Independence of Bangladesh

After a war of independence, East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangladesh.

Created by the 1947 partition, Pakistan consisted of West Pakistan and East Pakistan (East Bengal), more than 1,500 km apart with India in between. The east had the larger population, but political and military power lay in the west, and an attempt to make Urdu the sole national language sparked the Bengali Language Movement in the east in 1952. In the 1970 general election the East Pakistani Awami League won a majority, but the military regime in the west delayed handing over power.

When the Pakistani army began a crackdown, accompanied by mass killings, in Dhaka on 25 March 1971, independence was declared the next day and a war of independence followed. Estimates of the dead vary widely, from several hundred thousand to three million, and about ten million people fled to India. Bangladesh regards the killings as genocide, a characterization Pakistan rejects. India entered the war in December, and when Pakistani forces surrendered in Dhaka on 16 December, Bangladesh became independent. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led the independence movement, is called the "Father of the Nation".