In the last week of March 1971, Bangladesh faced a problem that was as practical as it was political: how does a people under military crackdown learn what is happening to them? Newspapers were constrained, the radio station in Dhaka had been taken over, and rumour travelled faster than fact. In Chittagong, the answer came from an unlikely place, a transmission centre at Kalurghat, on the edge of the port city, where a small group of engineers, soldiers, students and broadcasters put a clandestine station on the air. That station, Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra, the Independent Bengal Radio Station, would become one of the most powerful symbols of the Liberation War, not because it had powerful transmitters or a professional studio, but because, for millions of listeners, it was proof that resistance continued.
The Night Dhaka Went Silent
The background was Operation Searchlight, the Pakistani military crackdown launched in Dhaka on the night of 25 March 1971, targeting Bengali political leaders, intellectuals and military personnel in an attempt to suppress the autonomy movement. In Dhaka, the last message from Dacca Betar Kendro was delivered by announcer Nazma Akhtar, declaring that the people of Bangladesh had been subjected to brutal genocide by the army and would never allow the sacrifice to go in vain. Soon after, in the early hours of 26 March, the Pakistan Army took over Dacca Betar Kendro, renamed it Radio Pakistan Dacca, and used it to announce martial law orders. The attempt to silence Bengali voices had begun.
Chittagong, however, did not fall silent at the same speed. On 26 March, Chattogram emerged as one of the first centres of organised resistance, where scattered reactions quickly turned into coordinated defiance. Bengali soldiers within the East Bengal Regimental Centre and East Pakistan Rifles units began regrouping after surviving attacks inside the cantonment. By the morning of that day, roads across Chattogram were being blocked with barricades made of logs, trucks and whatever civilians could gather. The resistance soon took a more organised shape under Bengali military leadership, including officers like Ziaur Rahman, who moved to secure key points and disrupt Pakistani troop movements. The most significant clash took place at Kumira, along the Dhaka-Chattogram route, where East Pakistan Rifles members launched an ambush on a large Pakistani convoy from elevated positions, damaging vehicles and halting the advance. What set Chattogram apart, in one later account, was the convergence of soldiers, workers and civilians in a shared resistance, and the fact that, unlike Dhaka, the city did not fall immediately.
It was in this atmosphere of barricades, ambushes and uncertainty that the radio station at Kalurghat took on its historic role.
A Station in a Two-Storey Building
Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra was established in a two-storey building in Kalurghat, constantly broadcasting the call for independence. Its first name was Swadhin Bangla Biplobi Betar Kendra, the Independent Bengal Revolutionary Radio Station, later shortened to Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra. It had no professional studio and no proper instruments to record programmes, according to a Daily Star feature, yet it continued to carry out inspiring programmes as best it could, relaying important messages, giving updates from the battlefield, and connecting the whole nation with an unseen thread.
The sequence of broadcasts in those first days is recorded in several accounts, with small differences in timing that reflect the chaos of the moment. On the afternoon of 26 March, at 2.30 pm, a call was transmitted through the Kalurghat transmission centre by Chattogram District Awami League Secretary M. A. Hannan, urging resistance against the invading forces. In the afternoon of 26 March, a telegram containing the message of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman reached Syed Anwar Ali through some students in Chittagong. The message was translated into Bengali by Dr. Syed Anwar Ali's wife, Dr. Manjula Anwar. She, along with Syed Anwar Ali, Kazi Hosne Ara and two Water and Power Development Authority engineers, Ashikul Islam and Dilip Chandra Das, decided to cross the Kalurghat Bridge to reach the local transmission centre, which was controlled by Bengali soldiers of the 8th East Bengal Regiment under Major Ziaur Rahman. Bengali soldiers guarded the station as engineers prepared for transmission.
As contact could not be established with the political leaders, Major Ziaur Rahman was requested to broadcast the message. At 7.45 pm on 27 March 1971, he broadcast the declaration of independence on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. One account of the broadcast quotes it as beginning, "This is Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra. I, Major Ziaur Rahman, at the direction of Bangabandhu Mujibur Rahman, hereby declare that the Independent People's Republic of Bangladesh has been established." The first historical declaration, in another account, was made at 2.10 pm on 26 March, lasted only five to seven minutes, and was not clearly heard because of lower transmission quality, which helps explain why the clearer broadcast on 27 March became the one most people remember.
The Kalurghat station's transmission capability was limited, but its message travelled further than its wattage would suggest. The message was picked up by a Japanese ship in Chittagong harbour and retransmitted, and was then broadcast by Radio Australia and later by the BBC. Inside Bangladesh, those who heard Radio Australia passed on the news of the historic declaration in whispers to friends, neighbours and strangers. In a country cut off from free news circulation, where newspapers were forced to publish press notes and handouts given by the martial law authorities, a whisper that had travelled via a ship and a foreign broadcaster could carry enormous weight.
The Battle for Kalurghat
The radio station did not broadcast in safety. The Battle of Resistance at Kalurghat, from 26 March to 11 April 1971, was one of the first battles between the Pakistani army and the freedom fighters of Bangladesh. The 8th East Bengal Regiment played the leading role. At the start of the war, the regiment was located about four kilometres from the Chittagong cantonment in the Sholoshahar area. Its commanding officer was the non-Bengali Lieutenant Colonel A. R. Janjua, while Major Ziaur Rahman was second-in-command. Pakistani forces suffered substantial losses during the battle, but the resistance fighters were ultimately forced to retreat, as their troops and arms were not sufficient compared to those of the Pakistanis.
The radio station itself was bombed and damaged by the Pakistan Air Force on 30 March, after running for five days. Ten founding members broke into two groups and went to Agartala and Tripura with a one-kilowatt transmitter. On 3 April, they restarted broadcasting from Bagafa in Tripura, and later moved to Agartala. The station was ultimately moved to Kolkata on 25 May, from where it would broadcast until the end of the war. A Daily Star summary gives the Kolkata address as 57/8 Ballygunge Circular Road, and dates the start of official operations there to 25 May 1971. The journey from Kalurghat to Tripura to Kolkata is a map of the war itself: a station that began as a local act of defiance became a government-in-exile broadcaster, operating under constant threat, with the mission of informing the public, countering Pakistani propaganda, boosting the morale of freedom fighters and civilians, and keeping alive the spirit of independence.
Songs, Satire and the Voice of a War
What Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra broadcast after Kalurghat mattered as much as the declaration itself. During the nine-month war, the station aired news bulletins and wartime updates, patriotic songs, poetry, drama and satire. It became a lifeline for millions of Bangladeshis facing violence, displacement and uncertainty, and it used music, poetry, drama and satire as tools of resistance, turning broadcasts into emotional shelter and collective strength.
Two programmes became especially famous. "Chorompotro", produced by Abdul Mannan and presented by M. R. Akhtar Mukul, gained massive popularity for its presentation in Dhakaiya dialect and sharp humour. "Jollader Darbar" and "Pindi'r Prolap" were other popular programmes. Excerpts of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's historic 7 March address were also broadcast under the title "Bojrokontho", which greatly inspired freedom fighters. The station aired news updates, patriotic songs and satire programmes, and became a major source of inspiration for freedom fighters. It aided psychological warfare in 1971 and motivated people to keep on living and fighting for freedom in the most devastating days of the war.
The station's journey came to an end on 16 December 1971, the day of victory, and it was turned into Bangladesh Betar. It had been renamed Bangladesh Betar on 6 December 1971, when India recognised Bangladesh as a sovereign state, and it started broadcasting in the independent country on 22 December 1971. The ten founding members remembered in one account were Belal Muhammad, Syed Abdus Shaker, Mustafa Monwar, Abdullah Al Faruque, Abul Quasem Shandeep, Aminur Rahman, Rashedul Hossain, A. M. Sharfuzzaman, Kazi Habib Uddin Moni and Rezaul Karim Chowdhury.
Why Kalurghat Still Matters
Today, Kalurghat is a place name that carries a weight disproportionate to its size. The transmission centre there was not a grand building, and the station's early broadcasts were brief, faint and technically fragile. Yet those qualities are precisely why the story endures. Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra showed that, in a war, information is not a luxury. A declaration that no one hears changes nothing; a declaration heard by a ship's crew, rebroadcast from Australia, and whispered from house to house can change what people believe is possible.
Chittagong's role in 1971 is often reduced to a single date, 26 March, and a single building. The fuller story is broader: barricades on the morning of 26 March, an ambush at Kumira, a battle at Kalurghat lasting into April, and then a station that kept broadcasting from across the border until victory. The radio did not win the war by itself, and no honest history would claim that it did. But for listeners who had been told that all was calm, that resistance had been crushed, and that there was nothing left to hope for, the voice from Kalurghat, and later from Kolkata, was evidence to the contrary, carried on the airwaves when almost every other channel had been closed.