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TheSwadhin Bangla Biplobi Parishad (English: Independent Bangla Revolutionary Council) was an armed undergroundstudent political group secretly organized in 1961 bySerajul Alam Khan, a key founder ofBangladesh, that worked to wage an armedsecessionist struggle againstPakistani rule and achieve the independence ofEast Pakistan as "Bangladesh".
Swadhin Bangal Biplobi Parishad was secretly organized inDhaka University's Jahrul Hoque Hall bySheikh Mujibur Rahman under command of Sirajul Alam Khan (who was from the same university) along withAbdur Razzaq andKazi Aref Ahmed. Its political arm was the Bangladesh Liberation Force (BLF). From 1962, it planned and organized mass movements through the historic6-point and11-point programs. Training of Dhaka University students for the armed revolt against Pakistan started on the university's gymnasium field on 1 March as the university's halls were closed to students since then.[1]
Earlier, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had founded another student group in the same university's Fazlul Huq Hall on 4 January 1948 named theEast Pakistan Chhatra League, renamed the Bangladesh Chhatra League upon theBangladesh Liberation War andBangladesh's subsequent independence. The students of this league were recruited into theMukti Bahini (Liberation Army), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's armedguerrilla force and the military arm of his political party theBangladesh Awami League trained byIndia's foreign intelligence organization theResearch and Analysis Wing[2][3] to wage the liberation struggle.[4]
The BLF first made theflag of Bangladesh and hoisted it on 2 March 1971, when theAwami League, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, made a call for ageneral strike to agitate for independence. ThePakistani military on 25 March launchedOperation Searchlight.Ziaur Rahman declared Bangladesh's independence the following day. Subsequently, under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's directive, the BLF high command was reconstituted with Serajul Alam Khan,Sheikh Fazlul Huq Moni, Abdur Razzaq andTofail Ahmed. This revamped BLF was renamed "Mujib Bahini" (Mujib's Army) in the war.
The general strike,pogroms and the resulting war followed on the heels of theAgartala Conspiracy, at the time deemed a politically motivated accusation by the Pakistani state against Bengali leaders but confirmed in 2011 to be factually true by theBangladeshi Parliament's DeputySpeaker and one of the Agartala conspiratorsShawkat Ali.[5] By the start of the war, other countries hostile to Pakistan seized upon the opportunity and gave material assistance to this student movement (that had by now morphed into an armed guerrillarevolt) to bring about Pakistan's disintegration, with a potentially friendly nation's independence being a favorable by-product.[6][7] When the war ended theIndian Army destroyed all files and records of its activities regarding East Pakistan before as well as during the war,[8][9] though in 2015 the IndianPrime MinisterNarendra Modi would explain India's role in the war in an address at Dhaka University.[10]
The central role of students in the armed secessionist rebellion aided by India[11][12] was the main reason why theRazakarskilled Bengali students and intellectuals on Dhaka University grounds on 25 March at the start of Operation Searchlight and committedanother massacre of Bengali intellectuals on 14 December, two days before Pakistan's defeat andsurrender and Bangladesh's resulting independence. Bothmassacres were committed on the grounds that Dhaka University was a hotbed of guerrilla activity and served as an arms dump and a nerve center of military operations run by the university's students and faculty.[13]
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