हसीना ने आरक्षण विरोधियों को क्यों कहा रजाकार: इन्होंने 1971 की जंग में बांग्लादेशियों का कत्लेआम किया; जनरल टिक्का खान की बनाई फौज की कहानी

The protests of students who took to the streets against reservation in Bangladesh turned more violent when Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called the protesting students ‘Razakars’.

“If the sons and grandsons of freedom fighters don’t get reservation, will the grandchildren of Razakars get reservation?”

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said this in an interview given on July 14. After this, the anti-reservation protest going on in Dhaka turned violent. The protesting students set fire to the government TV channel to which Hasina had given the interview.

Slogans of ‘Tui ke, Ami ke Razakar, Razakar’ started reverberating in Dhaka University. More than 100 people have died in the protests that have been going on for a week. Dhaka University has been evacuated and closed till further orders.

Who are these Razakars whose mention has set Bangladesh on fire? Why did Hasina mention them and what is their connection with the 1971 war? Answers to 5 questions related to the violence in Bangladesh…

After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, many Razakars were arrested.

Who are Razakars?
It was the year 1971. Two days had passed since Pakistan surrendered in the war for Bangladesh. On the morning of 18 December, 125 corpses were found one after the other on the outskirts of Dhaka. All their hands were tied behind their backs.

It was becoming difficult to even identify them. Some of them were shot, some were strangled and some were stabbed with a knife attached to the rifle. All these 125 people were well-known personalities of Bangladesh.

These were among the 300 people who were held hostage by the Razakars so that in exchange for their lives they could force the Indian army, which was advancing steadily in Bangladesh, to agree to their demands. However, as soon as they sensed that Pakistan had surrendered, the Razakars killed all the hostages.

The Razakars had set up a factory and a mosque outside Dhaka. From here, they were firing bullets at the people who were reaching there to identify the bodies of their relatives.

As soon as the Indian army got information about this, they immediately reached there and freed the factory from the Razakars. More bodies of Bengalis were found near the factory, which were thrown in pits. The two Razakars who survived the action of the Indian Army surrendered. They confessed to killing 300 people.

During the 1971 war, being a ‘Razakar’ was not a common thing in Bangladesh. Razakar is an Arabic word, which means – volunteer or supporter. However, in Bangladesh it came to be considered very derogatory. Razakar came to mean traitors, who shed the blood of their own people in the 1971 war at the behest of Pakistani General Tikka Khan.

Tikka Khan with General Manekshaw in the picture. Sam Manekshaw went to Pakistan in 1971 to talk about the exchange of some border areas after the war with Pakistan. At that time General Tikka was the Army Chief of Pakistan. Photo- (Twitter/Maverickmusafir)

How the hero of Rawalpindi became the butcher of Bangladesh…
In March 1971, Pakistan’s General Tikka Khan was given the responsibility of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). By the time the war stopped 8 months later in December, 30 lakh Bangladeshis had been killed. 4 lakh women were raped. For 244 days, not a single day passed when there were no reports of mass murders and rapes from Bangladesh.

However, on Tikka’s appointment, the American newspaper New York Times had praised him a lot. In April 1971, it was written about Tikka, ‘West Pakistan, where the footsteps of soldiers have been echoing for centuries, is the place through which Alexander the Great marched towards Delhi.

It was here that British officers prepared generations of soldiers for Queen Victoria’s empire. When Tikka Khan was born in 1915 in a village near Rawalpindi, it was certain that he would also become a warrior.

Tikka Khan’s military background was developed in India. This was also a big reason why Yahya Khan sent Tikka to Bangladesh to fight the Indian Army. Tikka Khan joined the British Indian Army in 1935 after studying at the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun and the Army Cadet College in Madhya Pradesh.

In 1939, Tikka Khan was made a commissioned officer. In the Second World War, he fought in Burma and on the Italian front. After partition, Tikka went to Pakistan. Where he was made Major General in 1962.

In 1965, the Indo-Pak war took place. According to NYT, Tikka Khan showed bravery against the Indian Army in the war in the Rann of Kutch. Due to this, he became famous in Pakistan. He was called the Hero of Rawalpindi.

After reaching East Pakistan, Tikka Khan formed three types of militias to rein in the Mukti Vahini front protesting for independence. Al Badr, Al Shams and Razakars. On the orders of Tikka Khan, Jamaat-e-Islami leader Maulana Abul Kalam was made the leader of the Razakars. Initially, there were only 96 people in the Razakars army.

Later their number reached around 50,000. Razakars included Urdu speaking Muslims who went to Bangladesh from Bihar at the time of partition. They were supporters of Pakistan and did not want Bangladesh to be a separate country in the name of language.

In her book ‘Gambling with Violence: State Outsourcing of War in Pakistan and India’, Yelena Biberman has written quoting former Razakars that they were poor and illiterate. They believed that they were fighting for Islam.

Tikka Khan started direct military action against Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League. This operation, which started on 25 March, is also known as Searchlight. According to statistics, thousands of Bengalis were killed in the barbaric action of the Pakistani army and militia. Tikka Khan, who was called the hero of Rawalpindi, came to be known as the ‘Butcher of Bengal’ after this incident.

AKM Yusuf, one of the founding members of Razakars in Bangladesh. Yusuf died in custody in February 2014.

Are the people protesting in Bangladesh now Razakars?
According to media reports, Sheikh Hasina called the protesters Razakars to humiliate them and damage her image among the public. It has not been confirmed whether they are Razakars’ children.

Before the statement, Sheikh Hasina would not have thought that calling the protesters Razakars would cost her government so much that Bangladesh’s protest would come to the attention of the whole world. The students made the word ‘Razakar’ their weapon against the government. They gave the message to the public that how the government wants to prove the students preparing for the exam as ‘traitors’ just for making their demands.

According to the Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star, after the Prime Minister, other leaders of his party also made similar statements, further inciting the anger of the protesting students. Social Welfare Minister Dipu Moni said – Razakars have no right to hold the sacred flag of Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Mohammad Ali Arafat said that no demands of Razakars will be accepted. Such statements by the leaders intensified the protests of the agitated students. According to the AFP report, at least 115 people have died so far in the violence. Apart from this, more than 2500 people have been injured.

What is that reservation against which more than 100 people were killed?
Bangladesh became independent in 1971. In the same year, 80% quota system was implemented there. According to the report of Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star, 30% reservation was given in jobs to the children of freedom fighters, 40% for backward districts, 10% for women. Only 20% seats were kept for general students.

After some protests, the reservation for backward districts was increased to 20% in 1976. General students got some benefit from this. 40% seats were allotted to them. In 1985, the reservation for backward districts was further reduced to 10% and a 5% quota for minorities was added. This led to 45% seats for general students.

Initially, only the sons and daughters of freedom fighters got reservation. After a few years, the seats meant for the children of freedom fighters started to remain vacant. General students got the benefit of this.

In 2009, grandchildren of freedom fighters also started getting reservation. This increased the resentment of general students. In 2012, 1% quota was also added for disabled students. This increased the total quota to 56%.

What is Sheikh Hasina’s stand on quota system
In 2018, after 4 months of protests by students, the Hasina government had abolished the quota system, but on 5 June last month, the High Court ordered the government to give reservation again. The court said that the reservation that was available before 2018 should be implemented again in the same way.

The Sheikh Hasina government has appealed against this decision of the High Court in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has suspended the decision of the High Court for the time being after the government’s appeal. The Supreme Court will hear the case against the High Court’s decision on August 7.

The quota system was discontinued by the Hasina government in 2018 following student protests.

What do Bangladesh students fear from reservation?
Like India, in Bangladesh too, government jobs are a major source of employment. In Bangladesh, every year more than 4 lakh students compete for 3 thousand Bangladesh Public Service Commission (BPSC) posts. For some years, due to lack of quota, merit was dominant in this, but now students are afraid that more than half of the seats will be eaten up by ‘quota holders’.

Now these students are demanding equal rights for all students. They say that there is no point in giving reservation to the grandchildren of freedom fighters. There should be merit in government jobs, not quota.

Protest against reservation in Bangladesh, 25 people died today, protesters set fire to government channel

The ongoing protests against reservation in government jobs in Bangladesh have now turned violent. Protesters set fire to the headquarters of Bangladesh’s main government TV channel BTV on Thursday evening. According to an AFP report, many people present in the BTV office are still trapped inside. According to an employee, hundreds of protesters entered the BTV office campus in the evening and set fire to more than 60 vehicles. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had given an interview to BTV today. Read full news…