Thread by @IndicHistory

The story of liberation of #Bangladesh starts in the year 1946 with the Muslim League (ML) winning an overwhelming majority in the then province of Bengal of Colonial India.

Of the 250 seats in the province, the ML won 113 seats in the legislative assembly.

#VijayDiwas

The overwhelming victory of the ML was a vote for a separate Pakistan based on religious majority. Within a year India was divided on religious lines into the States of India and Pakistan.

Muslim majority areas of Bengal became East Pakistan.

Though united by religion, East & West Pakistan were divided by language & Culture. The dominance of West Pakistan in military & bureaucracy meant the East Pakistanis were always treated as second class citizens. Despite being larger in numbers.

Then came the eradication of language & culture of East by Jinnah. Within months of independence, Jinnah declared #Urdu to be the sole language of Pakistan, including Bengali speaking East.

A systematic purge of Bengalis started in East. Refusal of jobs on grounds of not speaking Urdu deprived people from livelihood.

Powerful govt. positions were handed to West Pakistanis (mostly Punjabis), while keeping the Bengalis to lower ranking positions.

The last straw on the back of the proverbial camel was the landslide victory of Mujibur Rehman in the elections of 1970. Despite getting a full majority, he was not allowed to take office as the PM of Pakistan.

The deadlock resulted in the launch of #OperationSearchLight on 25 March 1971. The Genocidal armies of West Pakistan eliminated their Bengali colleagues & and carried out mass killings of Bengalis, primarily Hindus.

The Bengali army men joined the fast growing Mukti Bahini against the West Pakistani army. The genocidal army of Pakistan butchered around 3 million Bengalis, most of them Hindus during its purge. This led to a humanitarian crisis where lakhs of Bengalis pushed into India.

On 3rd Dec 1971, Pakistani Airforce launched pre-emptive attack on India, leading to formal declaration of a state-of-war between the two countries.

The war culminated in total surrender of Pakistani forces to Lt.Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora of #IndianArmy

93,000 Pakistani troops were surrendered to India by Lt.Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora by Pakistan's Lt.Gen. A A K Niazi.

The instrument of surrender officially ended the war with India's decisive win in the 1971 war.

India treated a defeated Pakistan with utmost generosity, which came back to bite it in 1999 in Kargil. The Kashmir dispute is still unresolved and state sponsored terrorism by Pakistan still plagues internal peace of India.