A night of fire, a dawn of freedom

The first hours of 26 March 1971 did not begin with the usual, familiar sounds of Dhaka city. It began with a sound that did not belong to the night - the metallic stutter of machine guns, abrupt and unrelenting.

Windows rattled. Then came the glow: an unnatural orange tearing through the horizon, as if the city itself had been set alight from within. From rooftops and shuttered rooms, people watched in disbelief as flames rose over Dhaka University, over Rajarbagh, over the dense arteries of Old Dhaka.

Dhaka was restless, rebellious, relentless for months. The Bengalis were being deprived of their due political rights, their right to form the democratically elected government. The military dictator of Pakistan Yahya Khan had come to Dhaka to 'negotiate' with the elected leader of the country Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. And in the meantime, military build-up was increasing. The non-cooperation movement was going on in full swing. The Bengalis wanted freedom. The Bengalis wanted independence. They had been cheated one too many times by outsiders, not anymore. And the Pakistanis decided to crush it.

The night that refused to end

By midnight on 25 March 1971, the Pakistani military had begun what it coldly codenamed Operation Searchlight—a premeditated campaign not of control, but of annihilation.

The targets were precise: students, teachers, police, intellectuals, political activists, Hindu neighbourhoods. The intent was unmistakable. Silence the idea of Bangladesh before it could fully speak its name.

There was small, disorganised resistance at places. Outside the cantonment, resistance—fragile but defiant—had already begun to take shape. Students and nationalist activists erected makeshift barricades, dragging tree trunks across roads, overturning abandoned vehicles, even hauling in rusted machinery to slow the army's advance. It was less a strategy than an instinct—a people's last attempt to hold back a military machine.

At midnight on 25 March, Dhaka heard it coming.

Troop carriers and wireless-fitted jeeps growled through the streets of Dhaka, their engines tearing through the uneasy stillness. The first column of the Pakistani army met resistance at Farmgate, barely a kilometre from the cantonment. There, a crude but determined blockade stood in its path—tree trunks strewn across the road, the hulks of abandoned cars, even an immobile steamroller pressed into service.

Several hundred people gathered behind it, their voices chanting defiant slogans. For a brief, suspended moment—fifteen minutes, perhaps—the chant held.

Then came the gunfire. And then, silence. The army pushed forward, ahead of schedule and without restraint. The Operation Searchlight had begun.

Soldiers fired at anything that moved. Pedestrians were cut down on footpaths. Entire stretches of settlements were riddled with bullets and set ablaze. Tanks thundered through the city, shells crashing indiscriminately into homes, offices, and crowds. Artillery fire tore through the night in relentless bursts, turning Dhaka into a landscape of fear.

At Dhaka University, the assault was systematic. Student dormitories were stormed. Residents were dragged out, lined up, and executed. Many were killed where they slept. Teachers were hunted down in their quarters and shot. Shaheed Minar was demolished.

Across the campus, soldiers stormed dormitories. At Jagannath Hall, students were lined up and executed. Professors—men who had spent their lives in the quiet pursuit of knowledge—were dragged out and shot. Govinda Chandra Dev lay among the dead. Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, grievously wounded, would not survive the days that followed.

In Old Dhaka, neighbourhoods with large Hindu populations were singled out. Houses were looted, then burned. Families were massacred. Women were subjected to horrific violence. Elsewhere, rickshaw pullers slumped over their handlebars, their bodies punctured by bullets. Entire settlements were set ablaze. Tanks rolled through narrow streets, indiscriminate in their violence, crushing both brick and bone.

If memory belongs to the victims, history is sometimes betrayed by the perpetrators themselves.

Major Siddiq Salik, the Pakistan army's public relations officer stationed in occupied Bangladesh, would later write in Witness to Surrender: "The gates of hell had been cast open."

By some estimates, more than 25,000 people were killed in a single night.

There is only one word for this: Genocide.

The arrest of a Sheikh Mujib

In the early hours of that same night, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was arrested by the Pakistani army. He had, in the preceding weeks, led a non-cooperation movement of unprecedented scale. He was taken—first to Adamjee College, then clandestinely flown to West Pakistan, where he would be held in solitary confinement. Before his arrest, he could transmit a message to the people. His party colleagues - Tajuddin Ahmad and others - made their way out of Dhaka and headed for the border with India.

Even as Mujib was taken away, his message had already taken root. According to accounts from that night, his voice—faint, almost spectral—had travelled across radio frequencies, declaring East Pakistan to be the People's Republic of Bangladesh.

Salik recounts hearing a faint transmission that night:

"The voice of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman came faintly through on a wavelength close to that of the official Pakistan Radio… in what must have been, and sounded like, a pre-recorded message, the Sheikh proclaimed East Pakistan to be the People's Republic of Bangladesh."

And this faint message would find its biggest amplifier, a young major in Chittagong, who had already revolted.

"We Revolt"

In the early hours of 26 March, a young army officer made a decision that would alter the course of history. Ziaur Rahman, then a Major in the East Bengal Regiment, would decide that the time to declare independence had come.

He would later recall the moment with stark clarity: "We revolted for independence on the night of March 25."

Returning to his battalion, he found that the Pakistani officers had already been detained. Time, as he wrote, was "very precious."

"I called the officer of the Battalion, the JCOs and the soldiers… I talked of everything in brief and ordered them to engage in armed fight. They all unanimously and whole-heartedly agreed."

By the afternoon of 26 March, Zia gathered his troops near Patiya. As General K M Safiullah, Bir Uttam, former Chief of Army Staff, recounts in Bangladesh At War: "All the troops then took an oath of allegiance to Bangladesh."

I, Major Ziaur Rahman…

In the Sholoshahar area of Chattogram, Major Zia initiated his rebellion by killing Pakistani officer Lieutenant Colonel Janjua. This Janjua had been leading the brutal repression of innocent Bangladeshis. On the night of 25 March, Major Zia arrested Janjua from his residence. After midnight, Janjua and other detainees were executed. Zia then assumed command of the 8th East Bengal Regiment. Standing atop a drum, he declared a revolt against the Pakistani forces and ordered his soldiers to move toward the Kalurghat radio station.

It is known that several transmitters at the radio station were damaged at the time. Local residents quickly repaired them.

From Kalurghat, a fragile transmission began to carry across the country. Zia's first announcement was urgent, almost improvised: "This is Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra. We are free now. We shall fight to the last to free our motherland from the enemy. We revolt."

In the early hours of 26 March, leaders of the Chattogram Awami League met with Major Zia. They requested him to return to Chattogram city from Kalurghat. However, Zia was exhausted at the time and said he would determine the war strategy and establish communication by 27 March. Meanwhile, the staff of the Kalurghat radio station had gone into hiding to save their lives. Zia called upon them to regroup and return to the station. Responding to his call, local residents of the Kalurghat area began bringing back the radio personnel. Once they had gathered, Ziaur Rahman began the process of announcing the independence of Bangladesh.

At approximately 7:45 a.m. on 26 March, Zia made his historic declaration: "I, Major Ziaur Rahman, Provisional President and Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army, do hereby proclaim the independence of Bangladesh and call upon all to join our struggle for freedom. Bangladesh is independent. We have taken up arms for the liberation of Bangladesh. Everyone is requested to participate in the Liberation War with whatever we have. We must fight and free our country from the occupation of the Pakistan Army. Inshallah, victory is ours."

On 27 March, in a more measured broadcast, he declared: "This is Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra. I, Major Ziaur Rahman, on behalf of our great national leader, the supreme commander of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, hereby proclaim the independence of Bangladesh."

The effect was electrifying. Air Vice Marshal (retd) AK Khandaker, Bir Uttam, deputy chief of staff of the Liberation War and former chief of the Bangladesh Air Force would later reflect: "The reading of this declaration created a tremendous positive impact among the freedom fighters and the general people."

Across a country still reeling from shock, the announcement travelled—through radios, through whispers, through memory. It electrified a population that had been thrust into darkness only hours before. The spark of rebellion needed air, and with the declaration of independence, it surged to consume the country like an ocean.

The new dawn amidst a genocide

Morning did not bring relief. It brought a silence that was, in many ways, more terrifying.

Curfew had emptied the streets. Those who dared to look out saw bodies—on pavements, in drains, beside burnt-out homes. The city had become unrecognisable overnight.

The brutality of Operation Searchlight had shattered any lingering illusion of reconciliation. The question was no longer autonomy, nor negotiation. It was survival—and, increasingly, liberation.

But before the nation could organise itself, it was struck at its symbolic heart.

Jahanara Imam would later capture that dreadful stillness in her diary: "What devastation is taking place all around! Even without curfew, who would dare step outside? The sound of gunfire never stops… Black smoke has covered much of the bright blue sky. Telephone dead, radio crippled… There is no way of knowing what is happening outside."

There were spontaneous uprisings throughout Bangladesh following the declaration of independence on 26 March 1971. These uprisings were participated by government officials, political activists, students, workers, peasants, professionals and members of the public. After initial resistance, many freedom fighters crossed over into Indian territory to have safe sanctuary, due mainly to the enemy's overwhelming superiority of trained soldiers and modern weapons. The scattered and temporarily retreating rudimentary liberation forces were soon brought under a unified command. And this army of people would achieve a glorious victory over a genocidal army.

It is, as Shamsur Rahman wrote, something at once intimate and immense:

Freedom, you're

the radiant gathering at Shahid Minar on Language Day.

Freedom, you're

the flag-draped, slogan-serenaded boisterous procession.

Freedom, you're

the farmer amidst his fields, beaming face.

Freedom, you're

the village lass's lightsome swim in mid-day pond.

Freedom, you're

the glint in the eyes of a freedom fighter scouting the darkened and deserted borders.

The men who spoke into makeshift transmitters at Kalurghat could not have known how far their words would travel. Not just across territory, but across time. Their voices, carried through static and uncertainty, would come to define a nation's claim to exist.

Independence was not secured in a day, nor in a single proclamation. It was earned over months of war—through loss, displacement, and the shadow of mass violence—but also through the quiet, stubborn refusal of ordinary people to yield. Those first acts of defiance, improvised and uncertain, lit a fuse that could not be extinguished. As the July Uprising has shown us once again, the spirit of liberation can triumph death, repression and massacre.

Today, Bangladesh's journey remains complex and unfinished. But the echoes of March endure—not as myth, but as a reminder. Even in the darkest hours, when power appears absolute and the future uncertain, history can still be shaped by those who refuse to be silent.