Ref : Mr. Larry Chowdhury’s rebuttal on NFB:

Mohammad Asghar counters his claims

Mr. Larry Chowdhury’s write up, as it appeared in News from Bangladesh, must be taken as a good read; it contains many information that were hitherto unknown to many Bangladeshis who had not taken birth at the time when their parents, brothers and sisters were fighting for the liberation of the land now they proudly call their beloved country. I thank Mr. Chowdhury on this account. I also congratulate him for having a photogenic memory, for, many of us who had seen and experienced the war of liberation taking place before our own eyes, have failed to retain many of its related events in our memory, hence our oft inability to recount the exact date, time, form and shape of the struggle that had unfolded some thirty-three years ago.

I have no doubt in my mind that some of the incidences involving the conduct of the Indian soldiers on the soil of Bangladesh that Mr. Chowdhury has mentioned in his write up must be true, as I believe, he had seen, if not all, but most of them taking place between December 23-31, 1971 and January 01-09, 1972 with his own eyes. Though I do not condone the activities of the Indian soldiers, as reported by Mr. Chowdhury; however, I feel that it is necessary for me to point out to him that before condemning India for the activities of its soldiers, we are also required to look at those incidences from a different but logical angle so that nobody can ever accuse us of being hypocritical and lop-sided in our judgment. Let me explain what I meant by my last sentence.

The Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, had her own political agendas for ordering her soldiers to fight against the Pakistani forces in Bangladesh, but to the soldiers themselves, their engagement with the Pakistan Army in the then East Pakistan carried little or no sense, as they were required to fight not to defend the territories of their own country but to free a nation with which they had nothing to do. But being soldiers, they carried out the orders of their Commander-in-Chief without being able to see any palpable gains that were likely to emerge out of their sacrifice to satisfy their humanistic instincts, hence, their involvement, most probably, in looting of the Bangladeshi civilians at the point of their guns to offset for what they had done for their everlasting benefit.

Similar incidences also took place elsewhere in human history. If we do not want to travel too far in time to find out how soldiers in the past treated the people of the lands they treaded, or fought wars on, in that event, we can refer only to what had happened when the Iraqi soldiers had occupied Kuwait just a little over a decade ago. They looted the Kuwaitis at gun points, even though both the looters and their victims belonged to the same race and religion. If what had happened to the Iraqis was the result of a victorious army’s expression of superiority over the unarmed people of a foreign land, must we not apply an identical logic in evaluating the conduct of the Indian soldiers in Bangladesh before condemning all of them in a lambasting language?

No doubt, the Indian soldiers had violated the trust of the Bangladeshi people, but did they not also lay down their lives to free us from the brutality of the Pakistan Army? Can we go back in time and note for ourselves how Pakistan and its forces had treated us during the war of our liberation?

The Pakistan Army had killed three million of our people (this is the official figure of the Bangladesh government). They killed almost all the intellectuals of our country. They raped an uncounted number of our mothers, sisters and daughters. They destroyed our infrastructures. They looted our national treasury. They shipped off to Pakistan even vehicles, which were then waiting for clearance in the port of Chittagong.

Compare the conduct of the Pakistan Army with that of the Indian soldiers: The latter did not kill a single Bangladeshi; they did not rape a single woman of ours, nor did they destroy our infrastructures; rather they restored many of them for our benefit (Had they committed these offences, I am sure Mr. Chowdhury would have mentioned them in his write up I am responding to).

Now my questions to Mr. Chowdhury are: If we are supposed to hate the Indians for what their soldiers had done in our country, should we not have much more intense hatred for the Pakistanis for what their Government and soldiers had done in the erstwhile East Pakistan? Has he ever condemned the Pakistan Army in the language he has used for the Indian soldiers? Has he asked his fellow countrymen to hate the Pakistanis for what they had done to us in 1971?

If not, would Mr. Chowdhury like to explain why he thinks that the Indian soldiers were more devilish than the Pakistani forces? Would he also explain why Bangladeshis find it cozy to be friendlier with Pakistan and its people vis-à-vis their antagonism against India and its people, even though the latter had been, despite all of its shortcomings, instrumental in securing our victory over the former, our national enemy?

Is Mr. Chowdhury’s harsh attitude towards India, and soft feeling towards Pakistan the result of the former’s proximity to, and the latter’s distance from, his country? Or, is it his Ummatic responsibility that makes him feel the way he feels for the Pakistanis?

Mr. Chowdhury also mentioned that the Indian Army had taken away a lot of things, including arms left by the Pakistan Army in various cantonments, while Sk. Mujibur Rahman looked on. He is right in his assertion. Yes, the Indian Army had taken away a lot of arms from Bangladesh. But has he ever thought why the Sheikh had allowed it to happen before his eyes?

Can we surmise that the Indians were able to decamp with our arms and ammunitions, as Sk. Mujib was, perhaps, a coward, a stooge of India or a stupid of first order, one or all of which had prevented him from safeguarding his country’s interest by standing up against the Indians? To get an assumptive answer to our question, we must evaluate his personality in order to understand the Indians’ conduct, Mr. Chowdhury has spoken of.

Personally, I do not believe that Sk. Mujib was a coward. Had he been one, then how can we explain his bold stand against the mighty Pakistanis? Can a coward say what he had said on the 7^th of March, 1971 at the Race Course of Dhaka?

Nor do I personally believe that he was a stooge of India. Had he been one, then why he would have asked the Indian government to remove its forces from his country, when the latter had the moral ground to keep on occupying Bangladesh for so long as it wanted?

Neither do I believe personally that Sk. Mujib was a complete stupid. Had he been one, then how could he have made the 75 million of Bengalees to believe in him for so long a time? If, being himself a fool, he was able to make a fool of the entire population of his country for that long, then does it not say a lot about the intellectual deficiencies of the entire nation of the Bengalees?

Does the above analysis of Sk. Mujib’s personality prove what Mr. Chowdhury has alleged against him? If not, then can he explain for us as to why the Sheikh might have allowed the Indians to take away all of the arms from our cantonments?

Mr. Chowdhury also blamed Indian for the bomb blast that had taken place at the Ghorasal Fertilizer Factory in 1973, without producing any credible proof. Since I consider him to be a credible person, I am willing to accept his claim, provided he is able to provide answers to my following questions:

1. Could not the blast have occurred due to the explosives left in the Factory by the Pakistani Army? Has Mr. Chowdhury explored this possibility before putting the blame squarely on the Indians?
2. Could not the Pakistanis have caused the explosion through their Bangladeshi Mullah surrogates to avenge the loss of East Pakistan to the Bangladeshi people?
3. If he still believes that it were the Indians who were behind the explosion, can he tell us on what documentary proof does he intend to rely upon to defend his belief?

Mr. Chowdhury has inferred that the floods that have been occurring in Bangladesh are the doing of the Indian government, without naming the Farrakha Barrage directly. Yes, this barrage is a problem for Bangladesh, but can Mr. Chowdhury tell his readers who it was that permitted India to build it in the first place?

It was Pakistan who had permitted India to build the barrage at Farakkha of West Bengal in exchange, if I am not wrong, for it (Pakistan) to be able to build its own dam at Tarbela on the Indus River of West Pakistan at the cost of the interest of the people of East Pakistan. I believe the construction of the Farakkha Barrage had begun in 1966, while that of the Tarbela Dam was undertaken in 1968; with its completion having been slated for 1976.

I urge Mr. Chowdhury to research on the information I have provided for him, and then to place the responsibility for the disasters the Farakkha Barrage has been causing to Bangladesh on the party it rightfully belongs to. Should he find out that what I have stated above is a reasonable assumption, in that event, I shall ask him not only to withdraw his diatribe against India but also to exonerate it from the unjustifiable accusations he has labeled against it by publicly admitting the inadmissibility of his anti-Indian theories. Can I expect Mr. Chowdhury to rise up and call a spade a spade?

Moreover, it is not fair to entirely blame the Farakkha Barrage for the floods that had been inundating Bangladesh from time to time. Bangladesh had two of its worst floods in 1904 and 1954, when the barrage in India was not in existence.

Can I know from Mr. Chowdhury and others as to whom they are going to hold responsible for the causation of those two floods? Was it India that had diverted the water of all the international rivers in 1904 and 1954 to East Bengal purposely to destroy it? Why India would have wanted East Bengal harmed, especially in 1904, when it was a part of its own territory?

Mr. Chowdhury claimed that India had forced Bangladesh to buy, as he called it, the junk and defunct McDonnell-Douglas Dakota aircraft from it, which he also said faced a kind of sabotage at its ‘embryo stage.’ May be he is right, but does he not believe that the Bangladesh politicians and government officials were equally culpable for buying the aircraft from India without protest? If they had nothing to gain personally from the purchase, why did they not make the story known to the people at the relevant time? If Mr. Chowdhury thinks that our leaders and officials were also responsible for the purchase of the junk, then why he opted to blame the Indians alone?

There are a lot of other questions related to Mr. Chowdhury’s write up, which I would have loved to have him clarified, but as my response to it has already become fairly long, I end my points of contention here, with a hope that he would be kind enough to respond to all of them as soon as possible. I know Mr. Chowdhury will not disappoint me and that he would come back to NFB soon with responses that neither I nor anyone else would have the courage to disprove or rebut again, no matter how hard we try! In the interim, I wish him good health and best of luck.

September 2, 2004