Word: bengal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last week, accusing Mujib of ineffectual leadership, the armed forces seized the Bangladesh government in a predawn coup. The man the Bengalis called Bangabandhu (father of Bengal), who led the country to independence from Pakistan only four years ago, was killed and replaced by a longtime associate. Although communications with Dacca were cut shortly after the takeover and reports were sketchy, it was clear that the coup was bloody. In addition to Mujib, 55, Prime Minister Mohammed Mansoor Ali and two of Mujib's nephews were also killed. So reportedly were at least 200 other supporters. At week...
...They have all the guns," he said of the West Pakistanis at the time. "They can kill me, but let them know that they cannot kill the spirit of the 75 million people of Bengal." Soon afterward, Pakistan's dictator, General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, packed Mujib off to a desert prison cell under sentence of death. In a brutal military pogrom, the West Pakistanis proceeded to massacre 3 million Bengalis; 10 million others fled to India for refuge. After India entered the war and crushed Pakistani forces nine months later, Yahya was himself placed under house arrest...
...forget I have had only three years as a free government," he reminded critics. "You cannot expect miracles." Yet even he seemed impatient for miracles in the end. No one ever doubted that his objectives were laudable. Mujib wanted nothing less than to build a "shonar Bangla," the golden Bengal of the poem by Rabindranath Tagore that serves as the country's national anthem...
...Bengal Lancer...
Even the beggars of Calcutta are better off than the estimated 15 million people now starving in West Bengal. "In the Kutch district of drought-stricken Gujarat," adds Shepherd, "peasants patiently wait for dogs and vultures to finish picking at the carcasses of dead cattle. The hungry gather up the bones and sell them to mills where they are made into bone dust, a kind of fertilizer...