by Kuldip Nayar
The Pakistan government’s attempt to foil Mujib’s secular appeal by arousing Islamic fervour for the ‘liberation’ of ‘Hindu-subjugated’ Kashmir evoked very little response, and even that soon died. Kashmir was too distant to stir up the Bengalis. In fact, they increasingly felt that the problem of Kashmir had been perpetuated to maintain the military machine monopolized by the West Pakistanis.
Mujib formulated a charter of demands which provided the bricks on which the structure of Bangladesh was built. West Pakistan saw the ‘hidden hand of India’ behind the demand and told this to the people in East Pakistan. They however cared little about the propaganda because they had faced exploitation and discrimination at the hands of their Muslim brethren from West Pakistan, not India.
The Agartala conspiracy case was trumped up against Mujib, who was already in jail under the Preventive Detention Act (20 January 1968). He was held responsible for a secessionist plot, obtaining weapons from India via Agartala, the capital of Tripura. To give it credibility, Pakistan declared (January 1968) P.N. Ojha, first secretary in the Indian High Commission, persona non grata, accusing him of having attended a meeting of the ‘conspirators’. It was true that Mujib had crossed into India in 1965 when he found the going difficult in East Pakistan, but he did this on his own. When the Indian government learnt of it, he was sent back.
The Pakistan government could not substantiate the charge and had to release Mujib unconditionally. After his release, Mujib said that if ever there was a conspiracy it was ‘a conspiracy against me’, and that the case was designed ‘to sabotage the just demands of East Pakistan’. The Agartala trial added to Mujib’s stature, and he now epitomized the Bengali resentment against West Pakistan. From then onwards, Mujib’s slogan was: ‘We want to be the brothers of West Pakistan, not its slaves.’
Tajuddin Ahmed, who was Mujib’s right-hand man, told me that the autonomy movement really began with the Agartala conspiracy case against them. ‘We realized then that we could not live with West Pakistan,’ he said, ‘and when we found that the allegation of conspiracy with India did not bring us down in the public esteem, we were emboldened.’
To appease East Bengalis, Yahya Khan announced (28 November 1969) the break-up of a ‘one unit’ West Pakistan and restoration of the old provinces and abolition of parity between East and West Pakistan. Subsequently, he fixed a time limit of 120 days for framing the constitution, and said that he would be the final authority to endorse or reject it.
The solution sought was too vague and too late. Two things shook the confidence of East Bengalis further. One was a report by the Pakistan experts that in 1959–60 the per capita income in West Pakistan was 32 per cent higher than that in the East and in 1969–70 the gap had widened by another 30 per cent.
The other reason was West Pakistan’s nonchalant attitude when a devastating cyclone hit East Bengal (12 November 1970), killing a million people and making East Pakistan’s weak economy still more feeble. Very little was done by Islamabad to help the victims. India offered helicopters to send them medicines and food but Islamabad rejected the offer. It was, however, alleged later by West Pakistan that the East Bengalis had been ‘won over’ by India with ‘money it had smuggled in’ during the relief operation.
Up to this point, East Bengal was only seeking autonomy within Pakistan. Even the election manifesto that Mujib’s Awami League adopted took a pro-Pakistan stand on Kashmir. The manifesto stated: ‘We accord the highest importance to the settlement of the Kashmir dispute on the basis of the UN resolutions adopted on this subject. We should continue to support the rightful struggle of the people of Jammu & Kashmir for the realization of their international rights of self-determination.’
However, when I met Mujib in April 1972, after East Pakistan had won Independence, he said that Kashmir was India’s in entirety and that the controversy was only about that portion of the state which was still with Pakistan. He did not want to say this publicly then because he said he could perhaps serve as a bridge between the Indian government and Sheikh Abdullah.
Bhutto threw the first stone when he announced that his party would not attend the National Assembly’s session fixed for 3 March 1971. He explained to me that it was neither a boycott nor a threat; was only intended to win time to reach ‘a broad settlement’ with Mujib before going to the Assembly.
Indicating that Bhutto and Yahya were in league, the latter postponed the Assembly session. (Yahya told the Hamood ur-Rehman Commission, appointed to inquire into the causes of Pakistan’s military debacle, that he was forced by Bhutto to postpone the session.) The postponement triggered off an uncontrollable chain of events. There were riots in East Bengal, particularly in Dhaka. Mujib again said at a public meeting (7 March 1971) that ‘we can live like brothers if we solve our problems peacefully and amicably’. However, before attending the assembly session, now fixed for 26 March, he wanted a withdrawal of all military personnel to their barracks as well as lifting of martial law and an immediate transfer of power to the elected representatives of the people.
Mujib also said that the East Bengalis felt the geographical distance during the 1965 Indo–Pakistan war, when the east was completely cut off from the west, devoid even of an air link. Partly to exploit this feeling and partly to keep the theatre of war restricted, India had not attacked East Pakistan at that time. (Bhutto, however, claimed that East Pakistan was saved only by Peking’s ultimatum to New Delhi.)
The US was keen on a settlement between East and West Pakistan. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger took a hush-hush trip to Delhi in July 1971 and met Indira Gandhi. Her plea to him was to stop the influx of refugees. She had asked Gen. Sam Manikshaw to come in his uniform and wait in her office. He was called in and Indira Gandhi introduced him to Kissinger who got the message that India was even proposed to go to war.
New Delhi announced its recognition of Bangladesh on 6 December 1971 and set up a joint command of the Mukti Bahini and Indian forces. It was clear in October itself that we were involved in some way or the other. A meeting of the secretaries of defence, external affairs, and home invited some editors and took them into confidence to say that the die had been cast. They thanked us for not having disclosed the location of Mujib Nagar, which we were aware was on the outskirts of Calcutta but we carried reports of incursions as if Mujib Nagar was in East Pakistan.
One editor pointed out to the secretaries that it would have been better had India sought to have a commonwealth of Pakistan with Bangladesh as an autonomous unit in it. He feared that Bangladesh was a ‘bottomless pit’ and it would not be possible for India to provide adequate assistance. One secretary said in reply that he agreed with him but the decision had already been taken.
There would always be a black mark against the Indian press for the coverage of the initial events in Bangladesh. During the first few days, whatever came in the hands of the press was published, even hearsay. It was true that the freedom fighters had put up ‘great resistance’; far in excess of what anyone had expected, and it was probably difficult for Indians to put themselves in place of Bangladeshis who fought the liberation war staking everything and sacrificing all that they had. The response in India was emotional, not even recognizing what the Bangladeshis were going through at that time.
The two principal Indian news agencies (PTI, UNI), had a field day and vied with each other in purveying exaggerated accounts of war, mentioning very little about the ‘enemy’ the Bangladeshis were pitted against. Not many correspondents were familiar with military terms and there were ludicrous mistakes in the reporting. By the time the press realized that its credibility had been severely dented it was all over.
The New York Times’ correspondent met me around that time to inquire whether there was informal censorship of the stories relating to Bangladesh. I told him there was ‘none’. This was true. Nobody from the government had told us what to report on Bangladesh and what not to. I admitted to him that the press during such situations acted on its own i
n a jingoistic way and became the custodian of ‘national interest’. ‘Perhaps we are too near slavery,’ I said. Many years later the Western press, including the New York Times, behaved even more abominably during the Iraq war. For the first time, the journalists reported the war on the basis of what the commanders of the US and the UK forces told them.
To India’s relief Pakistan attacked India on 3 December 1971 and bombarded Pathankot airport destroying all the planes. The Pakistan military was a divided house. Rumours were that Gen. Yahya Khan, the military chief, wanted to end the fighting but was virtually a prisoner of his aides. The Indian military too was not a cohesive force till then. However, before the operations, the three chiefs, General S.H.F.J. Manekshaw, Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal, and Admiral S.M. Nanda, met and decided to have Manekshaw as the overall commander. At that meeting, Nanda reportedly said that whatever differences of opinion there were should remain within the four walls of the meeting room.
‘Thank god Pakistan has attacked,’ was Mrs Gandhi’s reaction the moment she was informed about Pathankot. India was already prepared.
Chittagong harbour and Dhaka airport were bombed and the Pakistan air force in the East was put out of action. A sea blockade was also put into place, cutting off all assistance to the Pakistani forces and blocking all escape routes.
As for the navy, it bearded Pakistan not only in its home waters but also within its naval base at Karachi. Such was the confusion caused that the Pakistanis sank one of their own vessels mistaking it to be an Indian one. In reply to my question, I was told officially by Pakistan that the section which picked up the SOS from the Pakistan navy was headed by a Bengali official who ‘out of loyalty to Bangladesh’ did not forward the message. The oil installations at Karachi were bombarded, and when I visited the port three months later I saw the evidence of extensive damage.
From the outset, India’s plan was to outflank Pakistan’s prepared positions along the border, to cross the Meghna and the Padma rivers, and reach Dhaka, as Maj. Gen. J.F.R. Jacob, chief of staff of the Indian Eastern Command, told me after the operation. However, retired Lt Gen. Harbaksh Singh maintained that the conduct of the operation in the early days did not suggest that Dhaka was the principal target and his charge was that too much time was wasted in capturing areas in the north which were of no military consequence.
Pakistan first thought that India’s aim was to win a border strip to rehabilitate the refugees, and this indeed was New Delhi’s initial plan. When Swaran Singh went abroad, he had hinted at the creation of a 50-mile belt along the border to settle the refugees temporarily, under UN auspices, until a permanent solution was found. The US and UK did not however agree to this.
Apparently, Pakistan was led to believe that India planned only a limited action. Lt Gen. A.A.K. Niazi, commander of Pakistan’s forces in the East, said later, during interrogation, that he did not expect a major Indian attack and felt that Indian efforts would only be to capture a chunk of territory for the establishment of a Bangladesh government. That was the reason, he explained, for his initial deployment of troops and decision to wage battle close to the border. However, when the Indian forces bypassed fortified Jessore city and raced towards Dhaka, Pakistan realized that if ever there was a plan merely to ‘free’ some territory it had been discarded. By then it was too late for Pakistan to change its strategy. Indian troops drove rapidly towards Dhaka and contact soon established with the liberation forces inside East Bengal.
The government of India was giving daily briefings on the war. I would take down notes and run to Lt Gen. Harbaksh Singh who explained the moves and their significance. I began in the Statesman a daily front-page column under the byline ‘A military expert’. Ashoka Mehta rang me to find out the name of the military expert and was somewhat disappointed when I said that it was I who wrote the column.
New Delhi learnt via Moscow that Washington would attempt to evacuate Pakistani troops from a point near Barisal and Narayanganj, where they had begun to gather after their long retreat. Gen. Manekshaw, in a broadcast, warned the Pakistani forces that they would not be able to escape as all outlets had been sealed. It was better for them to surrender, he said, and he gave his word as a soldier that they would be well treated. A message intercepted at that time said that Gen. Niazi had escaped, handing over charge to Rao Farman Ali, deputy martial law administrator. There was, however, no truth in it; the message was planted to facilitate Niazi’s escape but did not work.
Although India began tightening the noose around Dhaka, it appeared that it was taking a long time. Not many Pakistani troops were surrendering and it appeared that they were making a planned withdrawal for a last-ditch stand around Dhaka. Moscow was concerned over the Indian forces’ slow progress in completing the operation. It did not want Bangladesh to become a Vietnam for India. Vasily Kuznetsov, first Soviet deputy foreign minister, rushed to Delhi post-haste, but he was soon convinced that the morale of the Pakistani forces, completely alienated from the Bangladesh population, had been broken and that the surrender was only a question of three or four days.
Pakistan frantically got in touch with the US for supply of arms and ammunition. Washington seriously considered the request and thought of ways of delivering arms despite India’s blockade of Pakistan’s ports. Asked by correspondents whether the US would respond, President Richard Nixon’s press secretary simply said: ‘There is no news.’ This equivocal reply was in contrast to his earlier statement that the US would remain neutral in any armed conflict between India and Pakistan.
Washington thought of invoking the 1964 Mutual Security Pact between the US and Pakistan to provide assistance. Indira Gandhi took the first opportunity to warn the US at a public meeting:
I hear that some countries are trying to threaten us and saying that they also have some treaties and agreements with Pakistan. I did not know this earlier because whatever the agreement was, as far as I know, it had been forged to form a pact against Communism. It was not a pact to fight against democracy. It was not against the voice of justice. It was not meant to crush the poor. But if that was so, then they had told a big lie to the world.
Nixon first sent a ‘warning’ to India and then ordered the Seventh Fleet, led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise, to go to the Bay of Bengal. Information of this first came from Moscow, which had monitored a message to the Seventh Fleet in the Tonkin Gulf, off the coast of North Vietnam. Soon the Indian embassy in Washington too confirmed it; a senior US marine officer had unwittingly revealed it in conversation with an Indian embassy official. I ran into an Arab diplomat in New Delhi at the time and he openly spoke about the fleet moving to the Indian Ocean, supporting America’s ‘punitive action’, as he put it.
Swaran Singh at the UN telephoned New Delhi to complete the operation expeditiously. The Soviet Union had told him that it would not be able to stall the ceasefire resolution for long. Even so, Moscow urged the UN for ‘a political solution’. Had Pakistan accepted it there would automatically have been a ceasefire. New Delhi hurriedly recognized the provisional government of Bangladesh (8 December 1971) and Jacob, who was spearheading the operation, received a telephone call from a US diplomat a day before the surrender that both Niazi and Farman Ali had submitted the ceasefire proposal to the US. Henry Kissinger kept the document with him, hoping that Pakistan would retake some of the territory occupied by India in West Pakistan.
In comparison to India’s contribution, the role of the people of Bangladesh and the Mukti Bahini was greater. I have no doubt that they would have won their independence on their own. Mujib had declared that East Pakistan was a free country which had severed all its ties with Pakistan. This was in the wake of brutal attack on Bengalis, particularly Hindus. The Bangladeshis would have found it difficult without India’s support and it would have taken them somewhat longer but their determination and capacity to suffer should never be underestimated.
Some three million people were killed and ten million uprooted from th
eir hearths and homes. Pakistanis have little knowledge about the atrocities committed by the Pakistan army. Thousands of doctors, lawyers, academicians, and journalists were murdered in cold blood prior to the surrender. This was confirmed by the Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission report.
I cannot understand why Pakistan has not apologized for the atrocities committed by its army at that time. It could not be because of lack of knowledge. If the US has apologized to Japan for dropping an atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, why not Pakistan.
In its finding, the Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission stated that the principal reason for the Pakistan army’s debacle was ‘lust for wine and women and greed for land and houses resulting in senior officials losing their professional competence and the will to fight’. The commission, while questioning Lt Gen. Niazi, asked him:
“General Niazi, when you had 26,400 troops in Dacca alone and the Indians only fought on for at least two more weeks, the UN was in session and had you fought on even for one more day, the Indians would have had to go back, why did you accept a shameful, unconditional public surrender and provide a guard of honour commanded by your ADC?”
Niazi replied: “I was compelled to do so by General Jacob who blackmailed me into surrendering.”
Niazi repeated this in his book, Betrayal of East Pakistan (1998). The reason why Niazi blamed Jacob was because the latter was able to bulldoze him into surrendering with his 93,000 men to the Indian army and not the UN. Jacob told me that on the morning of 16 December, General Manekshaw asked him to obtain a letter of ‘surrender’. The UN Security Council was in session. ‘I had sent a draft Instrument of Surrender to Manekshaw some days earlier, which the latter declined to confirm. I took this draft that I had earlier sent to Delhi with me to Dhaka’, said Jacob.