In Yunus’ Bangladesh, mad Islamist chant “India go back” outside Indian missions in Dhaka, and Indian diplomats faced stone pelting. These politically motivated, rabid mobs are those that do not understand that once there was a different Bangladesh. Once, there was a different Bangladesh – before Hindus were lynched or torched in streets as RAW agents!
Bangladesh was a nation born in India’s arms. A nation delivered at India’s expense – financially, militarily, morally. Yet the story of 1971 is rejected in the Razakar’s selective memory in Dhaka. They reject Mujibur Rehman, and with him, the suffering of their own compatriots. They deny the truth of the brutality and the war. Yet, it was India that paid the bill for the birth of Bangladesh – in terms of economic, human, and emotional costs.
Yunus’ Bangladesh refuses to acknowledge its history and its debt to bharat.
The Cost of Compassion: How India Fed Bangladesh
While the atrocities under the rule of Razakar and the Pakistani Army burnt the innocent, ten million refugees crossed into India in 1971. They fled Pakistani butchery and suppression of individual rights. Most were Bengali Hindus, yet some were Muslims too. However, all were starving. With two wars eroding its meagre resources, the young India was not a rich country.
At the time, Bharat was barely managing our own food shortages – Yet we opened the border, opened our homes, and opened our wallets.
History records the numbers:
- A special 5-paise levy on almost every postal article
- Cinema tickets cost 25 paise more
- Bus fares rose by a small fraction
- A 2.5% surcharge on advance income tax
- Customs and excise duties raised
This wasn’t to fuel a war or enrich a nation. This was not a charity by the elite; instead, it was every Indian citizen contributing to feed the hungry Bangladesh citizens under its wing. Millions of Indians paid as village postmen became unwilling tax collectors of history.
India collected a total revenue across sectors of around ₹135 crore per year at the time – when India’s per capita income was at near-starvation levels. Still, India sheltered refugees, built camps, fed children, and buried the dead.
And this bill, a labor of compassion, was never sent to Dhaka – Indians paid willingly to feed the people that were once their own!
Independence on Credit: India Fought a War Bangladesh Could Never Pay For
India did what international diplomacy failed to do. It intervened militarily.
- Gave voice to those who wanted to repel the Pakistani oppression.
- India’s military support faced sanctions from the US and UK.
- Nearly 4000 Indian soldiers lost their lives, and 10,000 were wounded in the war that burned India in both the east and west.
- Soviet vetoes saved us from diplomatic strangulation.
- Indian soldiers died to liberate someone else’s homeland.
After victory, India could have annexed East Pakistan to reunite Bengal – It had historical, strategic, and economic bargaining power.
But India didn’t – Because India did not want land – it wanted peace and harmony.
Ironically, many who demand “freedom from India” today descend from political factions tied to Direct Action Day violence in 1946. These very same Golams’ illicit progeny of rape and violence are the very forces that opposed the separatism that led to the independence of Bangladesh. Yet India looked beyond history and chose humanity.
Bharat’s humanity is being repaid today with hate slogans and diplomatic vandalism – Pakistan enabled Jamaati groups are back in action as the nation and its people forget how they gained Independence from a dictatorial, oppressive force.
A Debt of Gratitude Turned into Propaganda
Today’s Bangladesh chants anti-India rhetoric as if history began yesterday.
The Razakar mindset resurfaces in the Yunus-era Bangladesh. Islamists rule the streets. Hindu minorities are lynched, burned, and driven from land. Indian diplomats are threatened and besieged.
“We shall cut off the Seven Sisters,” they threaten while they blame India for every murder – whether orchestrated by factional Islamists or foreign handlers.
Today, the hand that fed a starving Bangladeshi refugees is recast as an invader. Bharat, which sheltered Bangladesh’s 10 million people, is demonized. The nation whose citizens paid extra paise to keep Bangladeshis alive is villainized.
Bangladesh exists because India acted, Indians paid, and Indian soldiers died.
No Gulf donor funded the refugee camps. And no Western nation sent grain ships. No Islamic bloc intervened militarily to stop the Pakistanis as they raped the mothers and sisters of Bangladesh.
The Indian public – Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Muslim – paid the cost through taxes, tickets, stamps, and sacrifices. In return, India asks for neither tribute nor thanks – only truth and peace at its borders.
To deny india’s role and sacrifice is historical theft, to distort it is moral bankruptcy, and to repay compassion with hostility is betrayal.
The dream of 1971 was freedom from Pakistani brutality. Not freedom from gratitude or freedom to erase history or freedom to export jihad across borders.
Bangladesh owes itself the honesty to say: We survived because India stepped in.
And India must say firmly to this new, ungrateful Bangladesh: Compassion cannot be mistaken for weakness – it never was and shall never be!
