In the process the real causes of the fall of Dhaka have been conveniently ignored. Dhaka was the cradle of Pakistan. The movement for Pakistan was nurtured in Bengal. Yet we hate to face the fact that the Bengalis were forced to opt out of Pakistan.
Bengalis were more in number than the entire population of the rest of the provinces of Pakistan. They have a distinct language - Bangla Bhasha. But the leaders of Pakistan inherited a nearly sacred mission of making Urdu the national language of the country.
Bengalis had no voice in the early federal government. The first Prime Minister of the country had no constituency in Pakistan. The Quad-i-Azam himself was the Governor-General and Liaquat Ali Khan, an Urdu speaking person, was the Prime Minister, a slot which in normal circumstances ought to have gone to the Bengalis with their numerical strength and the peculiar situation of their province...........................
Not only that Bengalis had no voice in the central executive their governments in the province were frequently and arbitrarily dismissed by the central government on political grounds. Some of their important leaders were publicly branded as traitors. The infamous Agartala Conspiracy case with Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, a popular political leader, as the principal accused lingered on so long that a West Pakistani judge presiding over the trial had to run for his life when an enraged Bengali mob attacked his court to vent their fury over the frame-up. ....................
It was the sacrifice of the Bengali majority that ultimately made the framing and passage of the constitution of 1956 possible. The principle of parity was devised and Bengal was to shed its majority edge in its representation to the central legislature. It was years later that this unpopular scheme was undone by Gen. Yahya Khan reverting to the principle of one-man one vote. But the results of the 1970 election based on this formula was most desirable from the point of view of Bengali leadership. They received the requisite majority to from a government at the center.
It was a shock to those leaders in West Pakistan who had traditionally opposed any nation of Bengali domination. The military ruler also dithered in transferring power to Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the majority party. ................................
Apart from the political factors leading to the dismemberment of Pakistan, there is an extremely ugly side to our social behavior, which contributed substantially to the alienation of the East Pakistanis. Brown sahibs from West Pakistan replaced the white sahibs in managing the rich tea estates of Bengal. They practiced the worst type of apartheid against the Bengalis working on such estates. They treated them like slaves. Bureaucrats from Punjab were bullies and they maltreated the general public in East Pakistan as they do in their own province."
The H.R. Commission tried to probe into some allegations generally made about the excess committed by the Pakistani Army. But brooming the surface of Pandora's box, they were so much horrified that they did not dare to go into the deep with common allegations. They dealt above matter with utter lightness and allowed most of the criminals to escape interrogation by making some of the offenders as witness. They also acquitted majority of criminals by not bringing them under interrogation and let loosed some by not forming proper charges and weakened the cases by not seeking strong evidences from their own troops at JCO, NCO level and not by elucidating reports sent by the civil authority and intelligence through 9 months of war.
The army cliques of Pakistan allowed Gen. Farman Ali & Gen. Tikka Khan and a few others to make their collars white and clean their hand. However the allegations which were considered for review and the substances of evidence in favor and against placed before the commission, reveals many truth, which were tried to be abated in HRC supplementary report.
According to the allegations generally made, the excesses as per H.R.C report committed by the Pakistani Army fall into the following categories:-
Excessive use of force and fire power in Dacca during the night of the 25th and 26th of March 1971 when the military operation was launched. b) Senseless and wanton arson and killings in the countryside during the course of the "sweeping operations" following the military action. c) Killing of intellectuals and professionals like doctors, engineers, etc and burying them in mass graves not only during early phases of the military action but also during the critical days of the war in December 1971. d) Killing of Bengali Officers and men of the units of the East Bengal Regiment, East Pakistan Rifles and the East Pakistan Police Force in the process of disarming them, or on pretence of quelling their rebellion. e) Killing of East Pakistani civilian officers, businessmen and industrialists, or their mysterious disappearance from their homes by or at the instance of Army Officers performing Martial Law duties. f) Raping of a large number of East Pakistani women by the officers and men of the Pakistan army as a deliberate act of revenge, retaliation and torture. g) Deliberate killing of members of the Hindu minority.
In view of the seriousness of the allegations, some of the repatriated officers of Pakistan army were interrogated considering the " international impact" of the allegations as well as the popping up horrifying evidences of the crime. It was done only by considering the future of Pakistan army and the fundamental importance of the matter from the point of view of moral and mental discipline of the Pakistan army in the prospect of its future.