BANGLADESH SALUTES INDIRA GANDHI

  BANGLADESH SALUTES 
        INDIRA GANDHI

   Bangladesh celebrating its 40th independence anniversary this year. The Sheikh Hasina government decided to confer the Banglades swadhinata Sammanona on Indira Gandhi posthumously for her" outstanding contribution to the countries independence from Pakistan.
  The honour will be cremonially handed over to the Indian National Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, also the daughter in law of Indira Gandhi, by president Zillur Rahman at Bangabhaban on July 25.
   Under Indira Gandhi's able leadership, India provided shelter,food and medicine to about 10 million people who fled their homes to the neighbouring west Bengal, Tripura, Meghalaya and Assam. the 1971, war was the culmination of a long drawn struggle by the people of East Pakistan who were secular despite being religious. The anti Pakistan sentiment surfaced soon after partition in 1947. In 1970, in the first-ever general election held in Pakistan people over whelmingly voted for the Awami League and its leader Sheikh Mujibur Rehman,who has become the symbol of freedom for the Bengalis. The Pakistani army launched a brutal crack down in Dhaka on March 26,1971, Pakistani military arrested to Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. Mujibur asked his people to continue the fight till the last Pakistani army was driven away from Bangladesh.

  President Yaahyakhan and his military commanders committed atrocities on unarmed civilians,killing them in thousands, Bengali women were raped and their houses set on fire. The unprecedented atrocities led to mass exodus to India, where an estimated 10 million people took refuge for nine months.
   India,under Indira Gandhi,opens its eastern borders allowing streams of refugees to take shelter. Pakistani troops, aided by their local Islamist collaborators three million people raped over 300,000 women, destroyed innumerable homes, and forced millions more to leave their homesteads during the bloody nine months war.
   Bangladesh will build a memorial soon in honour of the Indian soldiers who lost their lives fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Bangladesh freedom fighters.



                                                    Prof. John Kurakar