1971 Conflict: The alternative truth
Awami League got 75% of the votes cast in East Pakistan but the voter turn out was 56%.  This means only 42% people had voted in their favor, the 58% voters in East Pakistan were indifferent, or in other words didn't support their
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secessionist politics. Even among the 42%, some voters might only have voted for autonomy.
[S.Bose, Dead Reckoning, p22]
Till March 23 Yahya Khan was trying to negotiate a settlement between Bhutto and Mujib who weren't even ready to talk to each other at first and acting
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as "bashful newly weds"
[Sisson and Rose, 1990, p122]
[Other authors have spoken of Yahya's sincerity, like L.F Rushbrook Williams, 1971]

When the Assembly session was postponed on March 1st, angry demonstrators burnt Pakistani flag, Jinnah's picture and looted non-Bengali
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shops. Mujib insisted it was a non-violent movement despite the facts proving otherwise: G.W Chaudhary (a Bengali)
[G.W Chaudary, 1974, p 158]
Anthony Mascarenhas, a journalist who fled to London to write an expose of the military's suppression, acknowledged that these
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demonstrators burned Pakistani flag and looted West Pakistani shops.
[Mascarenhas [1971, p91-92]
US consul General Archer Blood who was sympathetic to Bengali cause also acknowledged arson, looting, intimidation, attack on NYT reporters and an attempt to burn British
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council.
[Blood, 2002, p158]
Lynching of Biharis and non-Bengalis became a daily occurrence.
[Raja Tridiv Roy, 2003, p211-2]
Mujib was using this violence as leverage for his negotiation with Yahya and Bhutto. 
Mujib had a parallel government and violence and lynching
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against non-Bengalis became a norm. In Khulna several employees of Telephone Exchange were killed on 4 March. In Khalispur and Daulatpur 57 non-Bengalis were killed with spears and sickles on 5 March. In Chittagong hundreds of non-Bengali men, women and children were
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killed in 3-4 March and their houses set on fire. On 4th March the whole area looked black from the air. Army was told to not react and maximum constraint was shown.
[S. Bose, p31]
Army officers were attacked and killing of officers became a daily occurrence. For example,
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Lt Abbas of 29 Cavalry was killed by militants on his way to buy vegetables. Mascarenhas, the critic of military regime acknowledged the Army discipline and restraint despite blatant attacks during those 25 days.
[S. Bose 32, 33, [Mascarenhas, 1971, p105]
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Mujib kept lying about killing of scores of Bengalis to further incite the people while still negotiating with government, like the incident of Joydevpur.
[S. Bose, p34-46)

So, far the violence was happening from rebel side on the Pakistan Army, West-Pakistanis and
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Biharis. Pak Army was staying in barracks under strict instructions.

OPERATION SEARCHLIGHT

Pak Army launched an operation on 25 March to take control. There is a buzz around this attack on Dhaka University and whether the students were armed or unarmed.
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US Consul Archer Blood, a critic of Pakistani regime against US official policy, said "The students from Iqbal Hall some of whom had weapons were shot"
[Blood, 2002, p207]

In the preceding weeks Bengali nationalists openly flaunted their military defiance, and
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Dhaka University was the centre with weapons, ammunition stocked there and training being provided. There was a two way fight, but Indian and Bangladeshi narrative ignores these facts to prove that Pak Army committed a cold-blooded massacre.
[S. Bose, Dead Reckoning p51)
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Kaliranjan Shil, a communist activist who survived Army's attack on Dhaka University's on Jagannath Hall writes that they were training with weapons there and many batches of students were ready to fight. Shil confirmed they were not necessarily students.
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[Shil, in Haider, ed, 1996, p5-6]

Nazrul Islam from art college writes that most of the university students had left for their villages and many outsiders were staying as militants.
[Islam, in Haider, ed, 1996, p18-19]

Intense fighting happened at Jagganath Hall but
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nothing happened at Rokeya Hall of females, unlike Bengali claims. Begum Akhtar Imam, provost of Rokeya Hall confirms that only 7 females student were there, who were sent to their villages on 27 March after curfew was lifted. Nobody was harmed.
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[Akhtar Imam, 1998,2002, S Bose, p57]

There are claims of many dead buried in a mass grave in Dhaka University but till now the ground has never been dug to confirm the numbers and no scientific exhumation carried out to confirm identities. There are two reasons
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1) It might reveal much lesser numbers than quoted 2) Outsider militants were present, which is against the dominant Bangladeshi narrative who says students were killed mercilessly. Such a widely circulated incident has no scientific backing to confirm many quoted events.
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[S. Bose, p68]

Some accounts also say that many soldiers acted on their own. A group of soldiers had shot and injured 3 people, but a later group came and felt sad about it and then catered to their injuries.
[Islam, in Haider, ed, 1996, p18-25]
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An image of a rebel group smiling while holding a severed head appeared in Newsweek 12 April 1971. The man was a civil servant named West Pakistani Waqar Naseem Mian posted in Kushtia.
[Time, Dan Coggins, 19 April 1971]

Many stories of excesses by Army have been
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exaggerated by pro-Bengali historians. In one such incident Shankharipara, multiple eye witnesses say 14-16 people died but Anthony Mascarenhas writes that 8000 people died here without any corroborations.
[S. Bose Dead Reckoning, p73-76]

Joydevpur and Gazipur: multiple
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incidents of West Pakistani Army personnel and their families killed and bodies mutilated without any provocation, on 29 March. When Gazipur factory was retaken, the Bengali workers had to be reassured that nothing will happen to them.
[Gen Safiullah(Bengali),1989, p27-39]
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Khulna, Crescent Jute Mills, Rustam Ali Sikdar of Awami League and many Bihari eye witnesses tell accounts of 'thousands' of Bihari workers and their families killed by Bengali workers and their bodies thrown in the river. Men, women, children were shot, knifed, killed by
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gallows and they even had a guillotine like device and other torture devices.
[S. Bose, Dead Reckoning, p80-82]

Mymensingh: Eye witness Sheikh Sultan Ahmed recounts that more than a hundred Army personnel were killed on 27 March. Later their women were raped and killed
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or abducted.
[GOP white paper p64-69, S. Bose, Dead Reckoning, p83,84]

Santahar: Brig Qadir narrates that when he reached the area, stench of dead bodies decomposing could be smelt from miles. He entered a room and there were 34 dead bodies of Bihari children of all ages
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who were killed by smashing their heads against the wall. Some of his men from then onward wanted to kill rebels the same way. GOP white paper estimates that 15000 Biharis were killed in Santahar-Naogaon.
[S. Bose, Dead Reckoning, p84,85]

Raja Tridiv Roy has written
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about the appalling Bengali atrocities against non-Bengali men, women and children in Chittagong.
[Roy, 2003, p214-21]

Many Bengali officers chose to stay loyal to Pakistan even disregarding family connections. A case in point was Lt. Imam uz Zaman, who stayed at the
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rebel side and Capt Abul Lais Ahmaduz Zaman, who chose to fight for Pakistan and migrated after the war. Both were cousins and in the same unit under the same CO. So, to say people were killed on the basis of ethnic identity is wrong as there were Bengalis on both sides.
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[Imam uz Zaman, 2001, 2002, S.Bose, p91-95]

After Independence, Biharis were killed in Mujib's government. 10 March 1972, Bihari jute mill workers and their families killed in the New Town Colony in Khulna. Some survivors say 20,000-25,000 Biharis were killed.
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[Eyewitness account, S. Bose, p159]

Bengali literature has many distortions, fabrications and lies. Pak Army attacking women in Dhaka University hostel was a lie. Massacre of West Pakistani civilians in Jessore on 1 April was passed off internationally as Bengali
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civilians killed by Pakistan Army.
[S. Bose, The Telegraph, "The truth about Jessore massacre, 19 March 2006]

Dhaka orphanage was bombed in last days of war, Bengali literature blames it on Pakistan but Pakistan's air support was grounded by then. It was reported by
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International media and turns out it was done by Indian Army, The Observer on 12 December 1971, for events of 9 December. 300 kids dead.
[Gavin Young, 'Dacca Diar', The Observer, 12 Dec 1971]

Sisson and Rose say the figure of 3 million dead was released by India and then
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quoted by Mujib, but it was unsubstantiated. William Drummond for The Guardian wrote on 6 June 1972, "three million deaths figure is an exaggeration so gross as to be absurd"
[Sisson and Rose, 1990, p217, W.D., The Guardian, 6 June 1972]

Hamood ur Rehman Commission
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reports that the 3 million figure is an exaggeration, and the deaths by Pak Army could be around 26000 (mostly rebels and Indian Army) after gathering evidence from all the reports, but says this figure is also biased upward, meaning that the real figure could be less.
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[HRC, p513]

Sisson and Rose also raise question about how many of these deaths were West Pakistanis, Army, Biharis and Bengalis?
[Sisson and Rose, 1990, p306]

The term genocide used for the war doesn't make sense according to the UN's definition of Genocide. Genocide
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would be indiscriminate killing, while Pak Army ensured that the ones they were killing were Mukti Bahini apart from a few incidents. Also many Bengalis were pro-Pakistan Army called razakaars. So, it wasn't a "genocide" of Bengalis. The whole nature of the conflict was
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political. Bengali literature also calls it holocaust, but when numbers don't match, nor the nature of the conflict, it is an insult to victims of the real holocaust to be compared to this.
[UN convention on the prevention and punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948]
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Other observations
Gen Niazi, Yahya Khan and Jehanghir Babar from the top leadership were all pashtuns, but still Punjabis are blamed for all the hatred and 'crimes'
Every Pakistani officer who was good to them is categorized as "Baloch" in Bengali rebel literature, when
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there were hardly any ethnic Baloch officer or soldier in the East. Baloch regiments had Punjabi and Pashtuns.

Bengali rebel literature tries to make it an ethnic conflict when it was mostly political in nature.
The whole Genocide and 3 million figure has just been
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made up to draw parallels with Holocaust's 6 million figure. This was done to defame Pakistan in worst possible ways.

By all accounts the Pakistani army performed astonishingly well against India in East Pakistan under almost impossible odds.
Despite passage of three
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decades, Bangladeshis collectively failed to produce well-researched, documented and thoughtful histories of 1971 which might influence world opinion with any degree of credibility
[S. Bose p4,5]
Many Bengalis supposed to be fighting for freedom and dignity committed
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appalling atrocities; many Pakistan Army officers, carrying out a military action against a political rebellion, turned out to be fine men doing their best to fight an unconventional war within the conventions of a warfare.
Many things taken to be established facts in
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the dominant narrative with which I grew up were demonstrated to be either false or seriously distorted
[S. Bose, p13]

2 Bengalis admitting that Bengalis believe in self-pity instead of hard work for eliminating the issues.
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[G.W Chaudhary, 1974, p10] [N.C Chaudhry, Elections is Pakistan, Hindustan Standard, 31 December 1970]

From 1st March to 25th March, many human rights violations were committed by Rebels despite no provocation by Pakistan Army. Officers were killed, their families killed

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women raped and killed, children killed in the most brutal way. West-Pakistanis and Biharis suffered the most, yet you never find these things in the dominant narrative of war. Pakistan Army started action after 25th March when negotiations failed.
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The most quoted source, Dead Reckoning, is by an Indian Hindu author, Sarmila Bose, who is also an ethnic Bengali. So, her bias can be taken out of the question.

Fin
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