The Bangladesh Liberation War: the reaction that reformed and revolutionized a society

Jhumpa Sarkar Senior Division Individual Website

Every year in social studies I learn about the American Revolution, World War II, the French Revolution and other wars in history year after year. Many people know about these wars, but very few know about the Bangladesh Liberation War. Actually very few know that the country even exist. When people ask me, Where are you from?, I tell them I am from Bangladesh. Then comes a follow up question, asking Where is Bangladesh?. I want to inform people and teach them about Bangladesh. I ask my parents what are some important events in Bangladesh history. They said that the Bangladesh Liberation War was very important in Bangladesh history and I started research right away. As I started my research I wanted to share this with people. My research started at home. As I started learning about the causes of the war. From there, I began contacting people that were involved in the war. The Bangladesh Liberation Museum (BLM) website provided useful information. I called one of the Board of Trustees from the BLM, Dr. Sarwar Ali and he talked to me over the phone about political reasons, discrimination, roles of women, and his personal experience during the war. I even called my uncle who lives in Bangladesh, to find information about the war and found out that he was a freedom fighter with his father during the war. I found online archives of eye witness accounts and online viewable documents. I also went to Queens College Library and to my local library to find books about the war. I found news clips from CBS, NBC, and ABC news on events during and after the war. I chose to present my topic in the form of a website. I thought that a website had all the other categories like documentary, paper, exhibit, all together. I wanted to provide multimedia, text, images, and more in my website. Also in elementary school and middle school I was in this competition called ThinkQuest. In ThinkQuest, I had to create a website and I decided that it was

be the best for me to do a website because I have background knowledge on creating a website. Before I used Dreamweaver, but this time I used Weebly, which was new to me. Through this experience I learned many new things through Weebly. As I learned the ways of Weebly, I used my old skills and my new skills to create this website. The Bangladesh Liberation War falls into all three themes: revolution, reaction, and reform. Revolution: East Pakistan revolted against West Pakistan, causing war to break out. Reform: the war changed the lives of the people living in East and West Pakistan. Not only that a but a new country was born. Reaction: the defeat was shocking and the reaction of West Pakistan and the USA was not positive. At first only India and the Soviet Union had accepted Bangladesh as a country and it took Pakistan a year after the war to accept Bangladesh.