পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (সপ্তম খণ্ড).pdf/৩৫২

3.18 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : সপ্তম খণ্ড Bengali volunteers were raiding and killing the minority community of Bihari Muslims "because they are spies and have sided with West Pakistan" Major Choudhury, of the East Pakistan Rifles, met Journalists here on the IndoPakistan border. He said that Bihari Muslims, who are identified linguistically and ethnically with the West Pakistanis, had helped president Yahya's soldiers to massacre Bengalis. The Bengali officer was being questioned in the light of news reports and fears that a great number of the non-Bengali minority communities, five million strong have been killed in a wave of reprisals There was no question of a Bihari joining the Liberation Front, he said "If we get a Bihari, we kill him: We are also raiding their house and killing them" New York Times, New York 20 May 1971: Homer A. Jack Those massacred in the East Wing were Biharis-Moslems originally from Bihar and other Indian States who migrated to East Pakistan after partition but had not yet been absorbed into the Bengali culture All in Karachi are deeply upset about the massacre of the Biharis not by the army, but by some members of the autonomy-cum secessionist Awami League however almost all deny any massacre of the Bengalis by the army Before and after this army action, some elements in East Pakistan apparently indulged in their own massacre in this seldom non-violent sub-continent; The Financial Times, London, 21 May 1971: Hervey Stockwin: The Bengali ideal of regional liberation ended in tragedy and in the idiocy of communal savagery against the non-Bengali These feelings based on the long-standing reality of Bengali exclusiveness and chauvinism were important element in the highly charged emotional atmosphere in the East prior to March 25-They also help to explain the descent into Bengali-Bihari fratricide, which formed an essential but little-noticed part of the catastrophe It needs stressing that these were the West Pakistani Army reactions. Bengali troops went the other way, doing-a great deal of the subsequent killing of Mahajirs and other non-Bengali immigrants in the East. All of which is the background to what can now be seen, not simply as a communal outrage, nor even as a civil war, but as the latest installment of the 1947 partition riots. Hence, the diversion of the secessionist effort, if such it was into communal blood-lust, sometimes in retaliation for the West Pakistani take-over in Dacca, sometimes from frustration in the face of defeat