Fifty years ago, the streets around Dhaka University were strewn with corpses of students and intellectuals killed by the Pakistani armed forces, which went around the dormitories looking for Bengali nationalists. Dhaka was the premier city of East Pakistan, at the time still part of Pakistan, a nation united by religion and divided by language and separated by 1,300 miles of Indian territory, from which Pakistan had separated violently in 1947. The world’s deadliest tropical cyclone on record had ravaged East Pakistan in 1970, stoking resentment in the province, which had felt years of neglect and sought greater economic, cultural, and political autonomy within the Pakistani federation.
In the national elections Pakistan held in December 1970, of the 162 seats in East Pakistan, the autonomy-seeking Awami League won all but two seats. West Pakistan—corresponding to Pakistan today—sent 138 members to the federal assembly in Karachi, which meant that the Awami League had secured an absolute majority over the united country and its leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, should have been invited to form a civilian government. But the generals who ruled Pakistan felt differently. Profoundly suspicious of civilians and uncertain about Bengali loyalty to Pakistan, they dragged Awami League politicians into long, exasperating negotiations. On March 7, Rahman gave a rousing speech during which he all but declared independence. East Pakistanis stopped cooperating with the federal government; there were daily marches and protests. Dockworkers had stopped working at the Chittagong Port.
