Bangladesh, 1971, and the BBC South Asian language services: perceptions of a conflict

Abstract

This article examines how broadcasters in the BBC South Asian language services recall and interpret the reporting of the events that led to the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent state in 1971 by the BBC’s Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English services. It is based primarily on oral testimonies recorded at a ‘witness seminar’ which reunited 15 former BBC colleagues and associates from that time, as well as further interviews with individuals who witnessed the events directly. The witness seminar provided the framework for the participants to reflect individually and collectively on the challenges they faced in reporting the events of 1971; on how Bush House operated as an institution, its technologies, its hierarchies and the relationships between diasporic South Asian colleagues and their peers at Bush House; and on their perceptions of their audiences. The article seeks to illuminate the transnational and transcultural relationships that have been a distinctive feature of the BBC World Service (BBCWS). It argues that relations between the broadcasters from the different language services, who came from both wings of Pakistan and from India and Britain, were at times very tense but professional ethics, especially about the primary significance accorded to standards of impartiality, took priority over personal or political sympathies. The witness seminar testimonies differed in significant respects but converged on how a remarkable spirit of cosmopolitan collegiality reigned despite the often intense personal pressures that broadcasters faced.

Keywords:

• BBC South Asian Services
• Bangladesh
• diasporic and national identifications
• cosmopolitan collegiality

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to Sophie West and to Kate Ribet for their assistance in organizing the Witness Seminar and preparing the documentary evidence for the portfolio that accompanies the seminar (see note 2 below). Warm and appreciative thanks are also due to all those who have kindly given their time and offered their memories of and thoughts on the momentous events of 1971 at the seminar (see Appendix) and to the author in personal interviews. The author is especially grateful to Professor Marie Gillespie, for her collaboration in conceiving and setting up the witness seminar and for her helpful advice at all stages of preparing this article; also to her co‐editors and to those who reviewed the article before publication and offered valuable suggestions for improving it.

Notes

1. The witness seminar held on 12 May 2009 was organised by William Crawley and Marie Gillespie as part of a project on diasporic broadcasters at the BBC World Service funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. For more information see http://www.open. ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/

2. A portfolio of the BBC archival material that was used as stimulus material can be found at http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/

3. A full account and evaluation of witness seminar as a methodological and analytical framework is beyond the scope of this article but further details of this and other witness seminars can be found http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/

4. See http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/. Thanks are due to Dr David Taylor and Dr Subarno Chatterji for their contribution to the seminar.

5. Ataus Samad, later BBC correspondent in Bangladesh, left Dhaka after presumed razakars (paramilitary supporters of a united Pakistan) came looking for him on 10 December, four days before Nizamuddin and others were abducted and killed (Ataus Samad, interview, Dhaka, April 2009).

6. Khalid Hasan writes of the media mood in Pakistan in 1971 and draws comparison with the coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004. ‘I was, at the time, a reporter on The Pakistan Times in Lahore and though we all knew what was going on in East Pakistan, we were not allowed to write about it. The mood among the ‘zinda dillan‐e‐Lahore’ was not one of compassion or concern for their countrymen a thousand miles to the east, but one of regret that the Bengalis were not being punished hard enough for their ‘Hindu ways and customs’. Khalid Hasan (‘Abu Ghraib and after – a Pakistani view’, Daily Times Pakistan 9 May 2004). Cited by Subarno Chattarji (WS, p. 42).

7. Rashid Ashraf’s views are recorded in a forthcoming article by David Page.

8. Compare the account of BBC journalist Harold Briley who reported from Pakistan before and during the December 1971 war. ‘It was only after the war in Pakistan India and Bangladesh I was told how much the BBC’s reports were appreciated, as they were analysed in retrospect and assessed for their truthfulness’ (Briley 1995).

9. Ataus Samad argued that the BBC became popular rather earlier, in 1965, when ‘ … listeners flocked to listen to BBC during the India–Pakistan war’ (Ataus Samad, interviewed by Raziul Hasan, Dhaka, April 2009).

10. Ataus Samad believes that Nizamuddin’s cover was blown when the BBC used his by‐line on a despatch in error (Ataus Samad, Dhaka, April 2009).

11. Atiqul Alam, Dhaka, 23 March 2009, Atiqul Alam worked for the BBC until 1981, when he moved to Reuters.

12. Letter from David Duncan, Information Counsellor, British HC, Islamabad, 2 April 1971, quoted by Mark Dodd (Head of Eastern Service) in BBC internal memo of 28 May 1971. Duncan had written ‘With one or two minor reservations I have greatly admired the extent and balance of BBC coverage in Pakistan. But … the Corporation is now billed as one of the villains of the piece, only slightly less detestable than that arch villain All India Radio … the truth about what has been happening in East Pakistan is the last thing that most people in West Pakistan want to hear … . Poor Ghayur was wringing his hands when I last saw him. I do not think myself that the BBC’s reputation … – will suffer in the long term – rather the reverse’ (BBC archives E40/793/1: reproduced in ‘Bangladesh, 1971 Documents’, p. 112).

13. Sir Colin Imray who had been posted at the British High Commission in Pakistan as Head of Chancery from 1973 writes that ‘… the Government of Pakistan was very hostile to HMG when I arrived in Pakistan, and I believe that the MFA complained about a pro‐Bengali bias in BBC reporting (in fact this was almost certainly justified, but uncomfortable for the Embassy on whom they inflicted discriminating treatment and pinpricks). One British diplomat used to throw copies of The Times into the grounds of a house where Bengali civil servants were being detained, so they could get more objective reporting than was available on Radio Pakistan.’ The British High Commissioner in Pakistan at the time, Sir Lawrence Pumphrey, ‘is very clear that the Embassy thought that the BBC reporting in 1971, and particularly that of Mark Tully, was heavily slanted and prejudiced in favour of the Indians. HMG’s reactions were much more even handed than those of the BBC.’ (Sir C. Imray, personal communication, 6 May).

14. R. Kaul, WS, pp. 37–38.

15. Cf. note 3 above.

16. Citing a recent speech made in Bangladesh by the current head of the BBC Bengali Service Sabir Mustafa (Chattarji, WS, p. 43).

17. For details of India’s external radio services see http://india.gov.in/knowindia/television.php. In India the Chanda Committee in 1966 and subsequently the Verghese Working Committee (1978) criticised AIR External broadcasts, arguing that their programmes were unsuited to the changing requirements of India’s foreign policy. Their impact in the 1991 Gulf War for Indian and South Asian diaspora communities in Iraq Kuwait and Gulf was significant. For a discussion of this issue, see W. Crawley in Malik and Robb (1994, 259–260).