The Razakars

The Razakars.....should be specially helpful as members of rural communities, who can identify guerrillas (freedom fighters)", an army officer (Pakistan) said...The government says it has already recruited more than 22,000 Razakars of a planned force of 35,000.'-New York Times, July 30, 1971 

' To help control of Bengali population, the army has been setting up a network of peace committees superimposed upon the normal civil administration, which the army cannot fully rely upon. Peace committee members are drawn from .....Beharis and from the Muslim Leagues and Jamat-e-Islami. The peace committees serve as the agent of army, informing on civil administration as well as on general populace. They are also in charge of confiscating and redistribution of shops and lands from Hindu and pro-independence Bengalis. The peace committee also recruits Razakars......many of them are common criminals who have thrown their lots with the (Pakistan) army.-The Wall Street Jornal, July 27,1971.

I think, perhaps you remember, Fazlul Kader Chowdhiury ...an honorable person, Sabur Khan, Monayem Khan, Maulabhi Farid Khan of Technaf.... all of them were pro-'Pakistan. They used to see me. All of them". - Niazi "The Betrayal of East Pakistan"

The term Razakar is originally derived from an Arabic word meaning volunteer. In the context of Islamic history Razakars were volunteers to defend or support Islam. But in Bangladeshi context Razakar means traitors or collaborators of the Paki army who helped them, in our liberation war in 1971, in identifying and killing millions of Bangalees involved in or even supporting the liberation war.  The Razakars were mainly the members of Muslim league, Jamat-e-Islam and other Islamic groups and factions. During the liberation war the razakars:

1. provided intelligence against the freedom fighters, the supporters and sympathizers of the war
2. abducted, arrested and eventually killed them with the help of the Paki troops and party cadres in various army, concentration camps and killings zones
3. burnt their houses and looted their properties
4. kidnapped thousands of Bangalee women and trafficked them to various Paki military camps
5. raped and molested 450, 000 Bangalee women.

f.       How the Razkars were created: Politically Razakar forces were created by the Paki military intelligence (ISI-Inter Services Intelligence, and possibly with active support from CIA) and they were the predecessors of today’s  Talibans. Members of both the forces, Razakars and Talibans, were recruited, trained and inducted in the same process. They were recruited from lower middle class, semi illiterate, Muslim families mostly from madrasa (parochial Islamic institutes) background. After recruitment they were inducted to Maududi’s ideology which prescribes extermination of non-Muslims and liberals. The razakar force was created to serve as a tool of Paki establishment to systematically turn East Bangla (as with Afghanistan) into a mere colony. The first step for the Paki establishment was to destroy in order to take over the textile industries. They did it in 1964 by means of a series of communal riots, incited by the activists of Muslim league and other Islamic parties, forcing the Bangalee Hindu textile owners to migrate. West Pakistani capitalists, not a single Bangalee, took over all the textile mills: the Adamjees, the Bawanis and the Ispahanis. Although missed out on the big bites, the Muslim leaguer and Jamati thugs, however, received the leftovers: the properties (residential and shops) left by the middle class Hindu Bangalees.

g.      Once the Bangalee elites were kicked out, razakars were deployed to force out the educated Hindu middle class. The reasons were: Hindu Bangalees were politically conscious and they were the patrons of democracy and liberalism in East Bangla. Communist party where mainly the highly educated and patriotic Hindus congregated were banned and the members were brutally repressed by the police forces (they were even killed in jail). Paki politicians knew very well that they could not fool the Bangalees as easily as they could the Pakis. The Hindu Bangalees were highly competent in parliamentary politics, a competence they learned through anti British movement. The shrewd Paki politicians knew that the only way to counter Bangalees politically was to rid of the Hindu middle class by means of Islamic ideology. For this the razakars came in very handy. They again instigated the common people against the malauns (the heathens, Hindus). Communal riots surged, Hindu houses burnt and women kidnapped. All the decent Hindu families left East Bangla except for the working class and a few die hard patriots like Dhirendra Nath Datta who refused to leave his motherland even for his life. It was a great opportunity for the Muslim Leaguers and razakars. They not only occupied the Hindu assets and properties but also took over their jobs, professions and trades. The janitors of Hindu trading houses became the owners of the business, 6^th grade pass peon of schools became the headmaster and that of college became lecturers and principals. The Hindus fought the British for their independence but kicked out of their motherland by the Muslim leaguers and razakars who had no contribution in anti British movement. What an irony of fate. How horrible Islam as an ideology.

 

h.     

 Towards the end of the liberation war, the razakars realizing that they could not stop the liberation (thanks to Russian and Indian support and extraordinary leadership of Tajuddin Ahmed) of Bangladesh, inflicted the deadliest blow against the emergent nation: they killed the top Bangalee intellectuals and professionals. The blueprint for the elimination of Bangalee intellectuals was done even before the start of the war. The blueprint was done by the ISI headed by its Eastern  commander Gen Rao Forman Ali in collaboration with the top Jamati / Muslim League leaders (see photo on Genocide page).

i.        The Razakars were behind the killing of a total number of 3 million Bangalees and rape and molestation of 450, 000 Bangalee women. After independence the Awami league Government arrested most of them. But due to political pressures from both home (Maulana Bhasani) and abroad (USA, all the Middle Eastern countries led by Saudi Arabia) Sheikh Mujib released the minor Razakars from imprisonment under general amnesty. But Sheikh Mujib never forgave the top Razakars. The leader of Jamat-e-Islam Go-Azam’s citizenship was revoked. Motya and other top leaders were in jail under trial. After the assassination of Mujib, the whole political scenario was changed. Zia granted Go-Azam Bangladeshi citizenship, released all the Razakars imprisoned on various criminal charges and by amending the constitution allowed them to be involved in politics (Mujib banned communal politics). Not only that under the banner of his new party BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) he rehabilitated all the notorious Razakars and  Muslim Leaguers (awarded premiership to a notorious razakar Shah Aziz)

j.      

  Following Zia’s lead his successor Ershad, in the midst of his massive screw ups, kept pampering the Razakars and the Muslim leaguers. As a result of fifteen years of pampering the once loathed Razakars now became the most powerful people of Bangladesh, a country ironically they fought against. Being in power they deliberately destroyed (while the BNP leaders were busy stealing the public money to get rich) the main political / social institutions of Bangladesh and rewrote the history of our liberation war. The 71 episode is banished from the history texts of Bangladeshi schools. Their mentor Zia (an ordinary major in 1971 who even helped Pakis in clearing the weapons later used to gun down Bangalees and changed side only when he realized he was to be disposed after the weapons were cleared) is portrayed as the leader of the liberation war and Mujib is condemned as a traitor who betrayed the infamous Lahore Convention- root of all political evils in Indian sub continent.

k.       

Since 1947, the razakars have been doing the same thing again and again: they are using Islamic ideology to counter democracy and liberalism; with their usual recourse to fascism and violence they are keeping social progress at bay (Islam represents feudalism not capitalism, although created by USA specially the CIA, Bin Laden hates America), they are indirectly helping the capitalist countries to keep Muslim countries as markets.

l.         

On behalf of the 3 million Bangalees who gave their lives for the liberation war and 450, 000 Bangalee women, raped and molested by the Pakis and the Razakars, Muktadhara demands the trial of all the war criminals and Razakars  of Bangladesh liberation war.

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General Yahya Khan

General Yahya was the president of Pakistan in 1970. He was supposed to hand the political power over to the winner of the national election of 1970: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as his Awami league won 162 seats out of 168 seats, more than double of his west Pakistani counterpart Bhutto. Sheikh Mujib's unprecedented victory in the general election was a crushing blow to the Panjabi military -feudal axis. So they involved in a pact known as Larkana Conspiracy to shut the Bangalees by violent massacre. In this very meeting the military macho man and the Pak feudal lord planned to implement  Shahibjada Yakub's notorious Operation Blitz on the Bangalees. They modified the plan and rendered it more destructive ( to crush the Bangalee uprising forever) and renamed it Operation Searchlight. To implement Operation Searchlight they (Bhutto and Yahya) recruited  (as both Gen Yakub and Admiral Ahsan recommended political instead of military measures to deal with the victory of the Bangalees in general election) two of their two most extremely notorious generals: General Tikka and General Niazi.

According to the plan Yahya, since early February, 1971, secretly sent Pakistani troops to Dhaka and prepared for the final crack down. When the preparation was complete, Yahya dismissed the constituent assembly. On March 25, after giving full instruction for mass killing of the inhabitants of Dhaka, at about 11 pm that night Yahya secretly left Dhaka. He went to Dhaka airport in a private car, completely unescorted in fear of identification by the airport officials. He was scared that Indian air force may stop him in the air. But Group Captain AR Khandaker saw Yahya sneaking out of the country in the dead of the night. 
Soon after Yahya's departure, the Pakistani army crashed down Dhaka city. Their main target was to devastate the center of Bangalee political strength: student halls of Dhaka university and the top leaders and intellectuals involved in nationalist movement. They crashed the whole of Dhaka city by killing thousands of innocent civilians and poor people on the street (rickshaw pullers, homeless people, day laborers, street kids etc). The casualties were more than 50, 000. They arrested Bangabondhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from his resident and took him to Pakistan. Yahya's officers also looked for other top leaders of Awami league specially Tajuddin Ahmed. But they could not find them as they, apprehensive of Pakistani military junta's next move, disappeared from their residences. Their failure to capture top Awami leaguers fueled their hatred against Bangalees and they appeased their avenging impulses by killing them in multitudes. 

After 25 March, the Dhaka crack down night, the devastation of Bangladesh topped the personal agenda of Yahya. He used all means at his disposal to crash down the Bangalees. The intensity of his personal hatred against Bangladesh rules out the " liability theory" adopted by Pakistani bureaucrats and academics to ditch, resource less but politically less obliging, Bangladesh and Bangalees. Even when the victory of the Bangladesh liberation forces became obvious, in September, 1971, Yahya manipulated all his international connections to destroy Bangladesh:

1. Exhausted his connection with Kissinger/Nixon duo to get massive arms supply from the US and finally, on the eve of the victory, to demonstrate US nuclear threat to counter Bangladesh-India alliance, Yahya managed to bring US Seventh Fleet to crush the independence of Bangladesh.   
2. He used his Chinese connection against Bangladesh-India alliance.
3. When Yahya finally realized his absolute defeat in the war, he used his loyal military officers to kill the Bangalee intellectuals to spiritually cripple Bangladesh for centuries. 

Yahya's plan to eliminate the intellectuals further reinforces the fact that the Pakistani military junta did not want to ditch Bangladesh only, they intended the total destruction of Bangladesh and absolute extinction of the Bangalee race as reflected in Tikka's war cry: " I want land only, not people."