"Bangla Desh" has been described as "one of the most cogent social statements in music history"[1] and helped gain international support for Bangladeshi independence by establishing the name of the fledgling nation around the world.

By the spring of 1971, George Harrison had established himself as the most successful ex-Beatle during the former band members' first year as solo artists;[3][4][5][6] in the words of biographer Elliot Huntley, he "couldn't have got any more popular in the eyes of the public".

[16][17] With Harrison also serving as record producer for the accompanying soundtrack album, work began with Shankar in Los Angeles during April 1971 and resumed in late June,[18][19] following Harrison-produced sessions in London for the band Badfinger.

[24] Along with the torrential rains and intensive flooding that were threatening the passage of millions of refugees into north-eastern India,[25] this news galvanised Shankar into approaching Harrison for help in trying to alleviate the suffering.

[28][29] While conceding that Harrison was no "natural sloganeer" in the manner of his former bandmate John Lennon, author Robert Rodriguez has written: "if any ex-Fab had the cachet with his fan base to solicit good works, it was the spiritual Beatle.

[31] Foreign journalists had been deported from East Pakistan shortly before the Pakistani army's Operation Searchlight, and even after Mascarenhas' first-hand observations had been published, Shankar and Harrison were concerned that the mainstream media in the West were showing a reluctance to report all the facts.

[1][32] That summer, it also emerged that America was supporting General Khan's military offensive, both financially and with weaponry[1] – despite the Blood telegram in April, in which officials at the US Consulate in Dacca advised their State Department of the "genocide" taking place and accused the US Government of "moral bankruptcy".

[33] Realising the need to create greater awareness of the situation in Bangladesh, and particularly the refugee camps of India that had become "infectious open-air graveyards"[34] with the outbreak of cholera,[25] Harrison quickly composed a song for the cause.

[39] Author Simon Leng writes that "[in] deference to the Shankar context", Harrison set the opening verse as a rock version of Indian music's traditional alap – "a slow introductory statement of the main ideas".

[25] The final verse-chorus, which includes the lines "Now, it may seem so far from where we all are / It's something we can't reject", reflects a point that former US Fund for UNICEF president Charles Lyons later identified as a perennial obstacle when addressing global issues of poverty: that the problems appear to be too big and too distant for individuals to be able to solve.

[40] In a review for the NME in August 1971, Derek Johnson wrote of "Bangla Desh": "Opens almost like a sermon, then the beat come is ... as George wails fervently to a backing of a solid rhythm section and handclaps.

[49][64] At Harrison's urging, Capitol Records, Apple's distributor in the United States, set all four of its manufacturing plants to producing copies of the "Bangla Desh" single; one-sided, white label promo discs were also rushed through to ensure immediate radio play for the song.

[65][nb 3] The front of the picture sleeve was topped with the line "(We've Got to Relieve)" before the words "Bangla Desh", leading a number of publications to include the parenthetical text as part of the official song title.

[22] Boxed off at the foot of the front sleeve were details of the George Harrison–Ravi Shankar Special Emergency Relief Fund (care of UNICEF's New York headquarters), to which proceeds of the single would go and further donations were encouraged.

[62] A Bangladeshi academic, Professor Farida Majid, would later write: "To the utter consternation of [US President] Nixon and [Secretary of State] Kissinger, George Harrison's 'Bangla Desh' hit the chart.

[73][74] Despite the song having been a hit – and its status as the first-ever pop charity single,[75] fourteen years before Band Aid and USA for Africa[76] – "Bangla Desh" was mostly ignored by record-company repackagers following 1971.

[77][nb 4] The song has since been included as a bonus track, remixed by Paul Hicks,[80] on the 2014 reissue of Harrison's Living in the Material World album, part of the eight-disc Apple Years 1968–75 box set.

[82] In his contemporary review for the NME, Derek Johnson considered the song to be "[n]ot so strong melodically as 'My Sweet Lord', but still nagging and insistent", and added: "one can immediately detect the despair and pity in [Harrison's] voice as he sings of the appalling plight of the East Pakistanis ... his lyric is bound to cause some heart-searching.

[97] Writing in The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles in 2009, Michael Frontani said that with his Bangladesh relief effort, Harrison "pioneered the whole idea of the charity album and single, as well as of the rock concert fundraiser".

[91] While bemoaning the song's omission from the 2009 Harrison compilation Let It Roll, Jon Cummings of Popdose described "Bangla Desh" as "no great artistic achievement" within itself, but "a key moment ... in the evolution of pop-music activism".

[100] Harrison played "Bangla Desh" as an encore at both of the Madison Square Garden shows on 1 August 1971, with the evening performance being selected for inclusion on the Concert for Bangladesh triple live album.

[104] Played at a faster tempo than the studio recording, it features what Spizer terms a "blistering" saxophone solo from Horn,[102] and a vocal by Harrison that Leng describes as "astonishingly powerful" and "a pure act of zeal".

[86] As shown in the concert film, following his brief guitar solo towards the end of the song, Harrison repeats the line "Relieve the people of Bangla Desh" before exiting the stage to loud applause,[105] as the band play on without him.

[90] Pitchfork's Quinn Moreland writes that the song title was the phrase that Harrison "hopes his audience takes away from the [concert]", and he adds: Concise, direct, and with a killer saxophone solo, "Bangla Desh" makes a convincing argument: Yes, the '60s were done.

[115] Harrison biographer Alan Clayson has written of the "triumph" of the Bangladesh concerts leading to a host of imitators and tribute acts replicating the shows' programme, among which was a French band's cover version of "Bangla Desh".

[117] The previous year, Stu Phillips & the Hollyridge Strings released an easy listening version of "Bangla Desh" on their Beatles tribute album The George, John, Paul & Ringo Songbook (1971).