Ramna temple massacre: Dawn shadowed by dark forces

The situation in and around the Ramna Kali Mandir and Ma Anandamoyee Ashram near the Dhaka University campus was frightfully unnerving.

Some 75 Hindu families living there were gripped with fear after hearing heavy gunshots and news of killings of students and teachers at Jagannath Hall, a non-Muslim dormitory of DU, the night before -- March 25, 1971.

Tension ratcheted sky-high when the Pakistan army visited the temple at the Ramna Race Course Maidan, now Suhrawardy Udyan, around 11:00am the next day. They asked the families not to go anywhere and left.

There was a curfew in place.

Within 15 hours, another group of Pakistan soldiers stormed into the temple. It was around 2:00am on March 27.

The soldiers held Swami Paramananda Giri, priest of the temple, and forced him to recite "Kalima", an Islamic declaration of faith, in front of those present there.

"'Are you a Hindu or Muslim?' the soldiers asked Paramananda.

"As he replied that he was the priest of the temple, the army compelled him to recite Kalima," recalled Shankar Lal Ghosh, a witness who was around 17 at that time.

"The Pakistan army then brutally killed him by bayonetting in the stomach. To reconfirm his death, they also fired bullets," he told this newspaper.

People started running frantically for life.

Women broke their shakha, conch shell bangles, and wiped clean their sindoor, vermilion dots put along the part of their hairline. They didn't want to be recognised as Hindus.

Some even began to shout "Pakistan Zindabad". Some tried to hide inside the temple and the ashram, but the soldiers traced them out.

Dilip Das, another witness, said women and children were forced to line up while men were in a separate queue. "They [Pakistanis] opened fire on the lines. Then they set fire to the temple and the ashram."

Dilip, who was then about 12, lost his father and two sisters on that night. It was sheer luck that he along with his mother managed to flee the temple to the High Court premises through a pocket gate.

Shankar, who was one of those standing in a line, also considers himself lucky. "A bullet somehow missed my head… I fainted," he recounted the nightmare. 

"I did not know how much time went by when I regained consciousness. As I opened my eyes, I found myself under some motionless bodies. I realised I was shot at the wrist joint of my right hand," said Shankar, showing the scars of the bullet.

He fled in the dawn after the barbaric Pakistan forces finished their atrocities.

During the army operation, Beli Rani crossed the wall of the temple cuddling her two-year-old daughter, and took shelter at an incomplete building on the High Court premises.

She, however, lost her husband, Shaurya Das, and two other relatives.

"As the day broke, I went back to find out what happened to them. But it was all over," said Beli, now in her late 60s.

Family members of the martyrs set up a public enquiry commission headed by Justice KM Sobhan in 2000 to prepare a list of martyrs and know the extent of the brutality unleashed by the Pakistan forces at the temple.

The commission report said the Pakistan forces upon arrival started to throw some kind of explosives, and according to some witnesses, they fired cannons, blowing away the backside of the temple.

The commission found names of 50 martyrs, though its preliminary report said according to deposition of witnesses, at least 85 to 100 were killed by marauding Pakistani forces.

Outside the main gate of the temple, built about 300 years ago, an epitaph is erected with the names of the 61 martyrs of the massacre.

A letter to Senator William B Saxbe from Dr John E Rohde, a physician evacuated from East Pakistan in 1971, contains a description of the massacre in Ramna area.

Senator Saxbe presented it in his speech in the US Senate on April 29, 1971, according to "Bangladesh Documents" by University Press Limited. It was first published by the Ministry of External Affairs of India in 1971-72.

Rohde wrote: "On the 29th [March] we stood at Ramna Kali Bari, an ancient Hindu village of about 250 people at the centre of Dacca Ramna Race Course, and witnessed the stacks of machine-gunned, burning remains of men, women and children butchered .... I photographed the scene hours later."

According to the book, Gordon Allott during his speech in the US Senate on July 14, 1971 said even during the most violent Hindu-Muslim riots of partition, the Ramna village was able to avoid participation in communal strife.

"On March 29, a pile of approximately 70 to 100 bodies charred and machine-gunned, was on visible display in Kali Bari. The entire village was burned to the ground," he added.

Bipul Roy, general secretary of a committee that rallying for recognition of martyrs of the temple massacre, said, "The massacre at Ramna Kali Mandir and Ma Anandamoyee Ashram hardly gets attention in the discussion on the genocide centring on the Liberation War."

Bipul, who lost his grandfather and elder brother in the massacre, said none of those killed in the temple massacre was recognised as "martyrs of the Liberation War" by the state.

They have held different programmes and press conferences seeking this recognition, but to no avail.

"We sought Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's appointment to place our demand before her in 2019, but we are yet to get it. We request the prime minister to meet our demand," he said.

Liberation War researcher Muntassir Mamoon opined that those who lost lives in the Ramna massacre should get recognition as the martyrs of the Liberation War.

"At least the names on the plaque [of the temple] should be given recognition," said Muntassir, one of the members of the Public Inquiry Commission.

Contacted, Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque said there are two types of martyrs of Liberation War -- one is Gono Shaheed (unarmed victims of mass killings) and another is those who embraced martyrdom in battlefield -- and the latter were recognised through gazette notifications.

"The government is considering preparing a list of the Gono Shaheed. If we prepare the list, we will definitely include the names of people who lost their lives in Ramna Kali Mandir," he said.