Bangladesh: A Brutal Birth

“All I can smell is rotten flesh...” said a deeply disturbed Kishor Parekh, India's first photojournalist on his return from the war zone of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971. His horror of the war is captured in his famous work “Bangladesh: A Brutal Birth”. The series of black and white photographs taken at the height of the bloody war for liberation in 1971are technically perfect. But the series, part of a photo book by the same title, conjure up the nightmare that still haunt Bangladeshis--death, rapes, violence, and the relentless climate of fear.

Parekh's iconic “Bangladesh: A Brutal Birth” was on display at Delhi Photo Festival 2015 held in the beautiful surroundings of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA).  The work was exhibited for the first time in India—a feat for Nazar Foundation, the organiser of the festival. The book is a rarity, a prized possession among those lucky in enough to have got hold of it, while even his family only has two copies--one of which was at the exhibit.

The photographs are haunting even for those unfamiliar with the history of the Liberation War: here lies a boot of a soldier, there stretched on the road is the bloodied corpse of a young boy.  There are women whose faces reveal signs of their misery. But there are  less horrific images too --photographs of soldiers tending to a frightened young boy and Pakistani Lieutenant General AAK Niazi and Indian Lieutenant General Jagijit Singh Aurora at the signing the Instrument of Surrender, that emerged as the iconic image of the war.

Difficult to believe but it took Parekh 50 rolls of film, just five days of shooting and 10 days in a darkroom in Hong Kong to come up with the startling images that are now part of photojournalism history.

The Indian government commissioned 20,000 copies of the book to raise awareness of the war.  International recognition followed--Parekh's  Bangladesh works featured in many front ranking  national and international publications like National Geographic, Paris Match, Time magazine and Stern Popular Photography.

Parekh died after a heart attack in 1982 while on an assignment in the Himalayas.