1964: Hindu Massacre and Ethnic Cleansing: The Hazrat Bal Incident
On January 22, 1964 The Washington Post reported that over 1000 Hindus were killed in a pogrom by the Pakistani Govt, police, and mobs. It is reported that Father Richard Novak, an American Catholic priest, visited the Hindu neighborhood where the Hindu owned Laxmi Narayan Cotton Mill was situated, and he was missing. The Morning News of Dhaka, East Pakistan, A “Missing note” was pasted on the gate about Father Richard Novak. At this time, there was uprising against the oppression of the East Pakistani Bengalis by the West Pakistan, although both population wise as well as their contribution to Pakistan’s finances were more. To divert the public attention, the rumor was spread by the Government and the Islamists that a part of Prophet Muhammad’s hair kept in the Darga or majar (where the bodies and remains of Saints are preserved in Islam) in Srinagar, Kashmir, a state in India, (about 1632.03144 miles or 2626.5 kilometers from Dhaka, the main city of then East Pakistan; Dhaka is now the capital of Bangladesh), was stolen. There was no such rumor or subsequent violence in India or across the border in West Pakistan. In an oblique reference, Matiur Rahman, a Muslim reporter for the Bengali daily, Ittefaq, reported that several Muslims were also killed trying to save the Hindus and their properties. Within a month over 1.1 million Hindu refugees registered with the Government of India for settlement in India.
References:
(Marcus Franda, Population Politics in South Asia: Part II Refugees and Migration Patterns in northeastern India and Bangladesh, American University Field staff, May 1972). https://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/24/archives/riots-arouse-moslem-shame.html https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v25/d4. https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/thematic-chronology-mass-violence-pakistan-1947-2007.html
1964: The Golaghat Massacre of Marwari Hindus:
“They were all anxiously waiting for the train that would leave for Jalpaiguri in West Bengal , India, through the Chilahati border.
More than 450 Marwaris Hindus (an ethnic Hindu group from North West India) boarded that train, but little did they know that it would take them just 2km from the railway station.
On that fateful night, they were betrayed and subjected to a pre-planned massacre by Pakistani army troops and armed Razakars (pro Pakistani groups in East Pakistan) led by two Muslim men, — Qaiyum Khan and Izahar Ahmed — and their associates, who were lying in wait near Golahat point. They stabbed all the passengers on the train to death with knives and bayonets, except for around 10 to 12 young boys and men who made a run for it in the dark.
The Daily Star spoke to three of these survivors who lost their family members and witnessed the barbaric Golahat massacre in Nilphamari’s Saidpur upazila, which saw at least 448 people, mostly Marwaris, killed on June 13, 1971.”
Like the Nazis, they were rounded off and killed by the Pakistani army. https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/news/train-massacre-2011965
“Bangladesh lost more than 400 of its citizens, mercilessly killed (mostly slaughtered) by pro-Pakistani partisans in the name of cleansing Pakistan. It was a sad day on June 13, 1971.
The massacre of these people, which tantamount to genocide, took place in a small village named Golahat merely 2 km from the bustling town of Saidpur, boasting of the biggest workshop of the East Pakistan Railways.
Parbatipur was an important railway junction connecting Assam and the north-eastern part of India with the rest of British India. Saidpur being the closest township grew as a backward link for supply and support. https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/longform/313360/the-golahat-massacre-of-marwaris.
1964: The Hazrat Bal Gossip and Hindu Massacre: From Nilanjan Chatterjee’s “Interrogating Victimhood: East Bengali Refugee narratives of Communal Violence,” Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 16).
In the Khulna district of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), which was a Hindu majority district in south west of Bangladesh, a pogrom led to killing of a large number of Hindus. An poor man, Mohendra Dhali, tells an inquiry Commission of India, “I witnessed the terrible mass killing by Muslims rioters at Khulna launch Ghat (river ferry) on January 3, 1964. We saw fifty Muslim rioters dressed in Black with daggers in their hands waiting for the Hindus and I saw one Muslim drag a Hindu onto the jetty where they butchered him with a dagger… there are innumerable dead bodies.. We saw villages burning. I believe that night in Khulna launch ghat alone Hindus numbering 200 to 300 were killed. The river turned red (Nilanjana Chatterjee, “Interrogating Victimhood: East Bengali Refugee narraties of Communal Violence,” Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 16). The whole point was to turn the Hindu majority district, into Hindu minority one.
