The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: A Haunting Journey Through Bangladesh’s Blood-Soaked Birth

Last updated on August 23rd, 2026 at 03:33 pm

Do you know why a nation born from a war that killed millions still can’t find peace, and why the man who helped murder its founding father never said sorry? Salil Tripathi’s The Colonel Who Would Not Repent journeys us to the crude answers.

Overview

Who should read The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: If you care about South Asian history, war crimes, justice, or simply want to understand why Bangladesh, a country of 170 million people, remains politically volatile decades after independence, this book is essential reading. It’s for journalists, historians, human rights activists, and anyone who has ever wondered how a nation can move forward when its past remains unresolved. But be warned: this is not light reading.

It’s harrowing, deeply disturbing, and will leave you emotionally drained.

Who should skip it: If you’re looking for a neutral, detached historical account without emotional weight, this might not be your book. Tripathi doesn’t hide his empathy for the victims, and the graphic descriptions of violence, particularly sexual violence, are relentless.

Also, if you’re uncomfortable with challenging official narratives (from any side), you’ll find this uncomfortable.

Salil Tripathi’s The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and Its Unquiet Legacy (Yale University Press, 2016, 416 pages) is not merely a history book. It’s an investigation into the soul of a nation that emerged from genocide, only to be haunted by its unquiet ghosts.

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent opens with a chilling scene: Tripathi, then a young journalist, interviewing Lt. Col. Farooq Rahman in 1986 at his well-appointed Dhaka home.

Farooq had just lost a presidential election but seemed utterly unbothered. When Tripathi tentatively asked about his role in the 1975 assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding father, Farooq interrupted: “Of course, we killed him. He had to go.”

No remorse. No hesitation. Just cold, clinical justification.

That interview became the seed of this remarkable book, which Tripathi spent years researching across six trips to Bangladesh. As he writes in the prologue, Farooq even defended killing Mujib’s 10-year-old son Russell: “It was an act of mercy killing. Mujib was building a dynasty; we had to finish off all of them.”

This is the man who would not repent, and his story is the dark thread that ties together Bangladesh’s tortured history.

1. Introduction

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and Its Unquiet Legacy by Salil Tripathi was first published in India by Aleph Book Company in 2014, followed by the Yale University Press edition in 2016.

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent runs 416 pages and is available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook formats.

Salil Tripathi is an award-winning journalist and human rights advocate. Born in Bombay (now Mumbai), he studied at Sydenham College and earned his MBA from Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business.

He has been a foreign correspondent in Singapore and Hong Kong for the Far Eastern Economic Review, and his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Guardian, New Yorker, and Foreign Policy.

He chairs PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee and has served as a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. His reporting has earned multiple awards, including the Citibank Pan Asia Economic Journalism Award (1994), third prize at the Bastiat Prize (2011), and the Red Ink Award for Human Rights Journalism (2015).

Context of The Colonel Who Would Not Repent

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is a searing, kaleidoscopic portrait of Bangladesh from the 1947 Partition of India to the present. Bangladesh was once East Pakistan, the eastern wing of the Muslim nation carved out of British India in 1947.

But religion alone could not keep the two halves together. East Pakistan, populated by Bengali-speaking Muslims who saw themselves as culturally distinct, fought for and achieved liberation in a brutal nine-month war in 1971.

The Pakistani army, with local collaborators, committed atrocities on an unprecedented scale, by Bangladesh government estimates, three million people were killed and 200,000 women raped.

But independence didn’t bring peace. Coups, counter-coups, and assassinations followed. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was murdered in 1975 along with most of his family. His killers were granted immunity and some even received diplomatic postings. It took until 2010, thirty-five years later, for five of the assassins to be executed.

And the war crimes tribunals set up to prosecute those who collaborated with the Pakistani army remain deeply controversial.

Purpose of The Colonel Who Would Not Repent

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent‘s central message is this: Bangladesh cannot truly move forward until it confronts its past honestly. Tripathi asks a question that haunts the entire narrative: “How can a nation put its blood-soaked past behind without condoning the guilty?”

He argues that the “culture of impunity” that allowed Mujib’s killers to walk free for decades is the same culture that has prevented Bangladesh from achieving the secular, inclusive, golden Bengal its poets dreamed of.

Through interviews with hundreds of Bangladeshis, from politicians and generals to rape survivors and ordinary villagers, Tripathi shows that the wounds of 1971 remain raw, and the struggle between Bengali and Muslim identity, between secularism and fundamentalism, continues to define the nation’s tortured politics.

2. Background

To understand Bangladesh’s tragedy, you have to go back before 1971, way back. Tripathi’s book is remarkable for its historical sweep, tracing the roots of Bengali identity through centuries.

The region that is now Bangladesh was once part of the Mughal Empire and later British India. In 1905, Lord Curzon partitioned Bengal along religious lines, sowing seeds of division that would eventually lead to the 1947 Partition.

When British India was divided into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bengal was split again, the western part went to India, the eastern part became East Pakistan.

But Pakistan was an “imagined community”, held together only by religion. The two wings were separated by over 1,000 miles of Indian territory. West Pakistanis, who dominated the military and civil service, treated East Pakistanis with contempt, calling them “Bingos” and dismissing them as weak, rice-eating peasants.

They refused to recognize Bengali as a state language alongside Urdu, leading to the Language Movement of 1952, when police opened fire on student protesters in Dhaka. February 21 is now commemorated worldwide as International Mother Language Day, but at the time, it was a massacre.

Economic exploitation followed. Between 1950 and 1955, the Pakistani government spent 11.29 billion rupees in West Pakistan but only 5.24 billion in the east, even though nearly three out of five Pakistanis lived in the east. Bengali economists like Rehman Sobhan documented how East Pakistan was being treated as a colony.

The breaking point came in December 1970, when Cyclone Bhola, one of the deadliest tropical cyclones in history, devastated East Pakistan. The federal government’s sluggish response enraged Bengalis.

A month later, in national elections, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League won an absolute majority in parliament. West Pakistani politicians, led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, refused to accept the result.

Negotiations stalled. And on March 25, 1971, the Pakistani army launched Operation Searchlight, a brutal crackdown designed to crush Bengali nationalism once and for all.

3. The Colonel Who Would Not Repent Summary

The Night the Killings Began

Tripathi’s account of the March 25, 1971 crackdown is visceral and devastating. He takes us inside the Dhaka University campus, where Pakistani soldiers systematically murdered students and professors. One of the first victims was Professor Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, a scholar of English literature.

Soldiers entered his home, asked his religion, and when he said he was Hindu, shot him. His daughter Meghna, now a prominent academic, later told Tripathi: “They had asked him his name and his religion. He said he was a Hindu, and they gave orders to shoot him.”

At Jagannath Hall, the dormitory for Hindu students, soldiers went from bed to bed killing young men. A smuggled video later showed students being forced to carry out dead bodies, then being lined up and shot themselves. One survivor, Kaliranjan Sheel, described hiding in a latrine while soldiers searched for survivors. When he emerged, he saw the body of Professor Gobind Chandra Dev, the philosopher, his chest mutilated.

Tripathi documents the systematic targeting of Hindus, intellectuals, and anyone suspected of supporting Bengali nationalism. The Pakistani army’s goal was nothing less than ethnic cleansing.

As one officer told journalist Anthony Mascarenhas: “We are determined to cleanse East Pakistan once and for all of the threat of secession, even if it means killing off two million people and ruling the province as a colony for thirty years.”

The Freedom Fighters

Despite the brutality, resistance emerged. The Mukti Bahini, Bangladesh’s guerrilla army, fought back with whatever weapons they could find. Tripathi profiles some of the war’s most remarkable figures, including Kader Siddiqui, a 23-year-old student who became a legendary guerrilla commander.

Siddiqui’s Kaderia Bahini fought nearly 300 battles, captured ships laden with weapons, and terrified Pakistani troops. Tripathi interviewed Siddiqui, who told him: “I had begun with one soldier. At the end of the battle I had 18,000 men and 72,000 volunteers.”

But Tripathi doesn’t romanticize the freedom fighters. He acknowledges that some committed atrocities too, particularly against Biharis, Urdu-speaking Muslims who had migrated from India and largely sided with Pakistan. After the war, reprisal killings were common.

Siddiqui himself was arrested by the Indian army for executing prisoners in Dhaka Stadium, though he claimed the photographs were staged.

The Brave Ones, Rape as a Weapon of War

Perhaps the most harrowing section of The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is Tripathi’s interviews with birangonas, the “brave ones,” as the Bangladeshi government called women who were raped during the war.

Tripathi met twenty-eight rape survivors across six trips to Bangladesh. He writes with painful honesty about the difficulty of these encounters: “I felt like a voyeur, an intruder, indeed, a violator.”

One woman, identified only as SB, told him how Pakistani soldiers came to her village in May 1971. They raped her, her sisters, and her sister-in-law. One sister bled to death because she had recently given birth. Another sister was so terrified she urinated, and the soldiers laughed. SB’s husband initially refused to take her back. She told Tripathi: “I want the soldiers caught. I want them tried.”

Another woman, SH, was 15 when thirteen soldiers raped her one after another. She never saw her husband again. She later told Tripathi: “During that war, men fought with their guns; I fought with my honour.”

Tripathi documents that rape was not incidental, it was systematic. Pakistani officers reportedly ordered soldiers to impregnate Bengali women to create a “purer” race. As one Australian doctor who performed abortions in Bangladesh after the war explained: “They had orders … to impregnate as many Bengali women as they could. That was the theory behind it.”

The Bangladeshi government, under Mujib, took progressive steps to acknowledge these crimes. Women were given the honorific birangona. Abortion was made more accessible. Adoption laws were changed.

But after Mujib’s assassination in 1975, successive governments buried the issue. Many records were destroyed. The women were left to struggle in silence.

A Friend in Need, India Joins the War

Tripathi provides a nuanced account of India’s intervention. Indira Gandhi’s government faced a massive refugee crisis, by the end of 1971, nearly 10 million East Pakistanis had fled to India.

But India was also cautious.

General Sam Manekshaw, the Indian army chief, told Gandhi that India was not ready for war in April 1971. The monsoon would make movement impossible. He needed time to prepare.

India used that time wisely.

It trained and armed the Mukti Bahini. It built international opinion against Pakistan. And it waited for Pakistan to make the first move. On December 3, 1971, Pakistan launched pre-emptive airstrikes on Indian airfields, Operation Chengiz Khan. The strikes failed. India retaliated with overwhelming force. Within two weeks, the Pakistani army surrendered in Dhaka.

Tripathi’s account of the surrender is vivid. General Niazi, the Pakistani commander, broke down in tears as he signed the Instrument of Surrender at the Ramna Race Course. “It became emotional,” recalled reporter James Sterba. “Niazi was in tears. He stood up, took off his belt and gave it to Aurora. The war was over.”

The Assassination of a Failed Revolutionary

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent‘s title comes from the man who would not repent, and the prologue’s account of Farooq Rahman’s role in Mujib’s assassination is chilling.

Tripathi reconstructs the events of August 15, 1975 in meticulous detail.

At dawn, 700 soldiers left their barracks.

They first attacked the home of Mujib’s brother-in-law. Then they surrounded Mujib’s house in Dhanmondi. Major Bazlul Huda entered and shot Mujib’s son Kamal. Then he climbed the stairs to face Mujib himself. “What do you want?” Mujib asked. The soldiers pulled their triggers, spraying him with dozens of bullets. His body tumbled down the stairs, blood splattering the walls.

The killers then went through the house, executing everyone they found, Mujib’s wife, his other son Jamal and his wife, his brother Naser, and finally his 10-year-old son Russell, who was crying for his mother.

When Tripathi asked Farooq about the boy, he replied: “It was an act of mercy killing. Mujib was building a dynasty; we had to finish off all of them.”

The killers were granted immunity by the new government. Some received diplomatic postings. Farooq himself ran for president. It took thirty-four years, and the election of Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina as prime minister, for justice to finally catch up.

In January 2010, five of the assassins were hanged.

Two Women and Their Troubled Inheritance

The final sections of the book examine Bangladesh’s contemporary politics, dominated by the bitter rivalry between Sheikh Hasina (Mujib’s daughter) and Khaleda Zia (widow of General Ziaur Rahman, who himself was assassinated in 1981).

Tripathi documents their toxic relationship, including a leaked 37-minute phone conversation where the two former prime ministers argued like teenagers about whether Khaleda’s phone was working.

This rivalry, Tripathi argues, has paralyzed Bangladeshi politics. The two women have alternated in power, but neither can work with the other. The country’s development, impressive in some areas, has been held back by political instability and the culture of impunity.

Judgement Day

Tripathi examines Bangladesh’s war crimes tribunals, set up in 2010 to prosecute those accused of collaborating with the Pakistani army.

The tribunals have sentenced several Jamaat-e-Islami leaders to death, and four have been executed. But the process has been controversial. International human rights groups have criticized procedural flaws. Some defendants have been tried in absentia. Witnesses have disappeared.

Tripathi doesn’t take sides. He acknowledges the legitimate desire for justice while also documenting the problems. He quotes one Bangladeshi human rights activist: “We are against death penalty but the dilemma is that we are in a country where life imprisonment really means imprisonment guaranteed only until your party comes to power. The death penalty is almost seen as the only way to guarantee justice for such a grisly crime.”

4. The Jamaat-e-Islami: An Ideological Foe from the Start

The Jamaat-e-Islami’s opposition to Bangladesh’s creation wasn’t a late development; it was rooted in its very ideology. The party was originally founded in Lahore in 1941, and its leadership did not support the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

Instead, they believed in a pan-Islamic vision that transcended national borders, thinking that the whole of India would one day convert to Islam.

After Pakistan’s creation, the party moved its base there, and its East Pakistan wing became the Bangladeshi Jamaat. By 1971, its ideology led it to oppose the breakup of Pakistan, viewing Bengali nationalism as a threat to the unity of the Muslim ummah. This fundamental opposition defined the party’s role in the war.

The Razakars, Al-Badr, and Al-Shams: The Jamaat’s Militias

The Pakistani army’s strategy to crush Bengali nationalism relied heavily on local collaborators, and the Jamaat-e-Islami was its most significant partner. The party and its student wing, the Islami Chhatra Sangha (ICS), formed and manned three main paramilitary forces that terrorized the Bengali population:

• Razakars: A general term for the paramilitary units that spread terror throughout the country.
• Al-Badr: This was a notorious “death squad” formed by the Jamaat’s student wing. The ICS was essentially transformed into Al-Badr during the war. Its primary task was to hunt down and kill Bengali nationalist activists, intellectuals, and anyone suspected of supporting the liberation movement.
• Al-Shams: Another auxiliary force of the Pakistani army, formed and staffed by Jamaat and ICS members.

These militias were crucial to the Pakistani army because they provided local knowledge, identified targets, and carried out the most brutal acts of violence. As The Colonel Who Would Not Repent notes, “With their local knowledge, the Razakars were an invaluable tool in the Pakistani Army’s arsenal of genocide”.

The Atrocities: A Systematic Campaign of Terror

The Jamaat’s militias didn’t just assist the Pakistani army; they were active participants in a systematic campaign of violence. Their specific crimes, as documented in the book and by the subsequent war crimes tribunals, included:

• Targeting Hindus: The Razakars and Al-Badr were instrumental in the Pakistani army’s policy of ethnic cleansing against the Hindu minority. One officer is quoted as saying their mission was to “sort out” the Hindus to “restore the land to the people”. Aroma Dutta, the granddaughter of Dhirendranath Datta, recalled how Razakars in her village actively collaborated with the army to hunt down and kill Hindus.
• The Massacre of Intellectuals: The most infamous atrocity attributed to Al-Badr is the systematic killing of Bangladesh’s leading intellectuals on December 14, 1971, just two days before the Pakistani army surrendered. This was a deliberate attempt to cripple the nascent nation by eliminating its brightest minds. Among the victims were:
  • Munier Chowdhury, a renowned playwright and linguist.
  • Shahidullah Kaiser, an award-winning novelist.
  • Dr. M.A.M. Faizul Mahi, a physician who helped the Mukti Bahini.
  • Journalist Nizamuddin Ahmed.
  • Poet and journalist Selina Parvin.

These men and women were abducted from their homes by Al-Badr, taken to Rayer Bazar, tortured, and killed. Their bodies were dumped in the Turag River. The body of Munier Chowdhury was never found.

The Rayer Bazar Killings and Farman Ali: The Colonel Who Would Not Repent highlights the controversial role of Maj. Gen. Rao Farman Ali, a Pakistani general, who is widely considered complicit in the Rayer Bazar killings. A list of Bengali intellectuals marked for death was found in his diary after the war. While Farman Ali denied ordering the killings, he was part of the military command structure that enabled them.

Brigadier Siddiq Salik, a Pakistani officer, stated, “He [Farman] was the major general in charge of civil administration. As such nothing would happen which he would not know”.

Violence Against Women: While the Pakistani army was primarily responsible for the mass rapes, the Razakars and Al-Badr played a key role in abducting women, enforcing curfews, and facilitating the army’s reign of sexual terror. They acted as the eyes and ears of the army on the ground.

The War Crimes Tribunals and the Reckoning

The role of the Jamaat-e-Islami in the 1971 atrocities was not a secret. After Bangladesh’s independence, the party was banned for its collaboration with the Pakistani army. It was later rehabilitated under the rule of General Ziaur Rahman, who lifted the ban and allowed the party to re-enter politics. This decision was a major point of contention and allowed Jamaat leaders to avoid justice for decades.

It wasn’t until the election of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in 2009 that the process of accountability began in earnest. The government established the International Crimes Tribunal to prosecute those accused of war crimes during the 1971 conflict.

Of the initial twelve men indicted, nine were leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami. This statistic alone underscores the central role the party played in the atrocities. The tribunal’s proceedings revealed the scale of the Jamaat’s involvement:

• Ghulam Azam: The wartime head of the Jamaat-e-Islami, he was found guilty on all five charges against him, including planning and complicity in genocide. He was sentenced to 90 years in prison.
• Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed: The secretary-general of the Jamaat, he was the chief of the Al-Badr militia and was sentenced to death.
• Motiur Rahman Nizami: The chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, he was found guilty of murder, rape, and looting, and was sentenced to death.
• Abdul Quader Mollah: A leader of the Al-Badr militia, he was initially sentenced to life imprisonment but was later executed after the public demanded a harsher punishment. One court even observed that his crimes were “worse than those perpetrated by… Nazis”.
• Muhammad Kamaruzzaman: A Jamaat leader, he was sentenced to death for mass killings, rape, torture, and kidnapping.
• Delwar Hossain Sayeedi: A senior Jamaat leader, he was sentenced to death for genocide, rape, and religious persecution. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent presents a damning portrait of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s role in the 1971 war. It wasn’t a passive observer but an active, ideologically driven collaborator that played a central role in the atrocities.

Through its militias, the party helped the Pakistani army target Hindus, intellectuals, and anyone who opposed the idea of a united Pakistan. The subsequent war crimes tribunals, while controversial in their procedures, confirmed through the conviction of numerous Jamaat leaders the party’s systematic involvement in crimes against humanity.

The Jamaat’s history remains a deeply divisive issue in Bangladesh, a legacy of violence and ideological opposition to the very foundation of the nation.

5. The Colonel Who Would Not Repent Analysis

What Makes The Colonel Who Would Not Repent Exceptional

Tripathi brings together the narrative skill of a novelist and the analytical tools of a political journalist. He doesn’t just tell the story of Bangladesh’s birth, he makes you feel it.

His interviews with ordinary people, rape survivors, refugees, villagers who witnessed massacres, give the book a human dimension that academic histories often lack.

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is also remarkably balanced.

Tripathi doesn’t shy away from criticizing the Awami League, Mujib’s party, for its failures, the famine of 1974, the corruption, the slide into authoritarianism. He also documents atrocities committed by Bengali nationalists against Biharis. This is not a hagiography of Bangladesh’s liberation struggle; it’s an honest reckoning.

The structure works brilliantly. By starting with Farooq Rahman, the unrepentant colonel, Tripathi sets up a mystery: how could this man walk free?

The answer unfolds through the rest of the book, as we see how Bangladesh’s history of violence, impunity, and political dysfunction made Farooq’s impunity possible.

What Could Have Been Better

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is not without flaws. Some critics have pointed out minor factual errors, misspelled names, for instance. More significantly, Tripathi doesn’t definitively answer the question of how many people died.

He presents the range of estimates, from 26,000 (Pakistan’s figure) to 3 million (Bangladesh’s figure), but doesn’t take a firm position. Some readers may find this frustrating, though it’s also honest: the truth is simply unknowable.

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent also spends relatively little time on the Chittagong Hill Tracts, where indigenous communities experienced their own conflicts with the Bengali state. Given that Tripathi elsewhere emphasizes the importance of inclusivity, this omission is noticeable.

6. Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

Oral history at its best. Tripathi’s interviews with survivors are the heart of the book. The birangonas, the raped women, speak with a dignity that is profoundly moving. One woman told him: “We made this country free, and how do we live now? Nobody values us, no one honours us. We are made fun of.”

Balanced perspective. Tripathi criticizes all sides, the Pakistani army, Bengali nationalists, the Awami League, the BNP, the Jamaat. This gives the book credibility.

Historical sweep. By going back to 1905 and the first Partition of Bengal, Tripathi shows that Bangladesh’s troubles didn’t begin in 1971, they have deep roots in colonialism and the politics of religious identity.

Journalistic rigor. Tripathi doesn’t rely on one source. He cross-checks accounts, acknowledges uncertainty, and lets conflicting narratives stand.

Weaknesses

Graphic content. This is not a book for the faint-hearted. The descriptions of violence, particularly sexual violence, are relentless. Some readers may find it overwhelming.

No clear answer on numbers. The debate about how many died remains unresolved. Tripathi presents the arguments but doesn’t settle the question.

Minor factual errors. Some reviewers have noted misspellings and small inaccuracies. These don’t undermine the book’s overall argument but are worth noting.

Limited coverage of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The indigenous communities of the CHT experienced their own conflicts with the Bengali state, but Tripathi gives them relatively little attention.

7. Comparison with Similar Works

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent sits alongside several other important works on the 1971 war:

Gary Bass’s The Blood Telegram (2013) focuses on Nixon and Kissinger’s secret support for Pakistan during the genocide. Bass’s book is more narrowly focused on US foreign policy; Tripathi’s is broader, covering the entire sweep of Bangladeshi history.

Sarmila Bose’s Dead Reckoning (2011) is controversial for its sympathetic treatment of the Pakistani army. Bose argues that Bangladeshis have exaggerated their suffering. Tripathi’s book is a direct rejoinder to this view, documenting atrocities through hundreds of interviews.

Yasmin Saikia’s Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh (2011) focuses specifically on women’s experiences. Tripathi covers similar ground but also includes the political and military history.

Archer Blood’s The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh (2002) is the memoir of the US consul general in Dhaka during the war. Blood was a heroic figure who tried to warn Washington about the genocide. Tripathi draws on Blood’s cables but provides a broader perspective.

What sets Tripathi’s book apart is its combination of journalism, history, and memoir. He’s not just a scholar, he’s a witness who was shaped by his interviews. The book is deeply personal, and that gives it an emotional power that more detached accounts lack.

8. Conclusion

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is a masterpiece of narrative journalism. It’s harrowing, deeply researched, and profoundly humane.

Philip Hensher of The Guardian called it “Superb and harrowing… A fine and judicious account of the horrors of the Bangladesh war of independence”. Gary Bass, author of The Blood Telegram, described it as “a compelling, haunting chronicle of the tragic recent history of Bangladesh”.

I agree. This is one of the most important books I’ve read on South Asia. It tells a story that needs to be told, the story of a nation born in blood, haunted by its past, and still struggling to find peace.

Who Should Read This Book

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is essential reading for anyone interested in South Asian history, international relations, war crimes, or human rights. It’s also valuable for journalists and activists who want to understand how societies deal with mass atrocities.

But be prepared. This is not a book you’ll forget. The images, the students lined up and shot, the women raped by soldiers, the 10-year-old boy crying for his mother before being executed, will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

The Unquiet Legacy

Tripathi ends the book with a question that haunts all of Bangladesh: “Tomader ja bolar chhilo bolchhey ki ta Bangladesh?”, “Does Bangladesh speak what you wanted to say?”

It’s a question that applies not just to Bangladesh but to any nation born from violence. Can you build a just society on a foundation of blood? Can you move forward without forgetting the past? Can you achieve justice without descending into revenge?

Bangladesh is still searching for answers. The war crimes tribunals continue, though they’ve stalled in recent years. The political rivalry between Hasina and Khaleda (now deceased) has been replaced by new conflicts. The struggle between secularism and fundamentalism continues.

But Tripathi’s book offers a glimmer of hope. In the village of Chuknagar, he met Ershad Ali Morel, a Muslim man who, during the 1971 massacre, found an infant girl whose mother had been killed. He carried her to a Hindu family, knowing they would raise her. The girl, Sundari, survived. When Tripathi met her, she said simply: “I have survived.”

That survival, of kindness in the midst of horror, of humanity in the face of genocide, is what this book ultimately celebrates. Bangladesh may not have achieved its dream of Sonar Bangla, the Golden Bengal. But the people who survived, who rebuilt their lives, who still hope for justice, they embody the spirit of that dream.

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is their story. And it deserves to be read.

Further Reading and Related Works

Books:

• Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (2013)
• Sarmila Bose, Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War (2011)
• Yasmin Saikia, Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971 (2011)
• Archer Blood, The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh: Memoirs of an American Diplomat (2002)
• Anthony Mascarenhas, The Rape of Bangladesh (1971)
• Jahanara Imam, Of Blood and Fire: The Untold Story of Bangladesh’s War of Independence (1990)
• Tahmima Anam, A Golden Age (2007) , a novel set during the war
• Siddiq Salik, Witness to Surrender (1977) , a Pakistani officer’s account

Films:

• War Crime Files (1995) , Channel 4 documentary exposing collaborators
• Muktir Gaan (1995) , Tareque and Catherine Masud’s documentary
• Matir Moina (2002) , Tareque Masud’s film set during the war
• Meherjaan (2011) , Rubaiyat Hossain’s controversial film about a war baby

Recent Developments (as of 2026):

• The International Crimes Tribunal continues to hear cases, though proceedings have slowed since the political changeover in August 2024
• Sheikh Hasina, ousted in 2024, has been sentenced to death in absentia by the tribunal and plans to return to Bangladesh in December 2026
• Khaleda Zia passed away on December 30, 2025
• As of February 2024, the tribunals had adjudicated 55 cases, with 45 receiving death sentences