Beyond the Lines: An Autobiography

by Kuldip Nayar

  So concerted and massive was the agitation against Ershad that he had to resign and order elections. Once elections were declared both Hasina and Khalida were again at loggerheads. My feeling is that Bangladesh lost, with time, the exuberance and idealism of Independence because of the constant and bitter contestation between the two begums.

  I have met both of them in office and have found Hasina pro-India and Khalida anti-India. The latter also brings religion into all her agitations and is very close to the Jamat-e-Islami. The Jamat has polluted the secular ethos of Bangladesh and makes no secret of its criticism of Mujib for having founded Bangladesh after defeating Pakistan. Both Hasina and Khalida have alternated in heading the government in the country.

  After the return of Hasina to power on 6 November 2008 (she secured three-fourths of the seats in parliament) she took several bold decisions, among them, extending transit facilities to India. Khalida’s public protests related to the cancellation of all the deals Hasina had signed with India. I do not see a consensus developing in Bangladesh because Khalida believes that an anti-India line sells in her country and that fundamentalism gives her a position of strength.

  The Tripura government has raised a memorial to commemorate the sacrifices of Bangladeshis who gave their lives for the liberation of their country. This is a gesture which should have been made long ago. In the same way, the invitation by Hasina to Lt Gen. J.S. Aurora, before his death, to honour the Indian soldiers killed in the Bangladesh war was belated. I have no doubt that New Delhi and Dhaka will one day in the not too distant future become close and friendly neighbours.

  As for Bangladesh, I do not see the army taking over the country. I feel it has had an unhappy experience when the military extended the rule of the caretaker government. The army sought to clean up the administration and took action against the corrupt leaders of both the Awami League and BNP and their followers.

  Where the army went wrong was in trying to drive both the begums, Hasina and Khalida, under detention, out of the country and ultimately out of politics. The two have roots too deep to be severed and their support amongst the public is substantial.

  I met the chief advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed, heading the caretaker government, at Dhaka in those days. He refused to be drawn into any discussion on the Awami League or the BNP but believed that the task of cleansing the administration which had been undertaken by initiating corruption cases against virtually all the leading politicians would be wasted once the ‘democratic structure’ was restored. He has been proved right.

  During the rule of the caretaker government, Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank (a micro-finance organization and community development bank), and Nobel laureate, thought of floating a third party. The army was all for it because it feared that its relinquishment of the administration would result in a revival of the same old corrupt and chaotic politics.

  Mohammed Yunus eventually decided that he was not up to the type of politics in Bangladesh. He had however never reckoned with Hasina’s rage over his mere consideration of the prospect of joining politics. She never forgave him and thought of punishing him when she came to power, and did so by retiring him from the project he had spent a lifetime setting up and nurturing, and one for which he had won worldwide acclaim. The effect of this was so far-reaching that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was even willing to fly to Dhaka to personally request Hasina not to humiliate Yunus. However, Hasina did not agree. New Delhi also tried to effect an honourable exit for Yunus but she was determined to humiliate him.

  Another person Hasina never forgave was Kamal Hussain, a colleague of her father and the first foreign minister of Bangladesh. He committed the cardinal sin of criticizing her for a departure from ethos of the country. He measured every step she took in the scale of secularism and democracy and also deplored her treatment of the old freedom fighters. He was loyal to her but more loyal to the principles for which they had fought during the liberation of Bangladesh.

  Hasina was furious with him and pushed him into a position where he could no longer remain a close associate and not even an important member of the Awami League. He bore this humiliation with courage. I asked her why she had treated him in this way. She said: ‘He was supposed to be my uncle but he stabbed me in the back,’ without giving me any further explanation. Kamal Hussain did not take things lying down for long and set up a party with the help of some other liberals. He was however roundly defeated. Bangladesh was yet not ready for an alternative to Hasina or Khalida.

  What may rock Bangladesh in future is Hasina’s constitution of the war crimes tribunal. The BNP is dead against it, but most people want the collaborators to be tried.

  After the massive win in 2008, Hasina’s first statement was on the ‘bogus cases’ against her. All the Awami League leaders who had been indicted for corruption plugged the same line. The BNP was more vehement because Khalida’s son Tariq, another Sanjay Gandhi, was hauled up for corruption. The two parties did not agree on anything else except that the cases of corruption were ‘a vendetta’ against the politicians. Hasina has been elected and has dropped cases against members of her party but most BNP men continue to face prosecution in the old cases.

  Relations between New Delhi and Dhaka have had their ups and downs. They are generally up when Hasina is in power and down when Khalida returns. Hasina depends upon India and expects it to help her country overcome the handicap of limited resources and territory, and a burgeoning population.

  The bureaucracy in both the countries is not imbued with the lofty ideal of bringing the two countries closer to each other. Volatile public opinion, fuelled by BNP’s anti-India propaganda and the Jamat’s fundamentalism may turn against Hasina for her tilt towards India.

  When I visited Bangladesh after Hasina’s electoral win (2008) I found that whatever good the caretaker government had done had been more or less undone. My disappointment was that authoritarianism had become part of Hasina’s personality, a streak, unfortunately, reflected in her father’s, the Bangabandhu’s actions. People however accepted it from him as their liberator but they might not react as charitably in her case.

  I am afraid this attitude may come in the way of Bangladesh’s progress which requires consensus and trust. Khalida and her party are forever on the look out for an opportunity to pounce on her, but Hasina, whatever her limitations, presents Bangladesh with its best visible prospects. Her move to put anti-liberation leaders on trial, however morally correct has confused the nation. The BNP is, of course, vehemently opposed to such a trial and in addition there so are many others who feel that the process might divide the nation.

  It was during Khalida’s regime that several groups from India’s Northeast found refuge and a base in Bangladesh aided by Pakistan’s ISI and Bangladesh’s intelligence agencies. The anti-India campaign and violence against the minorities assumed new dimensions. Scores of Hindus were killed and thousands crossed the border for safety. They have not returned.

  My feeling is that the sustenance of the atmosphere of goodwill between India and Bangladesh is more dependent on India than Bangladesh. If ever relations between the two deteriorate that would also be due to the mindset of the bureaucracies on either side.

  What would cement relations between the two countries is Dhaka’s return to its secular ethos. Hasina got an opportunity to delete the amendment to the constitution effected by Gen. Ershad declaring Bangladesh to be an Islamic state. However, she retained the amendment even when she made other changes in the constitution when Bangladesh was founded. Mujib did not declare it an Islamic state although there was a great deal of pressure on him to do so from within the country and from Muslim world.

  China’s interest is a new factor in Bangladesh. This may some day affect Indo–Bangladesh relations. China’s plan is to tie a ring around India, and Bangladesh is an important territory in this effort. Much will however depend upon Dhaka and how it protects India’s sensitivity. In turn, New Delhi will need to ensure that
Bangladesh receives every assistance it can provide to enable the country to develop. It already has a growth rate of 6.5 per cent and should never be made to feel that India is exploiting it in the name of assistance.

  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka in September 2011 was a limited success. True, the two countries signed many agreements for cooperation, particularly the transfer of a few enclaves of Assam to Bangladesh, its rightful owner (the BJP has already made it an issue). The absence of agreement on the Teesta Waters undercut much of enthusiasm in Bangladesh which almost ignored other generous agreements that Dr Manmohan Singh signed. The last minute cancellation by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee of her visit to Dhaka along with the prime minister proved a wet blanket. Although she had indicated to the Centre the share of Teesta Waters she was willing to offer Dhaka, Mamata did not want to go through with the commitment because of the threatened agitation by her rival, the CPM. CPM leader Jyoti Basu had come around to sharing the water at the Farakka Barrage even at the expense of the accumulation of silt in the Hooghly making it impossible for large ships berthing at Kolkata. Mamata may one day come around to sharing the Teesta waters with Bangladesh. Till that happens this issue will be a major irritant between Dhaka and New Delhi.

  10

  The Shimla Conference

  As soon as the Bangladesh war ended I sent a request for an interview through the Swiss embassy to the then Pakistan President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. We had no diplomatic relations at the time. When I arrived at Lahore airport I was put back in a flight to Kabul as the immigration authorities had no information about my visit. At that time, I met Salman Haider, India’s ambassador at Kabul, who was subsequently my deputy in London.

  I took the opportunity to visit the Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, in the one-room tenement in which he lived. He was squatting on a charpai when I bowed to say salaam. The room was bare, a kurta and salwaar hung on a string drawn from one wall to the other. A few earthen vessels with a chulah lay in a corner. I told to myself that here was an individual who could have occupied any position in India but had preferred to stay in Afghanistan because his struggle for Pakhtoonistan was not over. (Nearly thirty years later, his grandson, Asfandyar Wali Khan, elder son of Wali Khan who led the Awami National Party, had the NWFP renamed Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa.)

  Ghaffar Khan was bitter about Jawaharlal Nehru who, he said, had promised to fight for Pakhtoonistan. ‘Are you people banias who calculate all the time about the gain and loss in what you do?’ he asked rhetorically. I remained silent. After a pause, he asked me whether it was true that many Muslims had been killed in Gujarat (in the communal riots of 1970). I told him it was. He sorrowfully remarked that their assessment was that once Independence was won and the British left, communal violence would be a thing of the past. ‘But Gujarat is the land of Gandhi,’ he added, looking disillusioned and helpless. A few days later I crossed into Pakistan through Peshawar.

  After Pakistan’s central government had moved from Karachi to Islamabad, a city founded by Gen. Ayub Khan, who had the area aerially sprayed with seedlings to provide a green cover, and indeed the city was deliciously green. I spent the morning at Rawalpindi Club with local journalists. They were all critical of India for its role in the creation of Bangladesh but did not sound unhappy at having lost it. One journalist said in Punjabi – most of them were Punjabis – that they had had a taste of living with the Bengalis and that India was welcome to do so.

  Aware that the loss of Bangladesh represented a humiliation for Pakistan, I teased them with the question: Were we, the two Punjabs, to get together, what would happen? Pat was the reply: Were that to happen we would conquer the entire subcontinent.

  Before meeting Bhutto, I had fixed an appointment with Gen. Ayub Khan. A well-built Ayub was clad in a bush shirt and trousers and looked the picture of health. He was however a broken man because he had been forced to resign his position as president of Pakistan by what he described as ‘Bhutto’s tricks’. He told me that the students’ agitation outside Peshawar, given out as the principal reason for his resignation, was inspired by Bhutto and ‘openly supported by officials and the police’. Morarji Desai had faced greater problems but did not have to quit, Ayub Khan said.

  Ayub Khan was reluctant to talk about the 1965 war, which he characterized as ‘Bhutto’s war’. He told me: ‘You should ask him about it when you meet him.’ He however remarked that he knew the Kashmiris (Hatus, as he called them) would never rise. He proved to be correct at that time because the infiltrators in 1964 were unable to motivate the Kashmiri rebels.

  ‘What choice did I have?’ Ayub Khan asked me when I wanted to know why he handed over power to Gen. Yahya Khan, Pakistan’s army chief. He was on the defensive and sounded unhappy about his successor’s actions. Ayub Khan carried within himself a strong element of statesmanship notwithstanding his military background. I wonder whether the army would have indulged in the cold-blooded murder of thousands in Bangladesh had Ayub Khan been in power. Sometimes Yahya Khan appeared to be so enamoured of his rule that he seemed to be making a fetish of it.

  Even now a Bengali is ‘That Bengali’ in Pakistan. Ayub Khan said:

  West Pakistan did its best to help Bengalis to develop and find avenues of employment but whatever industries were started in East Pakistan, would be in the red because there was no managerial talent, no skills, and no hard-working people available. The real talent lay with Bengali Hindus.

  Ayub Khan went on to say: ‘Whenever I visited Dhaka I would tell the Hindus that I could have utilized them if they had been Muslims.’ Was he suggesting conversion?

  The Pakistan government was conscious of this. A deliberate policy of discrimination against Hindus in East Pakistan was launched soon after Partition. S.A. Karim, once a top Pakistani civil servant and subsequently Bangladesh’s foreign secretary, admitted to me in April 1972 at Dhaka that there were specific government instructions to push out Hindus. In consequence it became impossible for Hindus to find work, set up a business, or find a vocation; they could not obtain export and import licences unless they took Muslims as partners. The Indian deputy high commissioner reported to New Delhi (30 April 1948) a systematic ‘Government requisition of Hindu houses, even though they were occupied by the owners themselves’.

  Many Hindus began to migrate to India. Some changed their lifestyle, took to Muslim attire, and outwardly adopted Muslim forms of behaviour and speech to avoid persecution. Many of those who stayed back looked to New Delhi for succour.

  Ayub Khan was bitter not only at having lost his gaddi but also because of Pakistan’s surrender at Dhaka in 1971. That might be why he said that he had no doubt that ‘One day you will come to this side [West Pakistan] to conquer it. But we will always be a thorn in your flesh. You would recall how we did not allow the interim government before Independence to function.’ I assured him that India has no such intention. He, however, insisted that there was such a plan at India’s military headquarter.

  When I met Bhutto, I asked him whether the 1965 war was his doing, as Ayub Khan had alleged. Bhutto did not deny it and assumed responsibility for the war. I knew he had prepared a working paper to argue that if India was to be tackled at all, now was the time before Indian ordinance factories went into full stream. He reiterated this thesis and gave me an extended explanation which I recorded on tape (I told Benazir Bhutto later that I would one day present the tape to the Pakistan archives). I reproduce relevant section below:

  There was a time when militarily, in terms of the big push, in terms of armour, we were superior to India because of the military assistance we were getting. That was the position up to 1965. Now, the Kashmir dispute was not being resolved, and its resolution was also essential for the settlement of our disputes and as it was not being resolved peacefully and as we had this military advantage, we were getting blamed for it. So it would, as a patriotic prudence, be better to say, all right, let us finish this problem and come to terms, and come to
a settlement. It has been an unfortunate thing so that is why up to 1965. I thought that with this edge that we had we could have morally justified it. Also, because India was committed to self-determination and it was not being resolved, and we had this situation. But now this position does not exist. I know it does not exist. I know better than anyone else that it does not exist and that it will not exist in the future also.

  Bhutto was also taken in by certain occurrences in India before embarking on the 1965 war. He interpreted the Madras DMK demand for autonomy, the Akali Sikh movement for a Punjabi suba, and the Maharashtra–Mysore border dispute as evidence of India falling apart. His case therefore, was: the sooner Pakistan decided to ‘settle its scores’ with India the better.

  On the Tashkent Declaration, Bhutto said:

  Let me tell you, I told both Ayub and Kosygin [at Tashkent], that if you put a thousand years of history in a capsule and think you can swallow it and digest it, you are sadly mistaken. You cannot clear the decks of history in one sweep. There can be no clean sweep in the subcontinent. We know the subcontinent, you know the subcontinent. Why did Ayub not know it?

  He also defended Gen. Tikka Khan who had allegedly committed atrocities in East Pakistan. ‘He is a good soldier,’ said Bhutto, ‘but India thinks he is some Halaku Khan.’

  Bhutto did not allow normalization of relations with India beyond the restoration of high commissioners. He saw to it that Pakistan did not associate itself with India in getting the Tashkent Declaration registered at the UN and also had the Indo–Pakistan ministerial meeting in Rawalpindi (9–10 February 1966) sabotaged. Pakistan insisted on a ‘meaningful’ dialogue on Kashmir, suggesting thereby some ‘concrete concessions’ while India wanted to address other issues first. The tables were turned five years later when India insisted on settling Kashmir first and other issues later.