Tue 5 Jul 2005
Update: Pakistani Media, of course, jumps to embrace this finding based on flawed method. Its a matter of time before this will be touted every where by all the wrong people. That’s why it is imperative to point out all the flaws in this analysis. Also see this in Dawn
Late Update The whole controversy has been collated in one page over here
Late Late Update The link to her original article here was published in EPWa few months later..one of the previous versions which caused the major firestorm in Bangladesh was taken down of this site after the writer sent legal threat to the hosting company of this website without corresponding with us.
Last update Thanks to Salma’s compilation and research, all the responses to Sarmila Bose’s research are compiled in one page.
Update from 2006.. a fantastic academic rebuttal from Nayanika
July 6th, 2005 at 5:11 am
Obviously, she has done much research on the subject. While noting her
point that these descriptions and conclusions are preliminary, I have some
reservations :
a.. She seems to easily accept statements by people at face value. The
glaring example is her statement that the military action on March 25-26
was “condemned” by Gen Niazi. This is based on her interview with Niazi,
and his book. She appears to feel no doubt about its veracity. It does
not seem to occur to her that, in the aftermath of the debacle, Niazi had
good, self-serving reasons to portray himself as differing from Tikka’s
policies. From everything I know about that period (and the people
involved) I do not accept this as true.
b.. At the time I heard reports (from Army sources) of a particularly
bloody event during the March 25-26 operation. Troops from Farman’s
command surrounded a Hindu basti, set fire to it, and shot people trying
to get out; lots of people died. I am not sure if this is the
Shankharipara incident that she refers to, in which, she says, no massacre
took place (she does, though, talk about this incident being part of “an
attack” on Old Dacca). I cannot be sure that the accounts I heard were
accurate, though I do believe something much worse than her version did
happen. I did see myself, 2/3 weeks later, a Martial Law regulation
ordering the removal of this “unauthorized” basti ! I took this to be a
bizarre bureaucratic attempt to cover up whatever happened; a typical
Farman touch.
Is she letting the stated aim of “reconciliation” affect her research?
FB Ali
July 7th, 2005 at 8:50 am
When I saw the outline of the heading, I could initially only read Asif’s message beginning, which read “Sarmila Bose’s controversial pap…”. After a closer examination, I stand by the introduction - this is just atrocious, unscientific, obnoxious pap (garbage).
I will leave it to others to provide the detailed scientific rebuttal, but cannot help being disgusted at the utter immorality (yes, let’s use an old fashioned word!) of denying the misery and destruction of so many people’s lives in the name of Bose’s self promoting revisionism!
July 20th, 2005 at 6:35 pm
[...]
Uncategorized20 Jul 2005 06:35 pm
Sarmila: the curious historian
While Sarmila Bose’s research has generated many responses, is it enough or shoul [...]
July 26th, 2005 at 6:57 am
Ms. Sarmila Bose has done an excellent job by exposing the true picture of 1971 civil war. Though she is a hindu but hats off to her for bringing out an impartial view of 71 war. We bangladeshis should stop exagerating about 1971 war incidents particulary with death death figures of 3 millions and victim or rapes, which were all false and not recognized international bodies.
September 7th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
Excellent paper and excellent research by a person who is Hindu and so clear in her writting. I am really impressed. It is time for Bangladeshi people to look at things more realistically, forget about the lies spread during the war of 1971.
Miss Bose. Your contribution will always be remembred.
December 5th, 2005 at 5:44 am
Yes I am a “Hindu” and I am a Bengali from India.I am ashamed of this fact because Sarmila Bose is one too.
Would Sarmila have written the same things if her Mother or Grandmother had been raped in 1971 too??I have been reading a lot of articles she is writing in the pakistan press.
By the way is she a relative of The great Subhash Chandra Bose or Mohammad Ali Jinnah??
With “Indians” like her, we dont need Pakistanis .
Pakistan should grant her citizenship by now.
Joy Bangla,Joy Hind.
New Delhi
December 5th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
since when has this got anything to do with religion. The very nature of violence means that it is generally not possible to ‘prove’ scientifically - every single war in this world has had the same dynamic and same issue. The quote she begins her paper with - whilst may be the opinion of the person - that there are so many different sides of the story - is true for every single situation. Empirically speaking rape is again difficult or if not impossible to prove - however that is not a valid argument - one cannot prove rape therefore it did not happen. There are many cases the author could have sought to find and interview rape victims- empirical research - whilst not hard evidence - but expands the qualitative research already undertaken. There are again problems with women obviously not wanting to come forth and declare to the world they have been raped. There are issues therefore which are not only methodological, but also epistemological. I mean at the end of the day - people can deny the Holocaust all the like - but what’s the point? Finally, the paper is hardly a sophisticated sociological analysis of conflict - it appears to be more or less a thesis on national relations. Which require completely different approaches intellectually and academically. QUite shoddy academically -controversial - so clearly there are some issues here.
December 5th, 2005 at 2:28 pm
sorry the exact quote was ‘this must be the only country in the world where there are two views on the independence of the country’
the person may have thought so! But any social historian can tell you otherwise - why also if you only had 2 ( competing) views you could count yourself lucky. Ha ha.
Interesting as this quote highlights that people always imagine their case is unique and that obviously there is confusion on the ground. However extrapolating from that the Pakistani Army is thereby ‘not guilty’ of rape is a funny thesis. Clearly its one thing to say hey its not so simple - they weren’t the only ones. fair enough -that would be the non-biased thing to say perhaps, and usually there in violent situations yes there are never clear cut 2 sides necessarily in the sense that one is wrong and one is right. That in itself is a simplistic naive viewpoint and Bose’s paper simply turns it on its head and says the reverse. neither are useful constructs.
and then - its another thing to say yes - we should try and be constructive about the future - sure i agree with that - but again - the best way of that isn’t going to be by simplifying and sanitizing the past. If anything, it increases the rage of the victims and makes it harder to have a sensible cool clear dialogue. you only have to look at the mud-slanging that’s ongoing to see that!
January 23rd, 2006 at 4:22 am
Please note these facts before making any decisions about 1971. The total number of Paksiani soldiers in East Pakistan were less than 36,000 fighting against a combined force of 100,000 fighters which included members of Mukti Bahni and rebel soldiers of East Pakistan Rifles and Bengal Regiment. The total number of tanks under Pakistani Army command were 54 and Pakistan Air Force had 16 F-86 Sabres in their possession.
January 24th, 2006 at 9:43 am
What is the source of these facts, Mr. Ahmed? Can you provide attribution?
January 27th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
The figures are available in many books on this subject by both Indian and Pakistani writers but the easiest reference is Hamood Ur Rehman Commission Report( please see Chapter 43). I misssed the strenghth of Pakistan Navy beforee. Navy had 1 destroyer and 4 gunboats stationed in Eas Pakistan.
April 19th, 2006 at 2:35 am
This is why many people argue that and this is what the Hammood ur Rehman says that 35,000-70,000 soldiers cannot kill 3 million people or rape some 1 million women even when they are surrounded by Millions of bengalis and 100,000 mukti bahni ready to retaliate.
More importantly when an indopak war is going on you are more considered to be carefull of any attack that indian soldiers might launch against you than freely raping and killing people whereever you find them.
Pakistan’s army had the largest regment known by the name Bengal regment. They were stationed in the East who were no longer with Pak army and the rest army was stationed along the border of Kashmir and rest of Pakistan in the west. If Pakistan could have sent most of its soldiers from west to east and left its western borders empty for any easy strike by USSR through Afghanistan and India then they were very stupids to do that. Ofcourse this never happened and very minute number of soldiers were sent to East Pakistan and i believe they were all cowards who surrendered to the indian army. Those who surrender to the indian army so easily can never be brave enough to freely and bravely rape as many women and kill as many people as they like even when they know their opponents are very large in numbers and Indian army is strong enough to kill them at anytime.
Pakistan govt. states the total number of deaths are in between 40,000 to some 300,000 . This is also possible to happen as you can see today when the war techniques are much sophisticate and accurate yet still 200,000 people have died in Iraq in 2 years bloody war. Americans alone are not responsible as the insurgents when attack the Americans they kill only 2 or 3 US soldiers but alongwith these US soldiers 20s or Iraqis are also killed. Similarly when US lauches an offensive against insurgents only a few of them die and dozens of civilians are killed alongwith them.
Read following …….
“The historian branch of the United States State Department held a two-day conference in late June 2005 on U.S. policy in South Asia between 1961 and 1972. The State Department invited scholars from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to express their views on documents recently declassified by the State Department. According to Dawn, a Pakistani Newspaper, Bangladeshi speakers at the conference stated that the official Bangladeshi figure of civilian deaths was close to 300,000, which was wrongly translated from Bengali into English as three million. Ambassador Shamsher M. Chowdhury acknowledged that Bangladesh alone cannot correct this mistake and suggested Pakistan and Bangladesh should form a joint commission to investigate the 1971 disaster and prepare a report. “Almost all scholars agreed that the real figure was somewhere between 26,000, as reported by the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, and not three million, the official figure put forward by Bangladesh and India.”
Taken from
http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/07/nat3.htm
The conference link is as follows …
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/46059.htm
April 20th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
About Sarmila Bose’s rewriting of history: There have been a waves of protest against her views. Emminent Bangladeshi intellectuals have denounced her theory. Knowing that currently she is in a US university and funded by US gov., her view seems to provide a cover for the US gov. policies at that time. If she can prove that there was no point to support Bangladesh Liberation War, the US policy can be justified somewhat. That’s why she is selling a theory of confusion. It is shameful that she inherits Netaji Shubhash Chandra Bose, who was a great inspiratory figure of our Liberation War.
Parvez M. Ashraf
(Generation of 1971)
Dept. of EE, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA
April 20th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Mr. Uzair Chaudhry please take a note that the strength of Pakistani Army in then East Pakistan was not between 35,000-70,000 but 32,000.
May 20th, 2006 at 12:05 am
mam
your reasearch work is quite impressive .the claim of 3 million genocide during 9 months is just like a cock and a bull story to me although i feel pity for those who give their life.3 million in 9 month means 1200 deaths per day it looks more a joke is in it.if it is true why should not western democratic or UN took notice it is more then somalia or ruwanda genocide. death rate is more higher then Nazis killed in holocaust .
i feel sorry for inocent lifes .turely this should not happened we have to realized that with can crush people with arms but we can not crush dreams.
September 8th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Just to comment on what Mr Uzair Chaudhry said about- that Soldiers need to be brave to rape. I think, his interpretation is other way round. So far i understand that it is only the cowards who rape, and as he rightly said Pakistani soldiers were not brave but cowards, the logical sequence is that the cowards raped.
Even in Germany, Japan and in Turkey the press are in the state of denial of massacre and rape, let alone Pakistan, where if you notice that lot of rape victims had to flee the country and their General President interfered to save one Captain and gave an open interview with regard to that lady saying that anyone wants to settle in the west raises the issue of rape. This is so far the mentality of their president. What we can expect of them?
December 10th, 2006 at 12:03 am
I’m saddened by the fact that there are many Bengalis out there that support Ms. Bose self serving “research” findings.
If you care to research a little bit more that you will find the even the official statistical tally from the different districts puts the number above 1.5 million (although incomplete). And statistically it is not impossible to kill that many people within that time range because the Paki army did not have the decency to spare innocent civilians. In fact killing civilians was part of their overall strategy to quell the uprising. “Kill three million of them,and the rest will eat out of our hands” as Yahya Khan said at the February conference before the war was quoted by many publications at the time. Majority of these killings happened in the beginning of the war as death squads roamed the streets and killed anyone they came across. This was meant to instill fear in the public to deter their support for Mujib. By officially tally the army killed 7,000 people in a single night in the beginning of the war.
Statistically impossible? You tell me. Also keep in mind that there were 75 million people living in Bangladesh at the time of the war, (this in a modern day country that is smaller than Iowa). Also bear in mind that population at the time was a lot more concentrated (according to family member who fought) so as the Pakistani army marched on to kill, they did not have to go very far to find their next victim.
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:42 am
And where the Pakistani soldiers could not “bravely” rape the women, they had their Rajakers to help them, Rashad.
Ms Bose seems to have some kind of agenda to push with this article, perhaps trying to deny the legitimacy of Bangladesh’s struggle back in 1971 (the label ‘Pakistani Civil War’ is insulting enough…). As a Bengali, I sympathise with the fury that most victims of the 1971 conflict must feel right now.
August 21st, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Ms. Bose deserves our kudos for undertaking work that is neither politically correct, nor likely to win her any friends in her ethnic and political homelands. Yet the festering sores of hatred and anger cannot be drained without people like her moving courageously to cause the initiation of a dialogue. She forces open the doors to a discussion whose time has come… a discussion on the lines of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that needs to be set up to review the mis-steps, by Ayub Khan, MujiburRahman and Yahya Khan that led inexorably to the catastrophe. All who volunteer to come before the commission can be assured of a pardon for all crimes they confess… while remaining on the hook for crimes they keep hidden. While each witness can only provide their subjective .. and somewhat self-serving viewpoint of their own experience, some veracity can be ensured by having the testimony given under physical and psychological “lie detector” monitoring. This is a necessary step towards restoring harmony and ensuring that repetition of this disaster, that occurred barely 25 years after the trauma of the partition of 1947, does not ever recur!
One wonders that if a Truth and Reconciliation Commission had been set up after Partition, if all the subsequent hostilities would have occurred? The only person who could have pushed successfully for such a commission was assassinated by the precursors of the BJP… so that put an end to that route of reconciliation
Any Volunteers for such a commission?
October 1st, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Mr udarji a question put forwrad to you, Rapes were mostly occurred during the initial stages and death toll was also at those time. army killed 7000 a night but did they kill 7000 every night? is that possible? I can tell you it is not possible by any human being. We know 3 million was a mistake 3 lakhs became 3 million by mistake. If it is so let us admit it. Now my question is if 3 million were killed adn 1 million were raped. Do u think the family members of these 4 million will only produce .1 million of freedom fighters? Let us findout the facts but at the same time let us also stop those people like Ms bose who for her own agnda will use these datas or mistaken words to come up with some conclusions which does not anyway come near to the truth.
Pakistany army were afraid - true. But they also fought vallantarily in many places. fear is a natural phenomenon during war but most cases fear leads human to do the most couragious things. I can assure you the fact that rape during war does not result from fear for war rather it serves the soldiers to relase themselves from the autrocities of the war. It is a misdead no doubt but which war or battle have not experianced rapes. None. So it is a outcome of war. It is a tool used by the commanders in the field to boost the morale of the troops and at the same time suppress the locals in the vicinity of troops to remain loyal to the envading army. Why there is a word warchild? casue everyone in the world knows that it is bound to happen in a war. So lets not debate on this issue rather lets find out the facts may be as proposed by andy king or may be there are beter ways.
November 19th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Why can we not access the original article and its response on the websites?
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:46 pm
What can I really say? For starters I’m really shocked that Sarmila Bose wrote such things against such irrefutable evidence. I really don’t know what to say… everyone knows what happened in 1971, how could she write such a thing. What really pisses me off is the fact that her writing has a wide circulation and it will give a false/fabricated image of the then-1971-Bangladesh! I hate that fuckin’ lady so much! If I knew her personally, I would kill her, honestly I would. How can she implement that the women themselves wanted to get raped? I wish she would get raped someday! I am just so very mad at her. She herself must have done such things, thats why she thinks everyone else can do such things. That asshole… if I can I’ll mutilate her to death.
January 9th, 2008 at 5:53 am
The links of the reactions from Bangladeshi Civil Society are not reachable directly from this site. Pls tell me how can I get these?