Word: dacca
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...between Pakistan and India. After Pakistan's chief diplomat in Calcutta defected to the Bangla Desh side, Islamabad sent a successor who was unable to make his way to the mission through Indian demonstrators. Pakistan thereupon closed the office and demanded that India shut down its mission in Dacca...
...keep the soldiers away." As another form of insurance, portraits of Pakistan's late founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and even the current President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, were displayed prominently. But there was no mistaking the fact that the East Pakistanis viewed the army's occupation of Dacca as a setback and not a surrender. "We will neither forgive nor forget," said one Bengali. On learning that I was a sangbadik (journalist), various townspeople led me to mass graves, to a stairwell where two professors were shot to death, and to scenes of other atrocities...
...dead of Dacca included some of East Pakistan's most prominent educators and businessmen, as well as some 500 students. Among at least seven University of Dacca professors who were executed without apparent reason was the head of the philosophy department, Govinda Chandra Dev, 65, a gentle Hindu who believed in unity in diversity. Another victim was Jo-gesh Chandra Ghosh, 86, the invalid millionaire chemist. Ghosh, who did not believe in banks, was dragged from his bed and shot to death by soldiers who looted more than $1 million in rupees from his home...
Looting was also the motive for the slaying of Ranada Prasad Saha, 80, one of East Pakistan's leading jute exporters and one of its few philanthropists; he had built a modern hospital offering free medical care at Mirzapur, 40 miles north of Dacca. Dev, Ghosh and Saha were all Hindus...
Still, everywhere I visited on the journey to Dacca, I found astonishing unanimity on the Bengali desire for independence and a determination to resist the Pakistan army with whatever means available. "We will not be slaves," said one resistance officer, "so there is no choice but to fight until we win." The oncoming monsoon rains and the Islamabad government's financial problems will also work in favor of Bangla Desh. As the months pass and such hardships increase, Islamabad may have to face the fact that unity by force of arms is not exactly the Pakistan that Jinnah...