বাংলাদেশের কথা

We came across this rather lousy letter sent last year to The Guardian by Serajur Rahman, a retired deputy head, BBC Bengali Service. He claims that Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman mistranslated "lakh" as "million" or was confused in saying that three million people died in the war in 1971.  Mr. Serajur Rahman claims that "when I explained to him that Bangladesh had been liberated and he was elected president in his absence. Apparently he arrived in London under the impression that East Pakistanis had been granted the full regional autonomy for which he had been campaigning. During the day I and others gave him the full picture of the war. I explained that no accurate figure of the casualties was available but our estimate, based on information from various sources, was that up to "three lakh" (300,000) died in the conflict." According to Serajur Rahman, when Sheikh Mujibur met David Frost later that day, he announced, ...