Showing posts with label Bangladesh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bangladesh. Show all posts

Sunday, August 16, 2026

Friday, August 16, 1946. Direct Action Day and the founding of the KDP (ارتی دیموکراتی کوردستان).

Direct Action Day in British India, intended to be a peaceful demonstration in favor of carving out Muslim Pakistan, turned violent resulting in more than 10,000 people being killed around Calcutta.

The Muslim minority of India was adamantly opposed to being if a federation with India's Hindu majority, something that's understandable if we consider that Indian itself is a country, but not a nation.  The hope of the Muslims, at the time, was to carve out what is today Pakistan and Bangladesh into one country.

Bangladesh became independent of Pakistan, from which it differs ethnically, in 1971.  I can recall it very dimly occuring.

On the same day, in the same country, the All Hyderabad Trade Union Congress (AHTUC) was formed.  It was a trade union center in the Hyderabad State which was affiliated to the All India Trade Union Congress and which was aligned with the Communist Party of India.

It's easy for us to forget how strong Communism was in unions, even in some in the United States. The real kind, I might add, not the Mike Johnson, "oh my, . . .they'd rather have national health care than die in the gutter so I'm pissing my pants" sort of stuff the GOP comes up with.

Anyhow, it was very strong in Australian trade unions, where it was opposed by the Catholic Church, which is one of the reasons the Australian political left still hates the Church to this day.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party was founded in Iraq by Mustafa Barzani.

Today the party is the ruling party in Iraqi Kurdistan and the senior partner in the Kurdistan Regional Government. The ideology of the party is based on conservatism, secularism, and Kurdish nationalism.

Kurdistan really should be an independent country.

The deposed former and last emperor of China, Puyi, later emperor of Manchukuo, testifies at the Tokyo Military Tribunal

Truman went on vacation:

"A Journey into Nowhere"

Last edition:

Thursday, August 15, 1946. The Truman Doctrine.

Sunday, April 14, 2024

Friday, April 14, 1944. Indian drama.

The Bombay Explosion occured at Mumbai, India) when the British SS Fort Stikine caught fire and exploded, creating mass destruction and killing around 800 to 1,300 people.


Kohima was relieved with a British breakthrough.

Col. Shaukat Ali Malik of the Indian National Army entered Moirang with his troops and raised the flag of the Azri Hukumat e-Azad Hind for the first time on Indian soil.

The stories above illustrate the complicated nature of India and the Indian people in World War Two. Col/ Sjailat Ali Malik was a Muslim Indian who had previously served in a British Indian police force, the latter being quite militarized.  The INA was a collaborationist army in combat against the Allies, while of course the British Indian Army was an Allied Army, but subject to the British Empire and therefore not really a "free" army.  

Following the war, the INA would be regarded with sympathy by many Indians.  I don't know what happened to Col. Malik, but the Muslin portions of Indian broke off from it immediately with independence, forming Pakistan. Today, what had been East and West Pakistan are Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The Red Army reached the Carpathian foothills.

Gen. Nikolai F. Vatutin died of wounds received in an ambush by Ukrainian partisans on February 29, 1944.

The U-448 was sunk off of the Azores.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 13, 1944. Soviet advances in Crimea.

Sunday, June 13, 2021

Sunday June 13, 1971. Strife

On this day in 1971 the New York Times began publishing "the Pentagon Papers", the same being an internal report smuggled out by Daniel Ellsberg who had worked on the report.  The documents demonstrated an early involvement in the Vietnam War that differed from the one that the Johnson Administration had boosted.

The documents were one more step towards a disillusionment on the part of the public with the war, and indeed helped achieve a permanent distrust of the Federal Government that has never been restored. 

On the same day the London Times broke a story regarding Pakistani massacres of the Bengal Hindu population in East Pakistan.