How to Weave Lies Without Facts

[Note: This is a translation of the article তথ্য’বিনা মিথ্যা বোনা by Kaustubh, originally posted in Sachalayatan on 27-02-2013. While the facts were easy to translate, it is difficult to capture the essence and wit of the article in English. The translators strongly recommend reading the original article if you are can read Bengali.]

40 years have passed but some people are still poking around about the number killed in the 1971 war. These atheist/anti-Islamic/Awami-Leaguer/Indian-agents are still trying to prove that, in their "Liberation War", 30 million of their people died. The fact that this is a blatant lie becomes apparent if we recall that President Yahya said, "Kill 3 million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands" - So the fact that Bangladesh managed to get independence is proof enough that the kind Pakistani soldiers could not quite kill 3 million of their younger brothers.

But still these troublemakers don't stop, they continue lying shamelessly. To bring them down, some reverse propaganda with solid evidence has become necessary. A revered elder brother gave me Madam Bose's book and said that a more neutral, realistic and investigative book is impossible to find today, and it proved undeniably what we have been saying; I should write something about this book so that faithful brothers and sisters can share it en masse.

Now there is no need to attempt the audacity of introducing Sharmila Bose. She is one of the most successful, famous and informative political-researchers from this sub-continent. To honor her fame, her childhood-playground Calcutta city has recently renamed their only airport after her grandfather late Subhash Bose, who did some work here and there in the Indian Liberation War. Therefore she obviously holds the right to write a book about the Bangladesh "Liberation War".

I read that this eminent lady was harassed by some hooligans in a book discussion event at Harvard (It goes without saying, as we learned, that there was an unprecedented uproar all over Harvard right after the posters for the event were put up. Even when Bill Gates came to give a speech in the graduation ceremony there wasn’t quite as much fuss. As a result, the sole copy of her book in the library didn't get a chance to return to the shelf even for a moment.) The writer said during that event, about her book on the Bangladesh War of 1971, that she "estimated, from her collected data, a range (confidence interval) of the number of dead Bengalis, which is between 50 thousand to 100 thousand, with 90% probability". My task will be to scour through her book, find these statements and the evidences behind them and organise them in writing.
According to her, the fabled death of 3 million in the Liberation War is a big hoax. It is purely a propaganda to unfairly blame Pakistan for the mutual bloodshed between the two sides. Neither India nor Bangladesh have any proof in support of 3 million, this myth that is circling around since 1971 is nothing but a web of lies devoid of any real information and the time has come to tear it apart. Let us try to learn something from these calculations which are as untainted and immaculate as a precious gemstone.

What we have been saying repeatedly is also seen in her book, that the claim of 3 million has been undeniably established because it was something Mujib said. It was what he had been told on the aeroplane ride back from his captivity in Pakistan, after the war ended, which he abruptly announced at the press conference, "I discovered that they had killed 3 million of my people", there was no verification or consideration behind that statement. Madam Bose quoted from a book about this, "Examination of the available material on the 1971 war in both Bengali and English showed that while the allegation of 'genocide' of 'three million Bengalis' is often made–in books, articles, newspapers, films and websites–it is not based on any accounting or survey on the ground."

Basically, they have no solid evidence behind the claim of 3 million murders. So some people attempt to calculate that, if a Pakistani soldier murders, on average, only one person every ten days, the total number can possibly be 2 to 3 million. But Madam Bose stated quoting Commander in Chief Niazi (therefore indisputable) that even though the number of POWs (prisoners of war) were 93 thousand, the number of soldiers were only 55 thousand (we have to overlook the number of Razakars here). They even quote the UN about this murder rate, "Among the genocides of human history, the highest number of people killed in lower span of time is in Bangladesh in 1971. An average of 6000 (six thousand) to 12 000 (twelve thousand) people were killed every single day" - But everyone knows these writings are based on the stories broadcasted in India-Bangladesh.

Some people try to show from calculating the population, that the difference between the populations of the then East Pakistan and subsequent Bangladesh is around 2-3 million. But this calculation can be easily debated using the low death rate at the the time of war, number of Bihari murders, number of refugees in India, errors in the method of calculation etc.

Lets drop these hollow claims and turn to some indisputable facts from Madam Bose's book.

Madam Bose starts her book by establishing the 1971 Pakistani commander-in-chief General Niazi as the tragic hero. This clarifies that Madam is on the right track. A few verses:
“... If this was the fate of the winning commander, I wondered what had become of the one who had lost. The result was a revelation. General A.A.K. Niazi turned out to have a distinguished past and a tragic fate. Honoured by the British with the Military Cross for his performance on the Burma front during the Second World War, he was a general who had literally fought his way up from the ranks and a humble background. ... The Bengali insurgency was wiped out within a few weeks of Niazi's arrival in East Pakistan in April 1971. But in the continuing absence of any political settlement, his men ended up fighting a wearying war against Indian-assisted guerrillas for months and then a full-scale invasion by India from all directions, helped by a population largely hostile to the Pakistan army. By all accounts the Pakistan army performed astonishingly well against India in East Pakistan under almost impossible odds.”

In this way she begins this great piece of literature by setting up the reader to be sympathetic, with a generous heart like herself, towards the defeated, humbled and ill-fated Pakistani side. Compared to her, my pen is like a dried bamboo shoot next to a Parker but hopefully the readers of this post are also in the same position.

She begins by presenting quotes from other researchers-intellectuals, like herself,who have brushed off the number 3 million as a frivolous claim, but in her book she has used three main sources for the purpose of calculation. Let us review them one by one :

1) War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh - Richard Sisson, Leo E. Rose (1991)

Well, this book isn't exactly a statistical report but various post-war interviews and their discussions. She begins her book with profuse appreciation:

“The only book on 1971 that stands out in terms of research, analysis and objectivity is by the American scholars Richard Sisson and Leo Rose: War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh (1991). Sisson and Rose did their research in the 1970s, interviewing key players in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the United States. Most of the senior players have since passed away, making their work unique. On reading Sisson and Rose I was intrigued to find that the picture of what happened in 1971 that emerges from this work by two eminent scholars differed significantly from my childhood memories from Calcutta, which reflect the dominant narrative and public perception of 1971 in South Asia and beyond.”

They have blamed self-centered opportunistic India for the 3 million myth. And the naive foreign media kept quiet, accepting this propaganda as gospel because, as everyone knows, international politicians were really afraid of India.

“Much Indian attention during the war was directed to influencing the public and key political leaders and groups in the West, particularly the United States, to pressure their governments to adopt pro-Indian–or at least refrain from anti-Indian–policies. With the cooperation of most of the Western media, India was spectacularly successful in this endeavor. India had, of course, a good case to make in terms of Pakistani atrocities in East Pakistan, and it found the foreign press incredibly gullible in accepting, without effort at verifying, the substantial exaggerations that were appended to the list of horror stories from Dhaka.”

To prove exactly how fictitious the 3 million myth is, one of their top secret interviews is referenced :

“India set the number of victims of Pakistani atrocities at three million, and this is still the figure usually cited. We interviewed two Indian officials who had held responsible positions on the issue of Bangladesh in 1971. When questioned about the actual number of deaths in Bangladesh in 1971 attributable to the civil war, one replied "about 300,000." Then when he received a disapproving glance from his colleague, he changed this to "300,000 to 500,000.”

Given the fact that the key villain behind the 1971 unrest was India, these statements by Indian officials is enough to prove this entire 3 million issue is a lie. Still it is important to comprehend its importance as a piece of information. There's a lad with the nickname VitalStatistics who, despite being a slightly insolent atheist, understands statistics quite well. I have him added to a profile with a picture of a cute girl. I asked for his opinion via a message. His response :

Imagine Satyajit (Ray) witnessed a boat capsize resulting in the death of everyone aboard including the entire Ray family. We are interested in knowing how many people died in this disaster. If Satyajit, being an eyewitness, tells the information collector up front or writes it in a book, this is known as primary data. Regardless of how indirectly the book is cited by Soumitro/Shobboshachi whoever, the information is still primary data.

But if Satyajit tells only his worthy son Sandip and Sandip passes the information to us through a television interview, then that is known as secondary data. Because there is no proof of exactly what Satyajit said, Sandip might have forgotten bits and pieces of information or fabricated the whole thing.

But if Sandip passes the information through a secret interview to Sisson/Rose and it is then published by them, then this is known as tertiary data. This is exactly what happened here. Because high ranking government officials certainly did not analyze their fat notebooks to come up with this number. They must have heard from someone in charge of the data. This person (in charge of data) was obviously not walking around Bangladesh with notebook in hand. And any proof from any level was not found by the writers. There is no way to verify if there are blunders in all of these or if the entire event was made up.

This outcome is a little disappointing. But even though Madam Bose has mentioned this incident, she has refused to accept the numbers because they are way above the estimates we are trying to establish.

2) Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report, (1974)

After the Hamidur Rahman Commission report was published, the then Pakistani prime minister Bhutto was dissatisfied with it and had it covered up. In the year 2000, the Pakistani government declassified it. Therefore the magnitude of enthusiasm it deserves is unclear. But there are some quotable parts definitely to our advantage:

“According to the Bangladesh authorities, the Pakistan Army was responsible for killing three million Bengalis and raping 200,000 East Pakistani women. It does not need any elaborate argument to see that these figures are obviously highly exaggerated. So much damage could not have been caused by the entire strength of the Pakistan Army then stationed in East Pakistan even if it had nothing else to do. ...
Different figures were mentioned by different persons in authority but the latest statement supplied to us by the GHQ shows approximately 26,000 persons killed during the action by the Pakistan Army. This figure is based on situation reports submitted from time to time by the Eastern Command to the General Headquarters. It is possible that even these figures may contain an element of exaggeration as the lower formations may have magnified their own achievements in quelling the rebellion.
... An important consideration which has influenced us in accepting this figure as reasonably correct is the fact that the reports were sent from East Pakistan to GHQ at a time when the Army Officers in East Pakistan could have had no notion whatsoever of any accountability in this behalf.”

As this is the official Pakistani estimate, Madam Bose has accepted it with well-deserved respect. Although some troblemakers might cast doubt over the accuracy of information received by the General's headquarters during the war, at a time when Pakistani soldiers had no responsibility whatsoever to send this information, there were no restrictions on their random shooting and killing, and they had no reason to count the dead bodies.

(The Commission's report also contains some uncomfortable bits. Advisor to East Pakistani government Rao Farman Ali was quoted saying, “Harrowing tales of rape, loot, arson, harassment, and of insulting and degrading behaviour were narrated in general terms.” But such statements should not be brought to attention.)

Well, we get an alternate estimate to the one given by Bangladesh for the number of people killed but even though the number of rapes is claimed to be equally faulty, an alternate estimate is not given, would've helped though if one was given. Who knows why an estimate wasn't given...not like the Commission was any less interested in the issue of rape - there's a fiery report about how Awami League thugs raped their native 'sisters'. Did the soldiers avoid reporting their deeds out of shame? That doesn't seem right. The Commission report even talks about General Niazi ,

“The troops used to say that when the Commander (Lt. Gen. Niazi) was himself a rapist, how could they be stopped.” And again, “there is some evidence to suggest that the words and personal actions of Lt. Gen. Niazi were calculated to encourage the killings and rape." And of course there is Niazi's famous statement, “You cannot expect a man to live, fight and die in East Pakistan and go to Jhelum for sex, would you?” (Readers let us recall how Madam Bose's reverence for Niazi's character is being justified. And there is no mention of rape in her book.)

3) Behind the Myth of 3 million – M. Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury (1996)

Madam Bose has extracted an excellent piece of information from this faithful Bangladeshi writer's book : like Bhutto, Mujib also formed a Commission and as he didn't like the Commission's report, it was magically vanished - because the number of deaths reported in it was far below the 3 million he had claimed.

“Sources in Bangladesh reported that the draft report showed an overall casualty figure of 56,743. When a copy of this draft report was shown to the Prime Minister, “he lost his temper and threw it on the floor, saying in angry voice 'I have declared three million dead, and your report could not come up with three score thousand! What report you have prepared? Keep your report to yourself. What I have said once, shall prevail.” ”

But the problem is, he has not mentioned any source for this information. Madam Bose did not have that problem though - she mentioned this very book as her source. She also mentioned that after hearing about this report, she went looking for it in Bangladesh but was unable to find it.

I like this Mr.Chowdhury. He did not need to wear a veil of neutrality like Madam Bose. His book cries for our pious, faithful , separated-by-ill-fate Pakistani brothers and contains fiery verses against the selfish, imperious, insensitive Indian agent Mujib (as a result,conspirators might call the writer Pakistan-lover, Razakar-supporter). Some samples from the book :

• “few have spoken about the treatment meted out to the men and women who have either served Pakistan faithfully in the past or refused to join the conspiracy to destroy Pakistan.”

• “the Pakistan Army personnel and their families who were killed by their one time brothers and colleagues who together took oath to defend Pakistan.”

• “Apart from the systematic drive to penalize the huge number of patriotic Muslims and Buddhists who had refused to be beguiled by the Awami League/Indian machination, the Mujib Government also vouched for its determination to try and punish the members of the Pakistani Army...”

• “India needed to write the separation of East and West Pakistan in the boldest 'letters of blood'. There were a number of reasons for that - both immediate and long term. A peaceful political settlement within the framework of a united Pakistan would have deprived India of her chance of dismembering Pakistan through bitterness.”

• “The source of the American report of implied 5,000 killed at Rajarbag was, none other than the Goanese-born journalist who was later rewarded by the Mujib Government with 'a London House' for his service in putting slur on Pakistan.”

No more examples are needed to demonstrate Dr.Bose's strict adherence to principles and nature of references. Hopefully my Jihadi brothers are elated.

Now we face a problem. Some troublemakers keep spreading references from a book that supposedly supports their point.

This book is Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 by R.J. Rummel. They claim, in terms of data, this is one of the most comprehensive books on genocides in the world. This Rummel guy is a professor of Political Science in USA and takes part in some govt committees there. He is the one who coined the term "Democide", which means mass murder by govt orders. In his opinion, this is an easier definition than ‘genocide’, because even though ‘genocide’ is clearly defined by International Law, its use is often deceitful. Which is not all that bad because Madam Bose is also reluctant to label the murders in Bangladesh ‘genocide’.

As proof of Rummel’s impartiality, the troublemakers point out that he did not attack any single country with a particular agenda. In this book he dissected more than 200 regimes based on their murder etc. stats (including USA), and has labeled 141 of these guilty and 73 of these not guilty of democide. Even though he has distaste for communist regimes like the Soviet Union, China etc (not very surprising), there is no reason to think he has any special animosity against Pakistan, after all the government of USA was one of Pakistan’s biggest allies at the time of the war...

But my conviction of his impartiality completely evaporated as soon as I opened the book. He wrote in the 8th chapter named 'The Pakistani Cutthroat State',

"In 1971 the self-appointed President of Pakistan and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and his top generals prepared a careful and systematic military, economic, and political operation in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). They also planned to murder its Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They also planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India. And they planned to destroy its economic base to insure that it would be subordinate to West Pakistan for at least a generation to come. This despicable and cutthroat plan was outright genocide.

After a well-organized military buildup in East Pakistan the military launched its campaign. No more than 267 days later they had succeeded in killing perhaps 1,500,000 people, created 10,000,000 refugees who had fled to India, provoked a war with India, incited a counter-genocide of 150,000 non-Bengalis, and lost East Pakistan."

Of course the writer’s opinion is not of much importance, but the data he collected is troublesome. Compared to Madam Bose's 2-3 references, Rummel presented almost 50, including Bengali, non-Bengali and Westerners. (Although I think Madam Bose might have disregarded most of these references as Pro-Indian propaganda.)

How reliable are all these calculations? How do they hold up to scrutiny? Can we dismiss any of it? I contacted VitalStatistics via message again. He said:

The nature of his chapters are such that he provides very little personal opinion. After a small introduction, there is a summarized table (8.1) and an elaborated table (8.2) where he has organised the data, mentioning source, on various subjects like Bangladeshi murders, Bihari murders, soldiers killed during the war, sick people, refugees etc. Not only are date, year, source, footnotes given, the numbers are also organized into three columns - If the source says 'at least' then 'low', if the source says 'up to' or 'at most' then 'high', and if 'around' or 'approximate' is said then 'mid'. Since his entire book is available on the Internet, the tables from it have been colour coded and presented here for your viewing convenience.

First, lets take a look at the summarized table 8.1. It begins with data on the number of soldiers killed during the India vs Pakistan war - we do not need that. There are some other data, like murders in Balochistan, which are also unnecessary for this discussion. After that, in the blue section (line 7), under the label 'Civil War’, there is data about the number of people killed during the Liberation Force vs Pakistan Army War (details of which can be seen in table 8.2 lines 9-16). Our main interest is in the brown section (line 32) where calculations and estimates of the genocide in Bangladesh is listed. The yellow section after that (line 35) has data about the Bihari murders caused by Bangladeshis, which is the focal point of sympathy of the Pakistanis, but not within scope of this article. And the green section (line 37) contains data about the number of refugees who fled to India, which is approximately 10 million or 1 crore.

Details about the genocide are in the brown section of table 8.2, in lines 23 through 82. The data is organized in numerous sections, so that how they relate and support each other is clearly apparent. Not only the organization of data, but his method of calculation is also quite logical. For example, in a war that went on from January to December, A said 100 died in January, B said 500 died in December, C said 3000 died in the entire war and D said in the first 5 months 1000 died. So he deduced 4 monthly death rates from 4 sources - 100, 500, 250, 200. If the lowest figure is considered, total number of deaths is 1200, 6000 if the largest figure is taken into account, and the average is 3150. Although , if any source does not have correct references, or the data appears incomplete or weak or impractical, he discarded them mentioning reasons in the footnotes.

As I have mentioned before, the man worked with too many details - his long list of references (3rd page of the file) contains all the data sources Madam Bose has referred to (till the book was published). But he has only used primary sources, meaning if a news report used a book as the reference, he mentioned the book as the source, not the the news article. Sisson-Rose is mentioned here; the Anthony Mascarenhas article that Madam Bose grieved over saying people only read the part about the Pakistani atrocities but overlooked the Bihari murders, is also mentioned; the (yellow) section about Bihari murders has detailed data from white papers of Pakistani government and Kutubuddin Aziz's 'Bood and Tears' as well.

So what is his estimate? From at least 3 hundred thousands up to 3 million, a mid-value of 15 lakhs or 1.5 million. Very sad. I now understand why this book is being publicized so much. In it, the number of Hindu murders and murders before the war broke out are also much higher than what we wanted to show. Add to that the opinions of people like Richard Cash, who says, if we calculate adding the number of direct murders in the war with the number of post-war deaths of refugees/wounded/sick people, the number will reach around 3 million.

The only bright side is that there is no mention of Rummel’s book in Madam Bose's literary work, no mention of the information used to calculate the number 3 million or any of the references. Hopefully the reader has noticed, from the initial segments, that our good Madam is in the whatever-you-say-I-echo-for-I-know-nothing mode with regard to Pakistan. If you read her book, you will notice how she believes, with undeterred faith, whatever the Pakistani army officials have said in their interviews. And very appropriately expects the readers to believe her words with the same conviction.

(Footnote: The only fitting reply to this lowly conspirator Rummel is given by our Turkish brothers, who are bosom buddies with Pakistan in the political arena. The Western world claims that the genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish is another established chapter in history, and Rummel has provided data and calculations in his book as proof. As a result, the Turks were enraged and hurled insults like liar, devil, bastard etc.at Rummel. Wondering when the Pakistani brethren will go after him like that.)

Considering the volume of data and references, if not 3 million, then a figure of at least 1.5 million cannot be rejected, which Madam Bose did in her discussion. Now our last hope is to take a look at the calculations Madam Bose has performed to make the claim of 50K-100K deaths. While her overall data source situation is not all that great, if the calculations are irrefutable, then we could exploit, ahem, exhibit these numbers.

But I was extremely disappointed after reading the chapter. She starts by saying how difficult the calculations are because the sites of mass murder were not properly excavated and bodies counted, it is difficult to identify whether the dead were freedom fighters or Bangladeshi civilians or Biharis or Razakars or Pakistani soldiers, 'uneven time and space' etc. etc. Then she went on to discuss that data sources; foreigners (therefore respectable) like Drummond, Kissinger etc. are quoted to remind us how fictitious the claim of 3 million is; she even pointed out inaccuracies in simple calculations like the number of murders in Dhaka University by referring to a previous chapter on that topic, therefore reminding us that the calculation for the entire country is just as hazy. But in the end, there is no effort to sum up the numbers like Rummel!

She questioned, which of the claims between 26 thousand by Hamidur Rahman Commission and 3 million by Bangladesh, is true? (Although she has also mentioned that people may have exaggerated the number killed out of pride, meaning 26K may not even be the lowest number). Then without any calculations she claims directly:

"From the available evidence discussed in this study, it appears possible to estimate with reasonable confidence that at least 50,000–100,000 people perished in the conflict in East Pakistan/Bangladesh in 1971, including combatants and non-combatants, Bengalis and non-Bengalis, Hindus and Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis."

Huh! How did she suddenly come up with this number without any intricate statistics or complex equations? Yes she claimed, "Under the circumstances, the number 'three million' appears to be nothing more than a gigantic rumour.", but who is going to prove that her estimate is not a gigantic mess itself? And all the great statistical jargon she speaks of in the seminar, like 'confidence interval', '90% probability' etc. etc. were all a sham? How did she suddenly get from 26K, 3 million and isolated events like Dhaka University - Chuknagar murders etc, to the number 50K to 100K? Did a tiger..no wait...scavengers devour the calculations?

Now as the last hope lets examine Madam Bose's case studies closely. She claimed her book is an effort to present an impartial account of that time (1971), based on several interviews from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and through discussion of case studies of the murders of Biharis and Bangladeshis in different places like Dhaka University - Chuknagar etc.

So I opened the chapter on Chuknagar. In the calculations chapter, she has stated the following about the Chuknagar chapter, "The evidence assembled in Chapter 6 on the killing of Hindu refugees at Chuknagar indicates that a large-scale massacre–perhaps with hundreds dead–occurred there on 20 May. This is still not enough for some locals and Bangladeshi academics, who aspire to establish this incident as the ‘biggest mass killing’ of the year, by claiming–implausibly–that 10,000 people were killed there by a platoon of soldiers with just their personal weapons in a morning’s operation."

It might be of some help if she can successfully prove that the biggest mass murder claimed by the Bangladeshis is unrealistic. She said though, "by the massacre of unarmed and helpless Hindu refugees at Chuknagar, a band of twenty-five to thirty men brought lasting disgrace to an entire army and a whole nation.", but we refuse to give importance to this statement. Not because she says this at the end of every chapter on genocide, but because the honour of Pakistan and Pakistani army is not so flimsy - the thousands of murders/rapes they committed during the war, before or after Chuknagar, were not only justified but also their holy duties.

You see, whenever she asked any Pakistani army official, they all claimed they had never heard of any mass-murder at Chuknagar. This should be taken as as reliable enough evidence to conclude that nothing significant happened there. Even then, she has provided some calculations. About civilian murders, she claimed that the Pakistani army did not kill arbitrarily, "There appears to be a clear pattern in these cases of the Pakistan army targeting adult men, while sparing women and children. Female casualties in these instances appear to have been unintentional." She even proved this irrefutably using a couple of interviews. Even though one person stated that an infant was seen suckling the breast of its dead mother laying on the field, but these are just isolated cases..

One person said 50 to 60 Pakistani soldiers and some Biharis came riding on three trucks . There were 8K to 10K people in that area. Because Pakistani soldiers carefully targeted only the adult men, and because the majority present were most likely women and children who were there to cross Indian border, at most one out of every three people were targeted. And besides, others have stated that there were only 20-25 soldiers or less present there. Better if we take a low number like 30. Moreover the soldiers were said to be 'lightly armed', Madam Bose guessed that they had, at most, 1200 bullets. And even then, not all bullets hit a body - one person described he was shot at three times but only one hit him in the arm and he didn't die from it. That means the total number of deaths should be, at best, a few hundred.

Even though this is a better calculation than the others, troublemakers will find cracks. Some might dispute the number of soldiers and Biharis that arrived. And who can claim that some women and children did not die from their haphazard shooting? Are all the Pakistani soldiers as soft hearted as the hero of Meherjaan? The assumed number of bullets being the major driving force behind the sudden decrease in the number of deaths from thousands to hundreds is also a bit problematic. In the book and in interviews elsewhere, people claimed that the soldiers came prepared to attack. So if Madam Bose provided a few more details about the type of weapons and ammunition, like intimidating names of some of the light weapons, her calculations would have sounded a little more concrete. But as of now, her calculations are still unclear.

Alas, she could not conduct a single case study properly, it seems this lady is incapable of doing anything properly. I was hoping she would defy the outcry of 3 million by presenting some solid data but no luck there; she could have at least entwined some misleading words for our benefit, but there is so much carelessness that she was unable weave the lies properly it seems. Hmph! Now where do I turn to construct a proper propaganda that can establish numbers like 30K or 300K? With a foul mood, I began listening to songs on YouTube - “কাদের কুলের বউ গো তুমি কাদের কুলের বউ? (Which side are you on, lady?)”

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Thanks to Shoshtho Pandob, Himu, Arifur Rahman, Tulip and Orfias for various help.
Article download link with charts and references.

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Translated by: Afroza13 and SumonSM