An interactive history

A nation forged in nine months.

March 26, 1971 December 16, 1971

Step into the Bangladesh Liberation War as a civilian, a freedom fighter, or a foreign correspondent. Every choice you make shifts safety, resources, and morale — and ends in a real moment of history.

The setting

A people who voted, and were answered with tanks.

By December 1970, the Awami League had won a sweeping democratic majority across all of Pakistan. The ruling junta in West Pakistan refused to transfer power. On the night of March 25, 1971, Operation Searchlight began — and so did one of the swiftest, most violent independence struggles of the twentieth century.

07 December 1970
An election ignored

The Awami League wins 167 of 169 East Pakistani seats — a majority across all of Pakistan. The military rulers refuse to convene parliament.

25 March 1971
Operation Searchlight

The Pakistan Army moves on Dhaka after midnight: universities, intellectuals, and Hindu neighborhoods are targeted. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is arrested.

26 March 1971
Declaration of Independence

Independence is declared in Mujib's name. Across the country, a guerrilla resistance — the Mukti Bahini — begins to organize.

April – November 1971
War, exile, witness

Roughly ten million refugees flee to India. The Mukti Bahini carries out sabotage and ambushes. Foreign journalists smuggle the truth out past military expulsion orders.

16 December 1971
Victory Day

Pakistani forces surrender in Dhaka after Indian intervention. Bangladesh is born — at the cost of an estimated three million lives.

The simulator

Choose a life. Choose a path.

Three roles. Branching scenarios. Every decision moves a real bar — Safety, Resources, Morale — and ends in a real historical fragment. There are no perfect endings, only honest ones.

SESSION • READY
Beyond the simulation

Numbers that should not feel like numbers.

The simulator condenses nine months into minutes. The reality was longer, messier, and immeasurably heavier. A few figures historians broadly agree on:

9
Months of war

From the night of Operation Searchlight on 25 March 1971 to the surrender at Ramna Race Course on 16 December 1971.

~10M
Refugees

An estimated ten million Bengalis fled across the border into India — one of the largest single displacements of the twentieth century.

~3M
Lives lost

Bangladesh's official estimate of those killed in the war and the systematic violence that accompanied it. Other estimates vary widely; all are devastating.

"The people of East Bengal are being killed by the army of Pakistan. The dead include not only the poor and the unknown… but also professors, doctors, students, and journalists."

— Anthony Mascarenhas, "Genocide", The Sunday Times, 13 June 1971
About this project

Why a simulator?

History textbooks tell you that something happened. They rarely make you feel what it would have meant to be there — to weigh a child's life against a curfew, to pass a message under a tea-stall awning, to mail a roll of film to London while the airport shut.

This project is a small attempt to bridge that gap. It pairs interactive choice with verified historical context, so that every ending — even the painful ones — connects to something that actually occurred. It is not a game. It is a way of remembering.

Built with HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript. Scenario data is JSON. No external dependencies beyond Google Fonts.

Created by
Shahajada Jawar
Sources & further reading
  • The Blood TelegramGary J. Bass — Archer Blood and the cabling of dissent from the U.S. Consulate in Dhaka.
  • "Genocide"Anthony Mascarenhas, The Sunday Times, 13 June 1971.
  • A Golden AgeTahmima Anam — fiction grounded in the lives of ordinary Bengalis through 1971.
  • Liberation War MuseumDhaka — primary documents, photography, oral histories.