky ones, who could not afford to do so, still languish in relief camps in Dhaka in unspeakable misery. The Bangladesh government treats these hapless Biharis as Pakistanis and urges the Pakistan government to take them back. To this day, the Pakistan government refuses to repatriate those who sacrificed their kith and kin, lost their properties and became destitute but did not change their nationality because of their love of Pakistan . ......
Source: dawn.com