The Cruel Birth Of Bangladesh Book Review

Archer K. Blood was a kind and caring American Counsel who wrote "The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh" to show the extreme changes and harsh political oppression that East Pakistan's people had to endure. This book, which was written by Blood, is profound and always inspiring. The book's storyline is a complete summary of the author's practical career-related point of view. He made the situation worse by talking about political and democratic points of view. His excellent writing was evident in powerful countries' foreign policies and diplomatic goals and how the United States set up contracts. He also talked about these things.


This book is split into 24 chapters, each about a different part of Bangladesh's history and how it became a major country. A compassionate visitor from another country, a human rights lawyer from the United States, painted a clear picture of how things are going in Bangladesh. During the Liberation War, international politics and the foreign superpowers were almost entirely focused on the treaties and agreements they had made to further their own strategic goals. Archer K. Blood never changed his mind about wanting to serve Bangladesh on the international stage, even though the circumstances around this commitment changed often.

After reading the chapters in more detail, it was obvious that the Pakistani armies were responsible for several horrible crimes and acts of torture. The author gave many examples of how the cruel government of West Pakistan kept the innocent Bangalees in their place by using physical force and other forms of coercion. He talks about how the US media and that country's government have unfairly treated West Pakistan.

There is no way to say enough about how ridiculous the fake news that the media in the US have been spreading. In one of the book's chapters, the author talks in great detail about the terrifying cyclone that happened in November 1970. In one case, they said that US flights are not allowed in Pakistan, and in another, they said that thugs attacked the US Ambassador's helicopter. Both of these claims were made by different people.

The author does a great job of writing about all kinds of things. For example, he connected the Indo-Pak war and the US government wanting West Pakistan to be in charge instead of East Pakistan during the conflict in East Pakistan. During the battle, this choice was made. Every chapter of this groundbreaking book gives the reader much new information about the discussed subject. The author and his family are very interested in the culture and people of East Pakistan, where they live. The reader is stimulated by the warm empathy, honest leadership, and words of encouragement for Bangladesh that the narrator and his family give to the country. As the reader gets further into the book, this effect leads to a more solid understanding.

The author worked in public diplomacy in Greece, West Germany, and Algeria before moving to East Pakistan. He had been living in East Pakistan before that. The book's prologue goes into more depth about how the author and his family got to Dhaka. He chose Dhaka, which is in East Pakistan, over Madras, which is in India, as the location of his first job in South Asia. He had to choose Dhaka over Madras for many different reasons. First, he thought that because Dhaka was farther away than Madras, it had a greater right to freedom of expression than Madras. Second, it was possible to get to Dhaka from Karachi, where important USAID missions were based. Third, the Peace Corps volunteers finally got to where they were going, Dhakahe fought for independence, and the Pakistani army did many terrible things that hurt people. But because the United Nations (UN) could only work if all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) worked together, the UN couldn't stop millions of people from dying and their homes from being destroyed in Bangladesh. The UN Security Council was already divided by the geostrategic lines drawn during the Cold War. During the Independence War in 1971, the UN helped figure out what was going on but didn't do anything to solve the problem. The United Nations Security Council talked about three amendments that called for an immediate and accurate ceasefire and the return of pre-war borders. Still, the Soviet Union used its right to veto and stopped them all.

Due to the terrible state of Bangladesh, there have been many ideas for improving its government. To figure out which approaches are more likely to work, it is essential to first find out why Bangladesh's democracy is having problems. Blood's ideas about the challenge come from several different points of view. This chapter looks at different approaches and compares the pros and cons of West Pakistan's government to that of East Pakistan. Archer K. Blood's writing was very detailed and discussed how things were done.

Bangladesh celebrated this relationship on the 50th anniversary of the start of diplomatic ties with the US, which helped Pakistan in 1971. Henry Kissinger, a significant person in the US government then, later called this way of thinking an "empirical history of diplomatic misstatement." After being President Richard Nixon's adviser on national security, he became Secretary of State during Nixon's presidency. Henry Kissinger said that we started to have problems with Pakistan when it was our only way to talk to China.

According to documents in the archives, the two tried hard to keep in touch with Peking, now called Beijing, in 1971. They did this to compete with the Soviet Union's dominance in a bipolar world by taking advantage of the Soviet crisis. Even though both states were communist at the time, this was done. The Nixon administration's secret operation was done with little or no help from the US Department of State state department.

During the whole process, Nixon was in a position to support Islamabad's role. Even when Bangladesh's fight for independence was at its most dangerous, the US sent a task force to the Bay of Bengal strike, led by the nuclear-powered carrier Intrepid.

On the other hand, Kissinger said that the Seventh Fleet had been put together to protect West Pakistan and that "the most important thing is to stop India from attacking West Pakistan."

Gandhi's response to the end of British rule over West Pakistan in Bangladesh would have been. The records show that the Nixon administration worried that Gandhi would soon launch a full-scale military attack on West Pakistan after Bangladesh gained independence. Instead, due to the war, India won three crucial victories. These were Bangladesh's quick liberation, annexing the southern part of India for strategic rather than geopolitical reasons, and weakening Pakistan's military strike capabilities so that it would never again threaten to attack India.

India's attack on western Pakistan is the most important thing to stop. People say that Henry Kissinger wrote in his book, "We Had Been Doing Our Way by Placing a Carrier Response Team Towards the Straits of Malacca," a quote from that section. He thought back to how the US fleet made a big splash when it came through the Straits of Malacca and into the Bay of Bengal. Unfortunately, Nixon's "Tilt toward Pakistan" strategy was opposed by the Department of Justice, several democratic politicians, and Kennedy, even though they wanted to support a democratic, representative India with 600 million people instead of a dictator like Pakistan's then-president Yahiya Khan. Kennedy was a Democrat politician who was against the plan. Because of this, Nixon was forced to lead the carrier strike maneuver while keeping the state department in the dark.

The author says people were turned away from primary medical care centers in the 1970s. In the United States, this happened. Because of this, they got no or very little treatment in those centers, and as a direct result, many civilians died because they didn't get treatment. There was also talk about setting up a lab to study cholera, with the US paying for most of it and helping with ambulance services. So, most people with cholera who were diagnosed and treated were from East Pakistan.

They were worried that the young children in the village didn't have enough money to get by. One could say that East Pakistani children did not have access to good medical care when they were young. West Pakistan quickly got hold of the facilities that could be useful at the time. And the government took other parts of our area on purpose. They had direct control over our government, education system, and finances. It has also been called the cyclone that hit in 1970, when people were forced to give up their belongings, ran out of food, and were in a hazardous situation.

When you read these chapters, it's clear that the events before our author got there changed, leading to a broader range of political strategies. He talked in detail about the lives of East Pakistanis and how the West Pakistani Regime mistreated them. He made a great point about Bangladesh's social economy and natural resources (East Pakistan). From reading these pages, it's clear that our author cared a lot about Bangladesh and his own family. This kindness was terrific. He used clear and helpful words when discussing the criteria of Political Affairs and the situation in Bangladesh.

There might be a link between Selina Hossain's books "The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh" and "Ekatturer Dhaka." The book "Dhaka of 1971," written by Selina Hossain, is a collection of different writing pieces. It is also called "Ekattorer Dhaka." It starts on March 1, 1971, and ends after Victory Day, when the slaughterhouse is found, and the author looks back on the period in different ways. This book has a lot of helpful information about what happened in the first three quarters of 1971. The people of Bangladesh will never forget what happened during that time in their history. People were generally willing to give up their lives for freedom and didn't mind sacrificing for a good cause. Because of this, many Razakars in Albadar can no longer fight back. People in Bengal didn't let that time in their lives change without taking advantage of it. It is essential not to undervalue each person's role in becoming independent. Everyone in the country fights for freedom in their own way. This loan has been passed down from generation to generation and is thought of with great respect.

The author of this book talks about what it was like to live in Dhaka at that time. In that way, this book is an excellent example of the time it was written. But, unlike The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh, Ekattorer Dhaka doesn't have as much information about geopolitical strategies and interference from other countries. It also didn't show how much attention was paid to politicians and how they talked to people in their districts. This means The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh has much more information about the Liberation War than any other book. "The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh" and "Ekatturer Dhaka" are nonfiction books. The authors of both books talk about the liberation war that happened in 1971 from their own points of view.

The part of the memoir called "The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh" is something that I think should be suggested and recommended to people who are younger than me and are my peers. I also believe that this book should be taught in all schools so that students can understand the geopolitical point of view of a foreign strategic conspiracy and how a foreign Counsel describes tumultuous tortures. These help a lot for anyone to get a clear picture of what was going on and how things turned out for the better during the autocratic oppression of East Pakistanis. By doing this, students will be able to understand the alien strategical conspiracy from a geopolitical point of view and learn about the horrible tortures.

References: 

T. (2021, December 15). A cruel birth of Bangladesh by Archer K Blood: Book Review. The Wonk. https://thewonk.in/a-cruel-birth-of-bangladesh-by-archer-k-blood-book-review/

Sajen, S. (2021, January 30). Testimony to the cruel birth of Bangladesh. The Daily Star. Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https://www.thedailystar.net/book-reviews/news/testimony-the-cruel-birth-bangladesh-2035281