McCartney Times

The former Beatle’s concerts, featuring some of the world’s most famous musicians including Bob Dylan, created global awareness about the Bangladesh genocide

On the first Sunday afternoon of August 1971, an excited crowd of New Yorkers converged at the city’s iconic Madison Square Garden to witness a concert by “George Harrison and Friends.” A small advertisement about the concert had appeared in the back pages of the New York Times a couple of weeks earlier and tickets had sold out so fast that the former Beatle decided to keep a second show on the same day. A poster outside the famous arena’s box office made it clear that a person could only purchase four tickets for the so-called Concert for Bangladesh.

At a time when Americans knew precious little about South Asia, Harrison wanted to raise awareness about the plight of refugees from what was then East Pakistan. The land that would become Bangladesh faced the full fury of Cyclone Bhola in November 1970 and a few months later the Pakistani Army carried out a genocide in the country when the people demanded their democratic rights. This led to a massive influx of refugees into eastern India. These traumatised and frightened people, believed to number up to 10 million, faced starvation, lack of sanitation and deadly diseases such as cholera.

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Source: Why ‘Concert for Bangladesh’ in 1971 was a gamechanger | Dhaka Tribune