In reality, Yahya had used an incident of hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight to Lahore on 30 January 1971 as a pretext to beef up security in both East and West Pakistan. The Indian Airlines aircraft was flying from Srinagar to Jammu but was hijacked to Lahore by two members of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which was fighting for Kashmir’s independence. The hijackers were welcomed openly in Pakistan, exacerbating tension with India. While the two hijackers got asylum in Pakistan, India retaliated by suspending Pakistani flights over Indian territory adding to Pakistan’s discomfort.
It was against this backdrop that India was weighing its options on East Pakistan. When New Delhi failed to respond immediately to Mujib’s request of early March for help, he sent one more message which reached Indira Gandhi on 19 March. India’s deputy High Commissioner in Dhaka, K.C. Sen Gupta, carried New Delhi’s response. Author and historian, Srinath Raghavan, says Sengupta conveyed to Tajuddin Ahmad, one of Mujib’s associates, New Delhi’s vague and general assurance that India would offer all possible assistance to victims in the event of an attack.13 India was not fully committing itself yet, since the Indian leadership was still unsure about the direction in which the events in East Pakistan were headed.
1 Lt Gen A.A.K. Niazi, Betrayal of East Pakistan (Pakistan: Oxford, 1998).
2 Threat of a military attack or infiltration campaign by Pakistan (R&AW note to Cabinet Secretary), Subject file No. 220, P.N. Haksar papers (III Instalment), NMML, New Delhi.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 From Internal correspondence.
8 Ibid.
9 Indian intelligence assessment.
10 Jairam Ramesh, Intertwined Lives: PN Haksar and Indira Gandhi (New Delhi: Simon & Schuster India, 2018).
11 ‘PM’s instructions about assessment of East Pakistan Affairs’ R&AW note for P.N. Haksar, Subject File No. 220, Haksar papers, NMML, New Delhi.
12 Personal interview with Soumitra Banerjee, September 2019.
13 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2013).
ELEVEN
The Crackdown in East Pakistan
Even in West Pakistan, there was a sense of uncertainty as Yahya Khan returned to Rawalpindi from Dhaka in mid-January. Yahya’s dilemma was understandable. Mujib was in no mood to give up his six-point programme. Bhutto, on the other hand, was egged on by his supporters to claim political primacy.
Meanwhile, the Awami League was getting restless. Yahya Khan, under pressure from Mujib, announced on 13 February 1971 that the National Assembly would meet in Dhaka on 3 March for framing the Constitution. Bhutto, in the meantime, was being encouraged to play spoilsport. On 15 February, Bhutto announced his party’s boycott of the National Assembly. He told his followers, ‘We cannot go there [Dhaka] only to endorse the Constitution already prepared by a party, and return humiliated.’ He told followers at Lahore that he would launch a protest movement if the government backed Mujib. He said either East Pakistan should be allowed independence or Mujib should be arrested and taken to task.
In Dhaka, the situation was grim. Supporters of the Awami League were on a tight leash but beneath the surface, the resentment at the blatant discrimination by Yahya Khan had begun to rankle. The Governor at Dhaka, Vice Admiral S.M. Ahsan and his Martial Law Administrator Lt Gen Shaibzada Yakub, briefed Yahya of the dangerous situation in East Pakistan and advised immediate political action to end the crisis.
As troop build-up was taking place, Governor Ahsan told Mujib of the decision to postpone the National Assembly on 27 February—two days before the public announcement by Yahya on 1 March. He cited two main reasons for postponement—the threat of boycott by Bhutto’s PPP and a tense situation created by India on the border. The second reason was a red herring since India had neither moved additional troops to the border nor had it commented on what it considered as an internal affair of Pakistan.
As soon as the announcement was made at noon, streets in Dhaka were flooded with protesting people and the Awami League cadre. In a spontaneous outpouring, common citizens brandishing lathis and iron rods and chanting pro-independence slogans thronged the area around Hotel Purbani, where Mujib and the top brass of the Awami League had gathered to decide the next course of action.
Hours later, Mujib addressed a heavily crowded press conference and criticised the government’s decision but stopped short of declaring unilateral independence as many had anticipated. East Pakistan came to a standstill 1 March evening onwards. Next day, Dhaka was strewn with roadblocks put up by angry and almost out-of-control young cadres of the Awami League, and even ordinary citizens who had nothing to do with politics. The anger against blatant discrimination—indeed denial of their fundamental rights, so to speak—had boiled over amongst the East Pakistanis, who considered themselves Bengalis first and Muslims later.
East Pakistan saw a total bandh on 2 March. Mujib was apparently conscious of not letting the agitation turn too violent or going completely out of control. He had to maintain a balance between appearing to be reasonable (to the Pakistani ruling establishment) and inspiring his supporters who were in a heightened mode of protest. Hence, during a speech on 3 March, Mujib appealed to his supporters to observe peaceful satyagraha. He was aware of the palpable anger against the Urdu-speaking ‘Bihari’ Muslims—people who had moved from India at the time of partition and were seen as outsiders by Bengali-speaking natives—for supporting the ruling elite in East Pakistan. These Urdu-speaking people became an immediate and convenient target of street violence that unleashed in the aftermath of the civil disobedience declared by Mujib on 4 March.
That day onwards, the situation in East Pakistan went into a tailspin. The radicals were disappointed with Mujib’s balancing act and decided to chalk their own programme.
Yahya, alarmed at the deteriorating situation, broadcast a speech squarely blaming Mujib for the deadlock. While announcing 25 March as the date for the meeting of the National Assembly, he asserted that ‘it is the duty of the Pakistan Armed Forces to ensure the integrity, solidarity and security of Pakistan, a duty in which they have never failed’. Separately, Yahya sent a message to Mujib in attempt of a last-minute reconciliation. At the same time, he sent Lt Gen Tikka Khan to take over from Shahbzada Yakub Khan as Martial Law Administrator and Governor of East Pakistan.
The speech on 7 March is considered a turning point in the political history of East Pakistan/Bangladesh. That day, Sheikh Mujib virtually took control of the administration in the eastern wing of what was then Pakistan. Flags of Independent Bangladesh were seen fluttering at the venue of his meeting that day. As one writer describes it, ‘Mujib, in addition to the four conditions laid down by Awami League earlier, also demanded cessation of military buildup in East Pakistan, end to victimisation of government officers and employees and handing over of the maintenance of law and order to police and the East Pakistan Rifles (EPR). Yahya Khan, instead of coming to Dhaka on 10 March, postponed his visit to 15 March and to this Mujib reacted adversely.’1
On 16 March, Yahya arrived in Dhaka in what appeared to be a last-ditch effort to clinch a negotiated settlement. At the same time, some generals also arrived in East Pakistan, which, it later transpired, was in preparation for a pre-determined military crackdown. Gen Tikka Khan told President Yahya Khan, ‘Give me one week’s time, I will bring back normalcy in East Pakistan.’ The stage was thus set for a crackdown. A brutal operation, which even seasoned military veterans like Gen Niazi found unpalatable, was about to be unleashed on the unsuspecting people of East Pakistan.
Many accounts of the time now suggest that the die was cast on 18 March when Yahya told Tikka Khan ‘the bastard (Mujib) is not behaving. Get ready’.2
Meanwhile, in preparation for the crackdown, Gen Tikka ordered eviction of all foreign correspondents and TV crews. Some of them were manhandled, their luggage searched and films removed. Eventually
, they all moved to India.
On 25 March, when it was almost certain that a crackdown was coming, Tikka Khan had available to him the four brigades under the 14 Division. As events unfolded on the night of 25 March 1971, neither tact nor tactics was applied. Instead, a massacre of unarmed civilians—student leaders, intellectuals from Dhaka University, poor supporters of the Awami League living in ghettos (most of them were Hindus) and soldiers of the EPR—was unleashed on the unsuspecting population. The dreadful operation dubbed ‘Operation Searchlight’, which commenced around 11 PM on 25 March, killed anywhere between 7,000 to 10,000 people that night in Dhaka alone, according to independent sources, diplomats and foreign journalist, who were in Dhaka.
It was a complete military operation—one of the very few military operations in post-Second World War history, which ultimately was planned against civilians just to kill a small percentage of them and to scare the survivors. Many historians have traced the desire for full independence by the Bengali population to events of that horrific night.
The morning of 25 March was tense, as reports of the breakdown of talks and total collapse of the administration led to the death of more than a thousand people in Syedpur, Rangpur, Khalishpur and Chittagong the day before.
Operation Searchlight began at around 11 PM, but the tanks rolled out of the Dhaka cantonment around 8 PM. Some went towards Dhaka University, some to the EPR headquarters in Pilkhana and others towards Rajarbagh Police Lines.
The first target in Dhaka University was the Iqbal Hall (now Sergeant Zahurul Huq Hall), where most of the Bengali nationalist activities took place. To clear their way, the Pakistani Army set fire to the slums, which straddled the old railway line that ran west of Dhaka University and killed thousands of poor men, women and children within a few minutes.
The army also killed a number of teachers that night inside their houses. Dr Moniruzzaman, head of the Department of Statistics, was killed along with his entire family. So was Dr Jyotirmoy Guha Thakurta, reader of English, and Govinda Chandra Dev, head of the Department of Philosophy.
The Army was on a rampage, killing, pillaging virtually unopposed. The Hindu population of Dhaka took the brunt of the slaughter. Dhaka University was targeted, and Hindu students were gunned down. As the news of the military action reached Mujib (who was still at his Dhanmondi residence), he instructed all his top colleagues to go underground. Some student leaders who were meeting Mujib at that time urged him to go ahead and declare independence and call upon the EPR, Police and East Bengal Rifles (EBR). Mujib agreed and around midnight tried to contact the Dhaka Radio Station but the army had already seized it.
He then contacted the Chittagong Radio Station over the EPR wireless to broadcast the declaration of independence. Around midnight, in the first few hours of the massacre, Mujib’s voice was heard over the air waves, thanks to the broadcast by the Chittagong Radio Station. The voice, faint, as if pre-recorded, said, ‘This may be my last message. From today, Bangladesh is independent. I call upon the people of Bangladesh, wherever you are and with whatever you have to resist the army occupation to the last. Your fight must go on until the last soldier of the Pakistan occupation army is expelled from the soil of Bangladesh and final victory is achieved.’
Mujib was arrested shortly after declaring Bangladesh independent. The rest of the Awami League leadership went into hiding and those that survived eventually fled to India.
For the first few days after the Pakistani Army crackdown, the world, at large, was unaware of the massacre of 25 March and thereafter. Yahya Khan and the Pakistan Army had planned the genocide well. Yahya aimed to crush the Bengali spirit once and for all. Only handful of journalists managed to evade the Pakistani Army.
One of them was Simon Dring of The Daily Telegraph. He evaded capture by hiding on the roof of the Hotel Intercontinental. Dring was able to extensively tour Dhaka the next day and personally witness the slaughter that was taking place. Days later, Dring was able to leave East Pakistan with his reporter’s notes. On 30 March 1971, he filed a chilling report of the massacre that took place in Dhaka on the night of 25 March. Dring reported that in 24 hours of killing, the Pakistan army slaughtered as many as 7,000 people in Dhaka and up to 15,000 people in all of Bangladesh.
Dring described the attack on Dhaka University as follows:
Led by American-supplied M-24 World War II tanks, one column of troops sped to Dacca University shortly after midnight. Troops took over the British Council library and used it as a fire base from which to shell nearby dormitory areas.
Caught completely by surprise, some 200 students were killed in Iqbal Hall, headquarters of the militantly anti-government students’ union, I was told. Two days later, bodies were still smouldering in burnt-out rooms, others were scattered outside, more floated in a nearby lake, an art student lay sprawled across his easel.
Army patrols also razed nearby market area. Two days later, when it was possible to get out and see all this, some of the market’s stall-owners were still lying as though asleep, their blankets pulled up over their shoulders.
The ‘old town’ quarter of Dhaka city was singled out for destruction by the Pakistanis because of strong Awami League support there and because there were many Hindu residents in the area.
Here is how Simon Dring described the attacks on unarmed civilians:
The lead unit was followed by soldiers carrying cans of gasoline. Those who tried to escape were shot. Those who stayed were burnt alive. About 700 men, women and children died there that day between noon and 2 pm, I was told.
In the Hindu area of the old town, the soldiers reportedly made the people come out of their houses and shot them in groups. The area, too, was eventually razed.
The troops stayed on in force in the old city until about 11 pm on the night of Friday, 26 March, driving around with local Bengali informers. The soldiers would fire a flare and the informer would point out the houses of Awami League supporters. The house would then be destroyed—either with direct fire from tanks or recoilless rifles or with a can of gasoline, witnesses said.
After having massacred 15,000 unarmed civilians in a single day, the Pakistani soldiers bragged about their invincibility to Simon Dring: ‘These bugger men’, said one Punjabi lieutenant ‘could not kill us if they tried’. ‘Things are much better now’, said another officer. ‘Nobody can speak out or come out. If they do, we will kill them—they have spoken enough—they are traitors, and we are not. We are fighting in the name of God and a united Pakistan.
On 27 March, when the curfew was lifted after 33 hours, almost the entire population of Dhaka had started fleeing. Reports of the time said almost 80 per cent of the population had left the city. The people killed in and around Dhaka in those two days of frenzy were estimated to be close to 150,000. Bengali officers and men in EBR and EPR within the Dhaka area were killed.
The Pakistanis then began their killing spree in the major cities of Dhaka, Chittagong, Jessore and Comilla. In Jessore and Comilla Cantonments, Bengali officers (almost 30 each) were killed along with their families. The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) was pressed into service to strafe pockets of resistance. More than 15,000 villages and towns were bombed from air. Non-Bengali collaborators assisted Pakistani soldiers in identifying and locating prominent Hindu and Bengali intellectuals and hunted them down mercilessly. Although the exact figures will never be known, conservative estimates of the time suggest that over a million people were butchered in the barbaric campaign of the Pakistani Army.
In June, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg filed a number of eyewitness accounts from Bangladeshi towns for The New York Times. In response, the Pakistani Army expelled him from the country on 30 June 1971.
Schanberg described the systematic subjugation and killing of Bengalis as follows:
Army trucks roll through the half-deserted streets of the capital of East Pakistan these days, carrying ‘anti-state’ prisoners to work-sites for hard labor. Their heads are shave
d and they wear no shoes and no clothes except for shorts—all making escape difficult.
Street designations are being changed to remove all Hindu names as well as those of Bengali Moslem nationalists as part of a campaign to stamp out Bengali culture. Shankari Bazar Road in Dacca is now Tikka Khan Road, after the lieutenant general governor of East Pakistan and whom most Bengalis call ‘the Butcher’.
Since the offensive began the troops have killed countless thousands of Bengalis—foreign diplomats estimate at least 200,000 to 250,000—many in massacres. Although the targets were Bengali Moslems and the 10 million Hindus at first, the army is now concentrating on Hindus in what foreign observers characterize as a holy war.
Of the more than six million Bengalis who are believed to have fled to India to escape the army’s terror, at least four million are Hindus. The troops are still killing Hindus and burning and looting their villages.
However, army commanders in the field in East Pakistan privately admit to a policy of stamping out Bengali culture, both Muslim and Hindu—but particularly Hindu.
While the world was slow to realise the horrors of the 25–26 March genocide unleashed by the Pakistani Army in East Pakistan, India was alive to the magnitude of the crisis, since lakhs of refugees started streaming into the bordering states of Assam, West Bengal, Tripura and Meghalaya, putting tremendous strain on local resources, and, of course, creating unprecedented social tension.
As soon as the news of the massacres in East Pakistan was public, Indian political parties demonstrated before the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi, demanding immediate withdrawal of the Pakistani Army since it was committing unspeakable atrocities in East Pakistan. On 31 March, the Indian Parliament passed a unanimous resolution expressing grave concern and deep anguish at the massive attack unleashed by the forces of West Pakistan on the people of East Pakistan.
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