“In 1974 alone, over one-and-a-half million people died in Sheikh Mujib’s liberated Bangladesh. How big was that number? Five times the number of Bangladeshis killed by Pakistani forces during the entire period of the liberation war in 1971. No natural disaster had claimed so many lives since the beginning of our national calendar. No ruthless tribal landlord or Maharajah in our history had been the cause of so many deaths in the subcontinent. No religious clash, territorial disagreement, or deadly disease subjected our people to helplessly witness the untimely decline of such an astronomical number of lives.”