by Gary J. Bass
22. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Bell to Shakespeare, 21 April 1971, Dacca 1440. See NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Inter-Departmental Working Group on East Pakistan Disaster Relief, Daily Status Report, 20 November 1970; and NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Holly to Farland, 15 November 1970, State 187185. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 97. Library of Congress, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Archer Blood interview, 27 June 1989.
23. Library of Congress, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Archer Blood interview, 27 June 1989. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 79–85, 98–101, 110–14, 120–21.
24. The United States donated some $9 million in emergency relief aid, and U.S. military helicopters airlifted over a million pounds of supplies into the disaster zone (NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Kissinger to Nixon, 4 January 1971). Nixon committed an extra 150,000 tons of grain to help people left hungry from the cyclone, worth some $16 million. (NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Williams to Nixon, n.d. January 1971. See NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Kissinger to Nixon, 23 November 1970; NSC Files, Box H-054, SRG Meeting, Pakistan and Ceylon, 19 April 1971, Saunders to Kissinger, 16 April 1971.) NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Spengler to Farland, 19 November 1970. See NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Kissinger to Nixon, 21 November 1970. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Bell to Shakespeare, 21 April 1971, Dacca 1440.
25. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Kissinger to Nixon, 23 November 1970. See Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 91. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Inter-Departmental Working Group on East Pakistan Disaster Relief, Daily Status Report, 25 November 1970. Library of Congress, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Archer Blood interview, 27 June 1989. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 77, 100. India was actually preoccupied with refugees fleeing the disaster zone into India. (PMS, 7/371/71, vol. I, Gandhi to Shukla, 3 January 1971. PMS, 7/371/71, vol. I, Gandhi to Sukhadia, 3 January 1971. PMS, 7/371/71, vol. I, Gandhi to Naik, 3 January 1971. PMS, 7/371/71, vol. I, Patil to Gandhi, 13 January 1971. PMS, 7/371/71, vol. I, Naik to Gandhi, 19 April 1971. PMS, 7/411/70, Satpathy to Gandhi, 27 November 1970. PMS, 7/411/70, Kaul to Sanpathy, 28 November 1970.)
26. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Kissinger to Nixon, 19 November 1970. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Kissinger to Nixon, 20 November 1970.
27. MEA, HI/1012/32/71, Sen Gupta to Acharya, 5 February 1971. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 114–15.
28. Ved Mehta, The New India (New York: Viking, 1978), p. 131. For a laudatory biography, see Yatindra Bhatnagar, Mujib: The Architect of Bangla Desh (New Delhi: Indian School Supply Depot, 1971). Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 46–48.
29. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Saunders to Kissinger, 1 March 1971. See MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 4 March 1971, and Peggy Durdin, “The Political Tidal Wave That Struck East Pakistan,” New York Times Magazine, 2 May 1971. Library of Congress, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Archer Blood interview, 27 June 1989. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 115–18, 69–70, 125–28. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, INR note, 23 November 1970.
30. NSC Files, Box H-112, SRG Minutes, SRG meeting, 6 March 1971, 11:40 a.m. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, INR note, 23 November 1970. Library of Congress, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Archer Blood interview, 27 June 1989. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 125, 132.
31. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, INR note, 23 November 1970. Choudhury, Last Days of United Pakistan, pp. 106–26. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 128, 115–19. NMML, Kaul Papers, Subject File 19, part II, Singh briefing in London, n.d. June 1971. Jones, Pakistan, pp. 153–54. For a harsh verdict on Yahya, see Government of Pakistan, The Report of the Hamoodur Rehman Commission of Inquiry into the 1971 War (Lahore: Vanguard, 2001), p. 336.
32. NMML, Kaul Papers, Subject File 19, part II, Singh briefing in London, n.d. June 1971. Choudhury, Last Days of United Pakistan, p. 85. Jones, Pakistan, pp. 151, 155.
33. FRUS, vol. E-7, White House tapes, Oval Office 624-21, 24 November 1971, 12:27 p.m. Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (New York: Ecco, 2003), p. 449. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, INR note, 23 November 1970. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 44–45. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Politics of the People: A Collection of Articles, Statements and Speeches, vol. 3, ed. Hamid Jalal and Khalid Hasan (Rawalpindi: Pakistan Publications, n.d.), pp. 1–179. See Salmaan Taseer, Bhutto: A Political Biography (New Delhi: Vikas, 1980).
34. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 123–24.
35. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 33. NSC Files, Box H-052, SRG Meetings, Hoskinson to Kissinger, 5 March 1971. Choudhury, Last Days of United Pakistan, pp. 52–66, 73–104. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 128–29.
36. MEA, HI/121/13/71, vol. I, Singh statement to United Nations General Assembly, 27 September 1971. The National Assembly had 313 seats. See MEA, HI/1012/32/71, Sen Gupta to Acharya, 5 February 1971. The Awami League won 160 directly elected seats out of 162 (Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the “Emergency,” and Indian Democracy, p. 147).
37. See Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), pp. 174–92. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, INR note, 27 February 1970.
38. Jones, Pakistan, pp. 156–59. See MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 4 March 1971; Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 128–29. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2531, Farland to Rogers, 19 April 1971, Islamabad 3523.
39. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 2 April 1971, Dacca 1067. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 129–34, 146–49.
40. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 136–37. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Sisco to Farland, 26 February 1971, State 33384. See NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Saunders to Kissinger, 1 March 1971. See MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 4 March 1971. Library of Congress, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Archer Blood interview, 27 June 1989.
41. Pakistan’s Lieutenant General A. A. K. Niazi argued that respect for the democratic process could have held Pakistan together (Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan [Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998], p. 220). Pakistan’s own Hamoodur Rehman commission later wrote that Yahya “was fully determined not to hand over power to the people at this or any other stage.” (Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report, p. 93.)
42. NSC Files, Box H-052, SRG Meetings, Rogers to Nixon, 23 February 1971. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Saunders and Hoskinson to Kissinger, 24 February 1971. NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Kissinger to Nixon, 22 February 1971. See NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Pavelle to Laird, 26 March 1971.
43. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Saunders to Kissinger, 4 March 1971. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Saunders to Kissinger, 1 March 1971.
44. Choudhury, Last Days of United Pakistan, p. 149. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Saunders to Kissinger, 1 March 1971. See MEA, HI/1012/31/71, Bakshi to Acharya, 18 March 1971; Choudhury, Last Days of United Pakistan, pp. 132–79.
45. Library of Congress, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Archer Blood interview, 27 June 1989. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 155. See Peggy Durdin, “The Pol
itical Tidal Wave That Struck East Pakistan,” New York Times Magazine, 2 May 1971.
46. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Rogers, 26 March 1971, Islamabad 2756. See MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 8 April 1971. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 165–66.
47. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 158–59, 167. See Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 310. For Pakistani accusations of atrocities by Bengalis, see Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report, pp. 507–8; Niazi, Betrayal of East Pakistan, pp. 41–43.
48. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Rogers, 26 March 1971, Islamabad 2756. NSC Files, Box H-052, SRG Meetings, Yahya broadcast, 6 March 1971.
49. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Sisco to Rogers, 2 March 1971; NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Eliot to Kissinger, 3 March 1971. See NSC Files, Box 624, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. III, Sisco to Farland, 26 February 1971, State 33384. White House tapes, Oval Office 461-10, 2 March 1971, 12:07–12:44 p.m. White House tapes, Oval Office 462-5, 5 March 1971, 8:30–10:15 a.m.
50. NSC Files, Box H-052, SRG Meetings, Hoskinson to Kissinger, 5 March 1971.
51. NSC Files, Box H-052, SRG Meetings, NSSM-118, 3 March 1971. NSC Files, Box H-052, SRG Meetings, Saunders to Kissinger, 5 March 1971. His italics. Saunders argued that “the bloodshed would be minimal,” since the army would soon be defeated. See NSC Files, Box H-052, SRG Meetings, Saunders and Hoskinson to Kissinger, 4 March 1971; NSC Files, Box H-052, SRG Meetings, Saunders and Hoskinson to Kissinger, 5 March 1971; NSC Files, Box H-052, SRG Meetings, Saunders to Kissinger, 5 March 1971. See NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Saunders to Kissinger, 5 March 1971; and NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Hoskinson to Kissinger, 5 March 1971.
52. NSC Files, Box H-112, SRG Minutes, SRG meeting, 6 March 1971, 11:40 a.m.
53. Kissinger later wrote, “For better or worse, the strategy of the Nixon Administration on humanitarian questions was not to lay down a challenge to sovereignty that would surely be rejected, but to exert our influence without public confrontation.” (White House Years [Boston: Little, Brown, 1979], p. 854.)
54. NSC Files, Box H-112, SRG Minutes, SRG meeting, 6 March 1971, 11:40 a.m. See NSC Files, Box H-052, SRG Meetings, NSSM-118, 3 March 1971. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 171–72.
55. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Saunders and Hoskinson to Kissinger, 8 March 1971, with Kissinger’s handwritten notes. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Saunders to Haig, 12 March 1971.
56. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Kissinger to Nixon, 13 March 1971.
57. FRUS, 40 Committee meeting, 9 April 1971, pp. 63–65.
58. MEA, HI/1012/31/71, Bakshi to Acharya, 6 April 1971.
59. MEA, HI/1012/30/71, Chib to Kaul, 8 April 1971. Blood, Cruel Birth, p. 173. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 9 March 1971, Dacca 647.
60. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 22 March 1971, Dacca 903. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 179, 159–61. A senior World Bank official later estimated that from the beginning of March, Yahya was building up his forces in East Pakistan with ten to fifteen daily flights of Boeing airplanes loaded with military personnel. (NMML, Haksar Papers, Subject File 168, B. R. Patel to I. G. Patel, 18 June 1971.) Choudhury, Last Days of United Pakistan, p. 155.
61. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 175–76.
62. In the middle of the crisis, Mujib’s birthday fell on St. Patrick’s Day, and Blood, riffing on the commonplace joke that the fractious Bengalis were the Irish of South Asia, merrily sent him a copy of John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage and a happy birthday message that “drew parallels between Irish and Bengalis (may all sons of old Erin forgive me for this blasphem).” POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 20 March 1971, Dacca 880. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 19 March 1971, Dacca 866. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 18 March 1971, Dacca 853. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 182, 189–90. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 2 April 1971, Dacca 1067.
63. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Blood to Farland, 11 March 1971, Dacca 726.
64. NSC Files, Box 625, Country Files—Middle East, Pakistan, vol. IV, Blood to Farland, 11 March 1971, Dacca 726. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 187–88.
65. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 13 March 1971, Dacca 773. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 183–84. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 16 March 1971, Dacca 818. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 20 March 1971, Dacca 883. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 24 March 1971, Dacca 911. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Rogers, 25 March 1971, Islamabad 2679; POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 22 March 1971, Dacca 903.
66. Choudhury, Last Days of United Pakistan, p. 161. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 19 March 1971, Dacca 868. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 189, 193–94. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 20 March 1971, Dacca 885. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 20 March 1971, Dacca 880.
67. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Barrow to Rogers, 2 April 1971, Lahore 515. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 2 April 1971, Dacca 1067. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Rogers, 19 March 197 1, Islamabad 2499. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Rogers, 20 March 1971, Islamabad 2527. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 23 March 1971, Dacca 906. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Barrow to Rogers, 2 April 1971, Lahore 515. Blood, Cruel Birth, pp. 190–91. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Rogers, 20 March 1971, Islamabad 2527.
68. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 24 March 1971, Dacca 927. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Sisco to Blood, 24 March 1971, State 49323. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 24 March 1971, Dacca 919. See POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Farland to Rogers, 26 March 1971, Islamabad 2752.
69. POL 23-9 PAK, Box 2530, Blood to Rogers, 22 March 1971, Dacca 903.
CHAPTER 3: MRS. GANDHI
1. Pupul Jayakar, Indira Gandhi: An Intimate Biography (New York: Pantheon, 1992), pp. 22–47.
2. Amartya Sen, “Tagore and His India,” New York Review of Books, 26 June 1997. Indira Nehru to Jawaharlal Nehru, 7 July 1934, Sonia Gandhi, ed., Freedom’s Daughter: Letters Between Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, 1922–39 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), p. 122. Katherine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 86–90.
3. Jawaharlal Nehru to Indira Nehru, 25 January 1934, Sonia Gandhi, ed., Freedom’s Daughter, p. 110. Indira Nehru to Jawaharlal Nehru, 27 March 1935, Sonia Gandhi, ed., Freedom’s Daughter, p. 149. Indira Nehru to Jawaharlal Nehru, 7 July 1934, Sonia Gandhi, ed., Freedom’s Daughter, p. 122. Indira Nehru to Jawaharlal Nehru, 12 January 1935, Sonia Gandhi, ed., Freedom’s Daughter, p. 136. Jayakar, Indira Gandhi, pp. 43–47. Rabindranath Tagore, A Tagore Reader, ed. Amiya Chakravarty (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), p. 27. Ramachandra Guha, ed., Makers of Modern India (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 171–72. Henry C. Hart, Indira Gandhi’s India (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1976). Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), pp. 90–91, 113–19. The institution is commonly known as Santiniketan, which refers to the town and grounds, but the school itself is named Viswa-Bharati (India in the World). On Tagore, see Guha, ed., Makers of Modern India, pp. 170–86; Sen, Argumentative Indian, pp. 89–120; Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012); Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006); and Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man (London: Bloomsbury, 1995).
4. Jayakar, Indira Gandhi, pp. 87–89, 101–2.
5. Sen, Argumentative Indian, p. 117. Jayakar, Indira Gandhi, pp. 106, 1
11, 114.
6. Janny Scott, “In Tapes, Candid Talk by Young Kennedy Widow,” New York Times, 12 September 2011, p. A1. See Oriana Fallaci, Interviews with History and Conversations with Power (New York: Rizzoli, 2011), p. 262. Jayakar, Indira Gandhi, pp. 37, 61. P. N. Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the “Emergency,” and Indian Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 120. Shashi Tharoor, Reasons of State: Political Development and India’s Foreign Policy Under Indira Gandhi, 1966–1977 (New Delhi: Vikas, 1982), p. 125.
7. Myron Weiner, The Indian Paradox: Essays in Indian Politics, ed. Ashutosh Varshney (New Delhi: Sage, 1989), p. 33. For a brilliant account of India’s high democratic ideals and harsh realities, see Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999). For an insightfully selected and introduced sample of Nehru’s own thinking, see Guha, ed., Makers of Modern India, pp. 299–37. See Jawaharlal Nehru, “The Unity of India,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 16, no. 2 (January 1938), pp. 231–43; Sunil Khilnani, “Nehru’s Faith,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 37, no. 48 (30 November–6 December 2002), pp. 4793–99; Myron Weiner, Party Politics in India: The Development of a Multi-Party System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957); Pratap Bhanu Mehta, The Burden of Democracy (New York: Penguin, 2003). Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the “Emergency,” and Indian Democracy, pp. 133, 123. Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (New York: Ecco, 2003), pp. 433–34. Henry Hart, “Political Leadership in India,” in Atul Kohli, ed., India’s Democracy: An Analysis of Changing State-Society Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 18–61. Dennis Kux, Estranged Democracies: India and the United States, 1941–1991 (New Delhi: Sage, 1993), p. 287. As president of the Congress party, she campaigned against the educational overreach of a communist government in the southern state of Kerala, trying to impose the rule of the central government there. Her father, the prime minister, was at first appalled at her efforts to topple a properly elected government, but eventually grudgingly went along with it (Jayakar, Indira Gandhi, pp. 112–14). It was arguably the greatest lapse in Nehru’s record of encouraging a real political opposition as a core part of India’s democracy (Guha, India After Gandhi, pp. 515–16).