Mukti Bahini

The Mukti Bahini is the guerrilla force operating against Pakistani military rule in East Pakistan during the 1971 conflict. The novel places it between the refugee flight into India and the Pakistani army’s counterinsurgency operations: Indian soldiers train the guerrillas near the border, while Pakistani units hunt people associated with them. The pursuit brings Saleem and his military companions far from their original assignment and toward the river country of the Sundarbans.

Background and Conflict

During 1971, ten million refugees crossed from East Pakistan into India, a number the narrator emphasizes as too vast to comprehend. Indian soldiers trained the guerrillas known as the Mukti Bahini on the border, while Tiger Niazi held military authority in Dacca. The force thus appears in a conflict that is at once a struggle over territory and a mass displacement of civilians.

The Army’s Counterinsurgency

Saleem serves as a tracker with Number 22 Unit under Pakistani command. The unit pursues suspected supporters of the Mukti Bahini, including minor Awami League officials and known Communists. Its assignments take the soldiers through violent streets and into the countryside, where villages are burned for collectively harboring guerrillas. The narrative stresses that the soldiers continue to obey orders despite their loss of certainty and the moral consequences of fighting fellow people.

The Pursuit South

Saleem follows scent trails rather than participating in the unit’s conventional methods of pursuit. As the trail draws the soldiers farther south, the fighting recedes from their immediate attention, though the hunt continues. They commandeer a boat and row down the river after an unseen quarry; the river is called the Padma, but the narrator identifies it with the Ganges. The pursuit ends at the threshold of the Sundarbans, where the soldiers find Saleem has disappeared and glimpse him being chased across flooded fields by a local man.

Narrative Significance

The Mukti Bahini is presented through the perspective of the force hunting its supporters, rather than through an account of the guerrillas’ own organization or individual members. This limited view makes the guerrilla struggle visible through its consequences: refugee flight, village destruction, military obedience, and a pursuit that carries the unit away from the war’s familiar geography. The river journey also redirects Saleem’s story toward the Sundarbans, where the conflict’s political violence and his own personal crisis converge.