Where so many people are dying fast
And it sure looks like a mess
I’ve never seen such distress
When thinking of the revolutionary rock-and-roll quartet, The Beatles, these distressing lyrics are surely not the first to pop into a listener’s mind.
The Beatles are known for their lasting legacy in the world of songwriting and youth culture.
But “so many people…dying fast”?
In 1947, the former British realms of India and Pakistan gained independence. However, they were separated by heightened religious conflicts; Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan fought a war almost immediately after a deadly partition, which in itself killed up to two million people and saw countless instances of sexual assault and battery.
After already fighting two wars – one in 1948 and another in 1965 – both nations mutually underwent losses in personnel and had bitter views of the opposing side, which could even be described as dehumanizing, which reflects the religious boundaries concocted by the British.
The Republic of India consisted largely of the central and southern regions of the defunct British Raj, the official name of crown rule on the Indian subcontinent. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan consisted of the northern and eastern areas and was divided into the contiguous West Pakistan and a province almost entirely enclaved within India: East Pakistan. It is important to note that originally, the province was known by the moniker of “East Bengal”, but in an effort for the central government to impose a more Islamic sense of unity in the nation, it was renamed “East Pakistan”, which conflicted with the strong cultural identity of the Bengali people.
Due to the over-simplistic partition of the Indian subcontinent, West and East Pakistan only shared religion as a commonality. Language and cultural customs were extremely different, as the West spoke Urdu and Punjabi and the East Bengali; languages which are written in different scripts and have different origins.
East Pakistanis began to self-advocate after Urdu was made the only official state language of the entire Pakistani realm. However, their efforts were met with violence, resulting in mass protests and widespread death in the capital city of Dhaka in 1952, underscoring a background of violence against East Pakistanis perpetuated by the West.
Moreover, in November 1970, the deadliest recorded tropical cyclone hit East Pakistan as well as Eastern India, resulting in one of the worst-ever humanitarian disasters in history. An estimated 300,000-500,000 people perished. The Pakistani central government sent very minimal help to a proud but anguished East Pakistani population, which was met with international censure from many influential nations.
This led to civil disobedience reminiscent of the styles preached by Mahatma Gandhi in the subcontinent three decades earlier. However, this was met with a declaration of martial law by the West Pakistani central government.
In the 1970 Pakistani General Election, the Awami League, an East Pakistani party, won in a clear majority, with their leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman advocating for more freedoms and autonomy in East Pakistan.
However, the central government of West Pakistan did not accept Rahman’s leadership, leading to his famous “Joy Bangla” speech, calling for an independent Bangladesh.
He was later arrested, citing mass protests in the region. The Pakistan Army invaded the East to smash these protests, in what was coined as ‘Operation Searchlight’, killing Bengali civilians, intellectuals, military personnel, students, politicians, and minorities.
This resulted in a massive refugee influx into India, with military and civilian deaths ranging from 500,000 to over 3,000,000.
Bangla guerilla fighters, known as the “mukti bahini”, fought the Pakistani Army, who stomped all over international war laws. Their efforts were valiant enough to where the Bangladeshi flag flies red to remember the blood spilled by these fighters.
Due to India taking in a massive amount of refugees, the Pakistani Air Force released unprecedented shock airstrikes on Indian soil, in an operation known as ‘Operation Chengiz Khan’.
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi initiated retaliatory strikes, with the Indian Air Force responding the same night. This escalated to an all-out three-front war, with the Indian Army, Air Force, and Navy enjoying numerical, technological, and morale advantages.
However, Pakistan garnered the support of a major superpower – The United States. The United States Navy’s largest fleet, at the behest of President Richard Nixon with backing from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, authorized the Seventh Fleet to move into the Bay of Bengal at the height of the conflict in December 1971. They were positioned in tactically advantageous areas where they could major Indian port cities.
The world’s largest democracy, India, was able to call its own ally to its defense. The smaller Soviet Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet was ordered to move into the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, where it successfully deterred the United States from striking Indian metros.
The Soviet Union’s relationship with the United Nations and the Sino-Soviet split ensured that China would not enter the war on a third front from the north of India and that the conflict wouldn’t escalate into a world war, as the United States was already facing domestic pressure to withdraw from the Vietnam War. Moreover, moving the largest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier aggressively near the Indian war spread their navy thin from a conflict they were already losing.
However, the States’ foreign policy in South Asia was heavily influenced by presidential prejudices; President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger described Indian women as “sexless”, “pathetic”, and “the most unattractive women in the world” in a conversation in the White House’s Oval Office in June 1971. He goes on to say, “They turn him off” and describes them as “repulsive” when referencing Indian women. And in the middle of a genocide, Secretary Henry Kissinger describes Indians and Bengalis as “scavenging people’.
Eventually, India won the total war in under two weeks and cemented itself as the leading superpower in South Asia, economically and militarily. And East Pakistan, with mukti bahini fighters, attained independence with Indian aid, establishing a nation reflecting their proud values: Bangladesh, denoting the land of the Bengalis’.
However, prejudices against Indians and South Asians were still prominent around the globe, intensifying after the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001.
Where The Beatles come into the picture
In a time when the world’s most powerful democracy, the United States, under the Nixon administration, failed to acknowledge a genocide, instead abetting it, a rock-and-roll band from the United Kingdom advocated for these ignored lives.
Beatle George Harrison, along with star Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, articulated harmonies that raised awareness about the crisis, in Madison Square Garden in the heart of New York City, one of the United States’ most notable metropolitan areas, in an effort to provide supplies to refugees. The Indian government was paying more than 1 million USD/day (7.49 lakhs INR/day) to care for refugees, with foreign aid only providing a fraction of the cost.
While the concert may not have completely alleviated the monetary cost of caring for the refugees, it was successful in being one of the first international efforts by any group in the Western Hemisphere to recognize this genocide.
More information regarding the genocide may be found here: Holocaust Museum: The Bangladeshi Genocide (1971)
Written by Eshan Korat
