The Forgotten River of Blood: Chuknagar Genocide of May 20, 1971

By Vinay Nalwa

In the quiet hamlet of Chuknagar, nestled in Dumuria upazila of Khulna, history stands stained with blood, muffled by indifference. On May 20, 1971, the Bhadra River witnessed one of the most horrifying massacres during Operation Searchlight, yet the world remembers little of it. This silence has only deepened over five decades, as thousands of Hindu refugees who were slaughtered that day continue to remain unnamed, unrecognized, and unavenged.

The events of that tragic day began to unfold much earlier. After the Pakistan Army unleashed Operation Searchlight on March 25, 1971, targeting intellectuals and the Hindu population in East Pakistan, tens of thousands of Bengali Hindus from Khulna, Bagerhat, and surrounding areas began fleeing towards India. Their goal was to reach Satkhira, and cross into West Bengal, seeking refuge from the genocidal onslaught.

By May 15, over 30,000 refugees, mostly Hindu civilians—men, women, and children—had gathered in Chuknagar, near the Bhadra River. They waited, unaware that they were gathering at a death trap.

On the morning of May 20, around 10:00 AM, Pakistani soldiers, accompanied by local collaborators—members of the Razakar force and the Peace Committee—arrived in three military trucks. What followed was a systematic, unprovoked massacre. Armed with semi-automatic rifles, light machine guns, and later bayonets, they opened fire on the crowd at Pathkhola, then proceeded to the Chuknagar Bazaar. The killing spree lasted for nearly five hours, turning the area into a slaughterhouse.

Many tried to flee by jumping into the Bhadra River, but were gunned down or drowned. The river turned crimson. Local people, out of fear and desperation, disposed of thousands of decomposing bodies by throwing them into the river. No official documentation, no list of names, no state mourning followed. Only the survivors remember.

Estimates suggest that 10,000 to 12,000 people were killed that day—a death toll far surpassing that of many more globally known massacres. Yet, the Chuknagar Genocide remains absent from school textbooks, history curriculums, and state recognition in both Bangladesh and globally.

Silence After the Slaughter

This was not an isolated massacre. Just a day later, in nearby Dakra of Rampal (Bagerhat), another 700–2,000 refugees were butchered under the direction of AKM Yousuf, the founder of the Razakar force. Together, these massacres were part of a broader policy of ethnic cleansing, particularly of Bengali Hindus, whom the Pakistani military viewed as traitors influenced by India.

Pakistani authorities operated under a deeply communal mindset. As Salil Tripathi recounts in The Colonel Who Would Not Repent, many officers saw every Hindu as a traitor and every nationalist as a Hindu sympathizer. Operation Searchlight, thus, was not just a military crackdown—it was a religiously targeted genocide aimed at eradicating Hindu presence in East Pakistan.

This was evident in the early hours of Operation Searchlight itself, when Dhaka University professor Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, a Hindu academic, was taken from his home and shot multiple times after simply stating his name and religion. He died three days later, a martyr to a genocidal campaign that began under the cover of curfew and continued unchecked.

This incident is one of the countless ones where the racial hatred against Hindus and Bengalis was unleashed. Three million people were killed and 200,000 to 300,000 women were violated in the most diabolic ethnic cleansing since the days of the Holocaust.

Demand for Recognition and Justice

The Chuknagar Ganohatya-71 Smriti Rakkha Parishad, along with numerous other civil society organizations, continues to demand that May 20 be declared a National Mourning Day in Bangladesh. They have urged successive governments to officially recognize the genocide, include it in educational curricula, and place it before the Geneva Convention for international recognition. In both Dhaka and Khulna, commemorative events are held each year, with wreaths placed at 11 points along the Bhadra River, where bodies were once dumped. Survivors, activists, and descendants of the victims gather to remember a day the world forgot.

But remembrance is not enough.

The Pakistani military and its collaborators in East Pakistan—the Razakars and Peace Committee members—have yet to face justice for this heinous crime. There has been no full inquiry, no international trial, no reparations. The blood of 10,000 innocent Hindus has dried but not disappeared.

Even now, in present-day Bangladesh, the persecution of Hindus continues with harrowing regularity. Since the fall of the democratically elected government, the situation has worsened under the false guise of political unrest. Hindu temples are vandalized and set ablaze, homes looted, women raped, and men assaulted or killed—all while the world looks away. These are not isolated incidents of political backlash; they reflect a decades-old pattern of targeted violence against a vulnerable community. The demographic decline of Hindus in Bangladesh is no coincidence—it results from sustained fear, displacement, and forced migration. Though regimes may change, hatred toward Hindus remains constant, and their suffering tragically uninterrupted.

Amid such persistent persecution, the silence and inaction of the global community is deafening. When will the world recognize that what is happening to the Hindus of Bangladesh is not merely a political issue—it is a humanitarian crisis rooted in religious hatred? For justice and in memory of those silenced, we must continue to speak, write, and act. Because silence, too, is a form of violence.

(The writer is an author and columnist)