Bangladesh: the Birth of a Nation - Ii

A civil war flared up and raged on for freedom Unequal it was, this bloody war for honour and secession The natives renamed their land Bangladesh Inviting anew the wrath of a desperate West The army’s presence then, was overwhelming in their land Due to the simmering discontent within and a border to be manned And from ground and air the armed forces effortlessly struck It was anarchy all the way with the West’s army running amuck In thousands they perished, nameless sons of the soil But the army had orders and the people’s aspirations to foil They killed and burned and looted and raped Digging mass graves to conceal evidence of the dead Granaries were burnt and villages razed The troops shot all that moved and Bangladesh bled Women captured alive, endured inhuman pain Brutally used, they’d be killed with a bullet to the brain Through their brutal acts in ’71, a sovereign state struck terror And as news of the carnage spread, an impotent world watched in horror Protector of civilian lives, the army had turned butcher Nine months later and a million dead, Bangladesh resembled an abattoir Resistance was futile against the war machine Would the aspirations of Bangladeshi’s remain just a dream? In this riverine country that year, the monsoons suddenly arrived Rivers in spate impeded troop movement and halted the state’s genocide With the receding flood waters, India joined the fray But now Nixon’s 7th Fleet showing solidarity with Pakistan steamed into Bengal’s bay Mercifully the Indian leadership stood resolute and undeterred And the rampaging army in Bangladesh was quickly outmanoeuvred There was no resistance from the state sponsored killers Ninety thousand troops surrendered meekly to the liberators Reports of atrocities and mass graves were dismissed as slander and lies The masterminds were let off the hook, pressured by powerful allies