Intellectuals murdered

A war on minds

From the first night of the war, the people who taught, wrote, healed and spoke for Bengali society were targets. On 25 March 1971, during Operation Searchlight, professors, doctors and journalists were taken from their homes and killed. Throughout the nine months, more were abducted, tortured and murdered. Wikipedia describes these killings as part of the Bangladesh genocide.

14 December 1971

By mid-December, Pakistan's defeat was only days away. In those last days, the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators, above all the Al-Badr militia, made a final attempt to destroy the educated leadership of the nation about to be born.

On 14 December, more than 200 Bengali intellectuals, including professors, journalists, doctors, artists, engineers and writers, were seized from their homes in Dhaka. They were blindfolded and taken to torture cells in Mirpur, Mohammadpur, Rajarbagh and other parts of the city. They were later executed in mass killings, notably at Rayerbazar and Mirpur. Among the victims were the novelist and journalist Shahidullah Kaiser and the playwright and scholar Munier Chowdhury.

Remembering the names

The killings of 1971 took many of the country's finest minds, among them Dhaka University professors Govinda Chandra Dev, Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, Mufazzal Haider Chaudhury and Anwar Pasha; the physicians Mohammed Fazle Rabbee and Alim Chowdhury; the journalists Selina Parvin and Nizamuddin Ahmed; the musician and lyricist Altaf Mahmud; the politician Dhirendranath Datta; and many more.

A list left behind

After independence, a list of Bengali intellectuals was found in a diary left behind at the Governor's House by Major General Rao Farman Ali, a senior Pakistani officer. He later admitted such a list existed, but denied it was meant for killing.

Why it matters

The murder of the intellectuals was meant to leave the new country without teachers, thinkers and voices. Bangladesh remembers them every year on 14 December, Martyred Intellectuals Day, Shaheed Buddhijibi Dibosh.