A Sunday Times article by reporter Anthony Mascarenhas exposed for the first time the scale of the Pakistani army's brutal campaign to suppress the independence struggle of East Pakistan in 1971. PHOTO: ARCHIVE
I was caught off guard when someone asked about my memories of the 1971 Liberation War. I was not prepared for the question, nor did I ever imagine speaking publicly about something so deeply personal. For most of my life, I kept those memories tucked away and offered quiet respect to the brave souls of that time—the commanders who led from the front, the uniformed fighters who risked everything, and the countless civilian freedom fighters who came from classrooms, fields, clinics, courtrooms, factories, and homes. I never felt my own story mattered beside theirs. I was only a child. Yet childhood carries its own kind of truth.
My own act of resistance was small. It came in the form of a tiny pebble thrown at a military jeep passing through our town. A second later, I was already underwater in a nearby pond, trembling in fear yet unwilling to let go of whatever courage had pushed me to do it. I was about ten years old. It was naïve, reckless, and almost humorous when I look back. But at the time, it was the only language of defiance I understood. That memory returned to me unexpectedly, carrying with it everything that childhood could not articulate about war, dignity, and the cost of freedom.
What troubles me most today is how little the world truly knows about our Liberation War. The story of 1971 has never been told internationally with the clarity and seriousness it deserves. The global understanding of that period is scattered, incomplete, and often distorted. During my years working across Africa and Asia, I encountered people who believed the number of casualties in 1971 was exaggerated. Others insisted it was merely a confrontation between regional powers. Some viewed it as an inevitable outcome of long-standing tensions, shaped entirely by intelligence agencies and old rivalries. Very few understood a simple truth—that it was a people's war, not a proxy conflict or an extension of someone else's agenda. It was an uprising of ordinary men and women who refused to live without dignity.
Across the world, I found myself trying to explain the scale of suffering. I often felt frustrated that the discussion turned into an argument about statistics rather than an acknowledgement of the brutality our nation endured, as if the exact figures could decide whether the pain was real.
In recent years, I revisited some of the literature that attempts to document that period. What struck me most was the lack of rigorous global scholarship on our war. The world has extensive documentation on World War II, Vietnam, Rwanda, and so many other tragedies. Yet the atrocities of 1971 remain underexamined in global academic and historical discourse. There is no shortage of facts, but a shortage of attention. And that has consequences for how the world perceives us today.
Some analyses correctly discuss the geopolitical shifts of that era and the decisions made by powerful nations. Those elements are part of the story, but they are not the heart of it. The heart was elsewhere: In refugee camps, where mothers clutched their children, unsure if they had a home to return to. In villages where farmers took up makeshift arms. In classrooms where students exchanged books for barricades. In hidden shelters, where doctors worked through the night with barely any tools.
What pains me most is how invisible this human story remains beyond our borders. I have spoken to colleagues abroad who had never heard of the massacres of 1971. Most of them knew little of the suffering, even less of the resilience, and almost nothing of the sacrifices that ordinary Bangladeshis made. When films or documentaries talk about the war, they often do so through the perspectives of other nations, shaped by their interests rather than ours. Our voice rarely makes it to global platforms in its authentic, unfiltered form.
Winning the war gave us a nation. Giving that nation's story its rightful place in global memory is a task we have yet to accomplish. The tragedy is that half a century later, the world still struggles to see us clearly, and our suffering is often dismissed as regional, political, or too complicated to grasp. But the truth is simple. A nation paid an unimaginable price to claim its freedom.
Today, when I think about that small pebble I once threw, I no longer see it as a childish impulse. I see it as a symbol of instinctive resistance, the refusal to bow even when one is powerless, and the quiet courage that lives inside millions of Bangladeshis. Our war did not begin with trained armies. It began with ordinary people deciding that they had suffered enough.
If the world still struggles to understand 1971, then it becomes our responsibility to tell the story again and again until it is finally heard. Bangladesh was born from courage—not dramatic, not glamorous, but humble, relentless, and shared across every corner of the country.
Mamun Rashid, an economic analyst, is chairman at Financial Excellence Ltd and former managing partner of PwC Bangladesh.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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