Mohendro Adhikary
Cinematographer: Naeem Mohaiemen
Duration: 00:33:58; Aspect Ratio: 1.364:1; Hue: 38.622; Saturation: 0.015; Lightness: 0.318; Volume: 0.144; Cuts per Minute: 0.147; Words per Minute: 124.507
Summary: Interview starts with breakdown of talks between Mujib and Yahya in March 1971, and cancelling of national assembly. Clouds of war.
1971 Bangladesh Liberation War
1971 Pakistani Army Crackdown
Balurghat, Dakshin Dinajpur
Binodpur, Rajshahi
Bosepara, Rajshahi
Carmichael College, Rangpur
Dahiya, Natore
Dangi Camp, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri
Dhaka
Dighapatia zamindarbari
Hatiandaha, Natore
Hili, Dinajpur
India
Kolom, Natore
Mahiganj, Rangpur
Mahishmari, Natore
Mohendro Adhikary was a college professor from Rangpur who during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War was forced into hiding with his wife due to his Hindu identity. He speaks of the time he and his wife were in hiding during the war and the dangers they and their shelter-givers faced.
Panchagarh
Rajshahi
Rajshahi College
Rangpur
Shahzadpur
Uttara Ganabhavan, Natore
"Come out of your homes! Come on to the streets! etc."
I mean, it was in solidarity with Sheikh Mujib's speech.
7th March Speech of Sheikh Mujib
"How dare Bhutto say this! Yahya Khan is refusing to hand over power due to his ill-advice."
(Zulfikar Ali) Bhutto
Yahya Khan
It was a terrible situation. I can't describe it!
I somehow walked down to the college.
There was no rickshaw. They were too afraid to come out.
They thought there would be firing right then.
Perhaps Section 144 would be imposed, or curfew would be prescribed
Section 144
or maybe the army is coming down now.
The Punjabi army would come out of the cantonment any moment, such was the situation.
When I reached my college,
my colleagues said to me, "Didn't you hear the news?"
"What news?" I asked.
"The formation of the National Assembly has been postponed indefinitely. Terrible situation!"
national assembly
"People are pouring into the street to protest."
"They are very much agitated."
Anyway, I came back.
The first two weeks in March were frightening.
After the 25th March massacre took place in Dhaka,
even then we couldn't grasp the situation.
My landlord was a forever bachelor.
He was above 70 then.
He still had a job here.
There was a renowned advocate Birendra Nath Sarkar who was killed on 26th or 27th of March.
Birendranath Sarker
Birendra Nath Sarkar.
*speaking to the person on his left*
You've met him, right?
He lived near Aloka Cinema Hall.
He was known as Biren Sarkar.
I used to be around sometimes.
Sometimes, I listened to their discussions.
They were much senior to me.
They used to discuss politics.
Biren Sarkar babu...oh, yes!
Before that, curfew was clamped on Rajshahi after the 25th March incident.
curfew
Hindu persecution
Hindus were not yet targeted then.
It was later realized
when the army began torturing people in the Hindu majority villages.
Everyone realized then that although generally they were targeting everyone
but particularly one community was being tortured more.
We realized this later. Anyway...
Q: But not at an alarming rate?
No.
At that time they were killing their political opponents—Awami League and NAP whether they were Hindus or Muslims.
Awami League
As long as one is Bengali, they are fair game.
Perhaps that was the major factor [in their crackdown].
Maybe later they changed their policy and added a communal color.
Through the window, I saw a bloodied corpse being carted down the street.
Advocate Sheetal Chakraborty was originally from the Kolom village.
He lived in a rented house and carried out his legal practice from there.
He was elderly, older than us by many years.
Even he did not consider it safe to stay in Natore town any more.
Thinking so, he and a trader named Jyotish Saha...
He had three grown-up daughters and two sons.
Sheetal babu, too had two-three daughters of marriageable age, two sons and his wife.
He was a neighbor of my colleague, Arun babu. They lived beside a river.
A small river.
Q: Why did he consider it unsafe?
In the town, the army had attacked with reinforcements.
Q: But not for looting?
No, it wasn't due to looting.
The Army and Biharis were preparing to launch their assault.
Bihari
In some places, they kidnapped and killed people. Many weren't found.
I mean to say, the conflict was mainly in towns and cities.
They thought they would be safe in the village.
[cut] We used to sleep on the floor.
The looting, I think, was to create terror.
looting
I took shelter that night at...
displacement
The looters won't get anything from us.
We hadn't taken anything with us except a few clothes in a leather suitcase.
and the 60 taka I just mentioned.
But they could beat us.
Fearing this, my wife and I took shelter in the house of a poor local fisherman named Subal Haldar.
I must acknowledge that some gentlemen in the village supported and inspired courage in me so much.
We'd been living in Arun babu's house for a month
and seeing it was becoming a burden for the man,
My wife and I...There's a school mess (hostel) there
of Kolom High School built on a deserted zamindaar mansion.
The students made that a mess (hostel) to live there.
We along with some other families took shelter there.
Because it had been a burden on Arun babu for a month.
He had been housing and feeding us, it's not right.
But how to survive?
My wife was then in an advanced stage of pregnancy.
pregnancy
I was in a terrible situation.
She wasn't getting proper medical attention.
Her feet were swelling.
She should've been under constant [medical] check-up.
I became puzzled.
Seeing my situation, a local primary school teacher called Nuru Bhai, we used to call him...
He died recently of a stroke.
And a tailor called Ahmed, I just met up with him a few days back...
Seeing me in this terrible situation, Mr. Ahmed and his nephew Safi used to bring chaal-daal and everything else for us.
Chaal-daal, fuel and matchsticks.
Mr. Ahmed even stitched a blouse for my wife.
He also gave me a shirt.
You can't imagine how people came forward to help in other people's distress.
They weren't your relatives, or anything.
They saw my poor situation and felt sorry for me.
With that "oh, those poor people!" feeling, they brought all essentials to us.
One cannot forget this kind of help.
[cut] Some eight-ten days passed like this.
But meanwhile, someone had stolen the clothes we'd hung up to dry. That was another problem.
We had only one set of clothes left.
If we had told the people who provided us food they would have gotten us clothes, but we couldn't do that.
We hit our problems from them.
One day, I heard shouts from Sheetal Chakraborty's house.
looting
At least 15-20 people were making an uproar.
Those were also cries for help.
I realized that the rumors we'd heard during the day were, in fact, true.
The house was looted.
The businessman, Jyotish Saha, who was also staying there, had stuffed a pillow with money.
The looters took away the pillow.
They became paupers in a moment.
Then on the 7th of May...
Q: Who committed the loot?
The looters came from the neighboring village.
They weren't motivated by the idea of liberation or opposition to it.
They just made use of the lawless situation.
They didn't have any kind of political consciousness.
They were basically looters.
They didn't have any political awareness. They just wanted to get rich through dishonest means.
Those type of people. Perhaps they beat up the residents and looted all of their belongings.
They didn't kill anybody though.
But the gravest incident occurred on 7th of May.
Army crackdown
By that time, the freedom fighters (muktijoddha) had arrived at the village.
Freedom fighters
The army had set up camp at Dighapatia zamindar palace, now Uttara Banga Bhavan.
Military coming from the cities made camp there.
Pro-liberation people like I mentioned Mr. Badruzzaman just now, a school headmaster who was training muktijoddhas (freedom fighters) in his village,
how to make weapons etc. were rounded up from various places and butchered in the camp.
A man, supposedly a Council Muslim League member, informed them that many freedom fighters were receiving training in Kolom village.
And that a large number enlisted as muktijoddhas (freedom fighters).
And that many Hindu families from Natore town had also taken refuge there.
Hindu families
"Malaun"
So, the soldiers landed in two or three jeeps.
It was eight or nine in the morning. We didn't know yet.
We were living in the hostel with a couple of families.
My wife was boiling rice in an earthen pot on a fire made with dry coconut leaves.
One calls it rice but we had to make do.
So, the rice was almost cooked.
At that moment, there was a sound of gunfire.
The military has finally come!
We, all the families, began to flee, confused.
We didn't know where to go or which direction we were running towards.
Someone came running and told us they had killed some people in a brush fire.
The army was at the marketplace.
We were busy fleeing, leaving behind the rice and everything else.
My wife was in an advanced stage of pregnancy and not in a condition to run.
There was a lawyer, Bhulu Siddhanta. He was a renowned lawyer of Natore. He is no longer alive.
A very senior person. His wife and son were there at that time, but he could not be traced.
I used to call his wife "auntie".
I took hold of her and my wife and ran desperately along the shadow of a bamboo grove.
Machine gun bullets were flying above us.
Had one of the bullets flew a little lower and penetrated the bamboo groves,
it could have pierced our flesh. But fortunately, it didn't. We weren't killed.
We ran four miles like that.
Sometimes we had to stop and take rest. It wasn't possible to run at a stretch in my life.
After four miles, we came across a river.
I didn't know how to swim. My wife knew, but her health wouldn't permit her.
The water in the river was deep.
Many people were crossing on boats.
They wanted to escape the firing.
We requested a boatman to take us to the other side.
My wife was wearing a spot of vermilion on her forehead and conch-shell bangles [as a Hindu married woman].
It made the boatman furious. He hurled a slur at her.
*laughs*
He called her Malaun.
"I hope you die."
I knew they couldn't be blamed for that. They were brainwashed.
But I thought it wouldn't have been safe.
We hired another boat and crossed the river.
It was a narrow river, but it had a strong current.
The monsoon rain had just come and the rivers were swelling up.
After crossing the river we had to wade through the mud for about a mile.
It was a lake. Our legs were getting stuck.
My wife almost fainted.
After that...
Q: The other woman with you too?
Yes, the older woman was with us.
But I couldn't notice which boat the old woman had taken.
We were separated.
I didn't notice which boat the lawyer's son, Haltush, got into with his mother.
After trekking for a mile, we took shelter on high land amid a bamboo grove.
And I was surprised to see that Sheetalbabu and Bhulubabu were both there with their families.
Sheetalbabu belonged to the area. He said he had an influential client in that village.
He would inform him and suggested that we all put up in his client's house for the time being.
Everyone's attires were muddied.
Someone was sent to inform him and he came to us.
Looked like he was working in his field. He came straight from there, I suppose.
He cried upon seeing us.
*speaking to the person to his left*
Do you know who I'm speaking of?
Monjur's father!
From the Botany department. Mostafa's father.
He came. He spoke to Mr. Sheetal, "Babu, what a state you're in!"
"What happened? We heard there was gun firing in your village."
He confirmed that a lot of people were killed in Kolom.
"In any case, Mr. Azhaar, please save the rest of us."
"We'll all have some water and food. We haven't eaten in a long time."
He told us, "Alright. You'll die if we die."
harboring
He took 15-20 of us to his home.
After reaching there, we freshened ourselves up.
Then we had puffed rice together in a big bowl.
He arranged for our meals in the meantime.
He was well-off.
We stayed at his house, but after a week, we felt it was too much of a burden for him.
15-20 people were having lunch and dinner together. He already had 3 wives and a lot of children.
Though he was well-off, it was not easy to provide food for so many people.
It was as if each meal was a picnic.
Then Sheetalbabu suggested that we stay there
and he and his family would move to the house of another client a little further away.
"Let us disperse", he said.
So, he left, but Jyotish Saha stayed.
He had come to stay there within a few days.
The businessman I mentioned earlier whose money-pillow was looted at Sheetal babu's house.
His family and mine remained there.
One day, one of his brother-in-laws came and offered to take my wife and me to his home.
"You're having problems with so many people around. Let me take them."
Mr. Azhaar wasn't willing to let us go. He said, "We'll all suffer together".
But the brother-in-law insisted.
So, we shifted to the house of Feroz-ul-Islam.
I used to call him mama (uncle) though we were about the same age.
Since I used to call Mr. Azhaar chacha (uncle) and he was his brother-in-law.
The sad news is...Mr. Azhaar, my shelter-giver, was a professor at Kolom College then.
Now, he's at the last stage of his life with bone cancer admitted to Pongu hospital.
Q: In Dhaka?
Dhaka, yes. I returned from Dhaka two days ago.
I went to see him.
If his situation worsens, I will have to go again in the next couple of days.
I was just informing you of his current whereabouts.
So, we went to stay with him.
A few days later, we heard that...there was the village of Dahiya surrounded by a lake 4 miles away from us.
Hindu village
It was a Hindu-majority village.
Most of the Hindus in that village had gone to India.
Hindus were pouring in at the nearby Hindu-majority Dahiya village.
Hindus of other areas were pouring in there.
And they've been crossing the Hili border to reach Balurghat after trekking for five to eight days.
However, they had to cross the Natore-Bogra road.
There was a heavy monsoon that year.
Q: Which month was it?
It was 1971, in the first week of June.
Hearing that, my wife became restless.
She believed her parents as well as mine had meanwhile crossed over to India
and were living safely with their relatives.
So we must go too.
Partly because of her pressure, I told my host to take us to that village
so that we could join the other Hindus and relieve him of his burden.
And it was also not safe for him to keep us.
Q: Because if they were seen giving shelter to Hindu families they would be in danger.
Yes, this happened. I'll tell you later.
I have a small incident to share.
[cut] They wanted to go to India.
The Punjabi Army suspected they might come back as militants after receiving training in India.
So, they must eradicate that possibility by killing them.
Perhaps they thought this.
At that time we heard one group consisted of 15-20 people, a couple of Hindu families together.
I don't know the actual figure, but an incident took place indeed.
After hearing this, none of the 150-200 people who had started for the border had the nerves to carry on
and we came back to the village of Dahiya.
A person named Binoy Ghosh from Dahiya village used to go to buy milk to Mahishmari village
(where we were staying earlier).
He informed the villagers that those who had gathered in Dahiya had come back.
From him, my earlier host Feroz-ul-Islam guessed that we, too, had come back.
firouz al-islam
He came to Dahiya immediately with a boat and witnessed the miserable situation we were in.
He told us, "I won't let you go anywhere again."
"I have come to take you back."
We'll die together if we have to. Let's go back home"
He felt my wife would give birth in 8-10 days.
Then he brought us back in a boat.
He gave us a set of clothes and arranged for a doctor for my wife.
He told me, "If it's a boy, name him Biplob (revolution)."
"If it's a girl, name her Mukti (liberty)."
"You have to keep my word."
I agreed. After two days, I didn't get Mukti, but there was Biplob.
He was born on 20th June, Sunday in the evening.
He treated us to sweets. It was a joyful time.
The month of June passed.
And so did July.
August, too.
In September, a Razakar force formed in that area.
Razakar
Before that, we were at peace.
Suddenly, a few Razakars came.
They were from my village.
I don't remember their names now.
They told my host, "Uncle, you have sheltered a Hindu gentleman."
"We know he's a government employee."
"He was supposed to report to his office on 16 June which he didn't."
"We'll take him and hand him over to the Pakistani army camp at Dighapatia."
I could hear my death knell ringing.
There is no other way.
It was night.
I heard everything from my room.
My host told them, "I won't let this happen."
"I've given him shelter and I'll die for him if I have to."
"If you want him dead, you must walk over my dead body first."
Hearing this, they didn't take the matter further.
He told them, "You all are from my village."
"Today you've gotten an opportunity."
"But where will you be if the country is liberated?"
"The whole country wants freedom."
"You can't oppose it for the lure of money, fatigue and rifle," he stressed.
They were village boys after all.
He wasn't scared of them.
They grew up in front of him.
When he scolded them like that, they left without taking me.
But later, when various stories began to circulate,
I noticed even my host had become a little afraid.
He was a bit scared for me.
Then it was decided that my wife and child would stay there,
while he would take me to his in-laws' house
and tell people that I had gone back to join the office.
His in-law's house was in Shahzadpur, headquarters.
On the way, we stopped at a gentleman's house.
He was a daroga (police officer).
He was the OC of Panchagarh police station when I used to teach at Panchagarh College.
I knew him from that time.
We stopped there for the night.
The next morning, we'd continue our journey by boat.
Firoz mama would put me up at Shahzadpur.
Anyway, he recognized me.
Hindu intellectuals
I recognized him too.
He told my host, "Feroz, you're making a mistake."
"Don't take the professor to Shahzadpur."
Do you know what's happening there?"
"There are so many Pakistani soldiers there!"
"You'll get him killed. Don't do this."
"I've heard that a few Hindu employees have joined at Rajshahi town."
"You better take him to Rajshahi Govt. Intermediate College"
"and ask the principal whether he'd be safe if he goes there."
"Let him join there."
Risking his life, Feroz-ul-Islam went to Rajshahi alone.
The principal gave him a letter from my father-in-law.
The principal was surprised to learn that I was alive.
He told him that the situation there had improved and I could come and join.
But I was under suspension since I didn't join on 16 June.
They suspended me.
The principal handed him the suspension letter and another one written by my father-in-law.
The letter said that his daughter was with me.
He had asked around in India as well but couldn't find any info on us.
"Please tell us where he is."
When the principal learnt from Mr. Feroz-ul that I was alive and at the latter's house,
he gave him the letter from my father-in-law to pass it on to me.
He also advised that I should come and join.
Feroz-ul-Islam came back and after 3-4 days, he took me there.
In Binodpur...
Punjabi army
Wait! Let me tell you about this one experience.
We left the boat at midnight.
Then we came to Hatiandaha.
From there, we took a horse-carriage and came to Natore town.
We had breakfast there in a stall.
There were several other Bengalis around.
Then some Punjabis in plain clothes entered the stall to have breakfast.
They were the Army.
At that moment, a bi-cycle tyre burst outside the restaurant.
Hearing the sound, a man inside the stall fainted.
He was afraid of gun firing. So, he fainted right then.
We left the place as soon as possible.
Q: Was the man who fainted a Punjabi?
No, no. It was one of the Bengalis who was breakfasting with us.
Given the entry of Punjabi Army, the tyre punctured, everybody was in panic.
Who knows who they would arrest and kidnap.
Anyway, we went on.
Our bus was stopped in Binodpur and we were searched.
They checked if we were carrying hand bombs and weapons.
We got up on the bus again and came here.
On reaching the college I gave a letter to the principal praying for the withdrawal of the suspension order.
I had to do it to save my life despite not wanting to.
After that...[cut] no, no.
They were my colleagues at the college.
A colleague said, "I will die if I have to, but Mohendro babu will stay with me."
He was a professor of history named Wahiduddin. His wife was headmistress of Helenabad Girls' High school.
He gave shelter to both Mr. Firoz-ul Islam and I.
On the third or fourth day, I was coming to college.
The principal had told me to visit his house on the way
so that I may be forewarned if there's any bad news.
On that day, the principal's wife told me to wait.
She directed Mr. Firoz-ul to go to the principal.
The principal told Feroz-ul-Islam to take me back to the village.
There was very bad news.
Somehow, the Army had found out there's a Hindu gentleman who joined the College.
Pakistani Army
And that they were looking for me.
I knew I couldn't go there anymore.
Q: Did everyone in the town know you joined work?
I don't know.
Q: I mean, they knew some Hindu gentleman was in the town.
I came trusting his words.
But on the third or fourth day, he told me...
The news spread quickly but he didn't know.
So he forbade me and I came back.
But after seeing the letter, my wife became restless.
She realized that her parents were still in Bangladesh.
She wanted to go to her parents in Rangpur.
I wrote to my father-in-law.
It was risky to address a letter to a Hindu family's address at that time.
Letters addressed to Hindu addresses wouldn't be delivered at all.
So, I addressed it to my brother-in-law's classmate Mr. Mansoor.
He delivered it to my in-law's.
After getting the letter, my father-in-law replied telling us not to come.
"If you feel it is safe there, don't take a step forward in this direction."
Because on the way we might face danger.
Better let things be as they are. "Stay put," he stressed.
"Don't leave that place till normalcy returns."
But our hearts didn't budge.
We started off in a boat, along with Feroz-ul-Islam and his two elder brothers.
We stopped for the night at Baghra, Bogra and took shelter at a gentleman's place.
Next day, we took a bus to Bogra town, then to Rangpur and then went to my in-laws' village.
We reached there on November 7.
And the war started on December 3.
It was all clear after that.
I joined the New Govt. Degree College again on January 20.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Mujib returned on January 10.
He ordered that everyone must go back to their previous posts
and they'd be treated as officers on special duty.
I joined on January 20, 1972.
Within a month, I took a transfer.
By that time, my house had been robbed thoroughly.
It was near Rangpur town. The area is called Mahiganj.
On 28 December, I went to India.
To search for my father, brother and elder sister.
Q: They left Bangladesh?
No, no. My wife's father remained here. But my parents had already left.
I found them.
Then I had to put my house in order before they returned.
It wasn't possible to take leave anymore, so it was better to take a transfer.
My house was only one and a half miles away from Carmichael College.
So I could organize my house again.
I was transferred to Carmichael College on 16 February 1972.
I had stayed in India for only 2-3 days. I didn't notice much.
I just located the camp where people from Rangpur were staying.
And luckily I found them there.
I had an experience there.
When my father and others in the family left in April,
a neighbor of mine had told him he'd seen the bodies of my wife and me lying in front of Kalpana Cinema Hall in Bosepara.
For so long, my father believed one of his sons was no more along with his daughter-in-law.
Q: And especially since his daughter-in-law was pregnant.
When I stood before him, he was speechless for a few minutes.
It was a strange feeling for him, who had mourned the death of his son for all this time.
Now, that very son was in front of him.
It must've been strange for him.
I didn't know he had mourned me.
When I went in front of him, I said, "Look, I'm alive, father."
I can't forget the expression on his face.
Anyway, the thing I noticed there...
mass panic
Q: Why did the man say you're dead?
It was a time when nobody knew anything for certain, lots of rumors.
Q: Not because of some enmity, then?
No, the man who told him I was dead didn't have any enmity towards me.
Maybe he'd heard that everyone in Rajshahi town had died and so I must have also been dead.
The fabrication of news went like this.
The refugee camp where they stayed was called Dangi Camp.
Dangi Camp
It was in Jalpaiguri district, Alipurduar subdivision.
There was a row of small rooms.
Numerous rooms. It's said to have housed 135,000 people!
It was really difficult to manage such a large number of people.
indian government
Hindu refugees
refugee camp
The Indian government, with foreign aid, provided food, fuel and warm clothes to the refugees as much as it could.
foreign aid
Yet, my uncle's (father's brother) two sons died there of cholera on the previous day,
cholera
martyrs
within a few hours of one another.
As a sacrifice for freedom, I lost two brothers.
Hadn't the political situation been thus in 1971,
they didn't have to become refugees or die in this manner without medical attention.
Although they didn't die from bullets,
they died for the same cause.
So I count them among martyrs.
They lost their lives amidst a strange situation.
Had the situation not been so, they wouldn't have lost their lives.
This was the greatest tragedy in my family.
Seeing his two married nephews die before his eyes brought a change in my father's life.
He didn't speak like before and was always gloomy.
He forgot in the afternoon what he'd had for breakfast.
He seemed to be always thinking about something.
That was the change I noticed in my father since 1971.
He didn't live long after that. He died in 1976.
I saw how people suffered in the refugee camp.
Ill-fed... Ill-treated...
That was what I noticed in the couple of hours I stayed there.
I didn't want to be delayed because I went there on 28 December.
They surrendered on 16th December and I went there on 28th December.
I had to return by the first of January so that I could collect the harvest from my sharecroppers.
Because I had to feed my father and others when they would return from the refugee camp.
When I left, I'd seen the crop was ready for reaping.
So I came back in a hurry to collect the paddy.
If I hadn't done that, they wouldn't have had anything to eat for six months or so.
[cut] But I found that someone had taken away my rice thrasher.
Some of our utensils, too.
We didn't ask them back. They were poor people.
They thought it was a deserted house.
What was there to be done anyway!
They were poor people.
They took it because of their need.
That was my experience of 1971.
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