When President Yahya Khan, the military dictator of Pakistan, decided to massacre the Bengalis of East Pakistan for daring to demand regional autonomy, the world's tragic ignorance about the country was a factor of inestimable value to him. Since there were comparatively few people who knew or cared about the people of East Pakistan, fewer still would care how many he massacred. No journalists would be permitted to see what he was doing. The massacres would take place quietly, as though in some remote and unknown region like the North West Frontier Province, where no news trickles out. All the advantages were on his side. The American government and the Chinese government were supporting him with armaments and advisers; he had unlimited funds at his disposal, a large army, a powerful propaganda machine, and the active sympathy of the some of the most powerful men on earth. Dr. Kissinger had only unstinted praise for him, President Nixon admired him, and Chairman Mao Tse?tung gave him a medal. There seemed to be no reason why he should not succeed in massacring as many Bengalis as he wished. He thought that three million Bengali dead would be a sufficient punishment. Thereafter the Bengalis would stop asking for regional autonomy and become the docile slaves of his dictatorship.
It did not happen like that. The Bengalis fought back, the journalists succeeded in entering the unknown country and thus making it known to the outside world, and the Indian Army marched in to deliver the coup de race to an army of massacre's. For the first time in our generation a powerful military dictatorship had been overthrown. This was a historical event of the first magnitude, for it demonstrated that determined men can always destroy a military dictatorship, the most corrupt and the most evil form of government ever instituted. It offered hope to a world, which has lived too long under the threat of military despotism, and gave no comfort to the dictators. What happened in Bangla Desh can happen elsewhere: both the massacres, and the retribution.
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Robert Payne visted India and Bangladesh in March and April 1972 and documented the painful birth of the nation in his book 'MASSACRE'