The second group of case studies in this book will tie the participatory and multi-causal character of the use of force in extremely violent societies to the idea of a crisis of society. It will reconstruct the victimhood and agency of various groups in relation to such a general crisis and make connections to long-term social transformations which involved massive social and geographic mobility as well as legacies of ongoing violence. This requires a very broad contextualization of peak events of destruction.

In a conventional view, matters seem clear for the case of Bangladesh. After the Bengali autonomy movement led by the Awami League won parliamentary elections in late 1970, the military dictatorship refused to hand over power. Instead, it cracked down on the peaceful people of East Pakistan on March 25, 1971 and started to kill Awami League supporters, Bengali intellectuals and troops, and Hindus, as this minority were collectively suspected of being Indian agents. Large parts of the countryside were devastated. The Pakistani army killed three million people, drove ten million out of the country, and raped 200,000 or more women. The East Bengalis started a guerrilla war for self-defense and achieved national independence with the help of an Indian invasion in December 1971. Several thousand people of the non-Bengali Urdu-speaking minority, the so-called Biharis, fell victim to the wrath of Bengalis because they had helped the Pakistani rulers.