by John Keay
As usual, the actual figures are disputed. Pakistan admitted to substantial military losses; Bangladesh claimed civilian losses of up to three million. It was the same with the refugee exodus across the border into the neighbouring states of India. Islamabad sanctioned a final figure of two to three million refugees, New Delhi one of eight to ten million. Either way, observers again noted Partition similarities, this time with the mass migrations witnessed in the Punjab in 1947–48. Less remarked, though, was the similarity in the confessional allegiance of the refugees. Whatever the total, as many as 90 per cent of the migrating refugees were not in fact Awami League sympathisers from East Bengal’s Muslim majority but members of East Bengal’s embattled Hindu community, many of them low-caste cultivators and menials. To West Pakistanis, the ten-million-strong Hindu community was the canker at the heart of the problem. Regarded as a subversive element whose real loyalties lay with India, East Bengal’s Hindus stood accused of undermining Muslim solidarity and instigating secession. Targeted accordingly, their flight replicated that of other East Bengalis in the 1950s and ’60s and was seen by many of the migrants as a prelude to permanent settlement in India.
In this they were disappointed: New Delhi was adamant that all must eventually return. While shouldering the burden of relief, it therefore detained the refugees in temporary encampments, most of which were dotted along the border and soon fell prone to cholera. The sheer scale of the exodus was said to preclude the possibility of rehabilitation elsewhere in India. Additionally, the plight of the massed refugees was a powerful weapon in India’s management of international opinion.
In a major diplomatic offensive of April 1971, Indian officials set out to alert world leaders to the humanitarian crisis and to press them into prevailing on Islamabad for a settlement with the Awami League that would enable the displaced to return. Sympathy and pledges of aid were forthcoming; but no government relished the consequences of intervening in what was regarded as a purely Indo–Pakistan affair. In Washington, President Nixon thought too well of Yahya Khan, whose good offices were essential to Henry Kissinger in arranging his groundbreaking visit to Beijing that summer.
The one exception was Moscow. There India’s Foreign Minister reaped the benefit of earlier overtures and returned with a draft agreement. Under the new Indo–Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation signed in August 1971, the pretence of Indian non-alignment was finally laid to rest. To offset China’s budding relationship with Pakistan and to cut off a trickle of Soviet aid and arms to Pakistan, India subscribed to a version of the Brezhnev Doctrine. Under it, each country undertook to consult and assist the other in the event of either of them being attacked or coming under the threat of attack. In effect, should India feel so menaced by the situation in East Bengal as to contemplate intervention, it could count on the support of an ally powerful enough to discourage China or the US from intervening on behalf of Islamabad.
That India was indeed an interested party in the possible break-up of Pakistan was taken for granted. But, aside from the question of who had been responsible for the timely hijacking that had closed Indian airspace to Pakistani flights, it seemed as if Pakistan was imploding of its own accord. Restraint rather than intervention looked to be New Delhi’s best option. When, therefore, the Director of its Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses saw in the breakdown of negotiations in Dhaka ‘an opportunity the like of which will never come again’, he was silenced. Yet six weeks later Indira Gandhi was coming round to the same opinion. Events in East Bengal were running contrary to all that India stood for. A democratic mandate was being flouted, Hindus were being massacred, and the Pakistan army was now massed in force along India’s porous and hitherto unmilitarised eastern border. Moreover, according to Mrs Gandhi, the growing number of refugees was evidence of Islamabad pursuing a solution ‘at the expense of India and on Indian soil’. This, according to her advisers, constituted ‘indirect aggression’.17
Further evidence of active Indian interest came with New Delhi’s decision to host the activities of a Bangladesh government-in-exile. Formed by Awami League officials loyal to Mujib who had escaped to India, the interim government was installed at ‘Mujibnagar’ (‘Mujib Town’). This was a moveable venue which was initially a property in Calcutta but was later shifted to a disputed sector of the nearby border so that it could claim to be operating from Bangladeshi soil. In the same mischievous spirit, the Indian army was instructed to equip and train those Bangladeshi guerrilla units known collectively as the Mukti Bahini who were conducting sabotaging raids into East Bengal from Indian territory. Both initiatives were in marked contrast to Delhi’s hands-off attitude to the Tibetan refugees a decade earlier. Then, in deference to Beijing, Nehru had refused to countenance a Tibetan government-in-exile and had denied support to those Khampas and others who were actively engaged in opposing the Chinese. Now, in deference to no one, Mrs Gandhi took it upon herself to arm and actively support East Bengal’s ‘freedom fighters’, sponsor their self-declared government and protest to Colombo over Ceylon’s airports being used to refuel Pakistan’s Dhaka-bound airlift of munitions and troops (the troops slipped into civilian clothes for the Colombo stopover). India’s earlier restraint in respect of what was still part of Pakistan was giving way to hostile engagement. Critics saw parallels with the last days of Goa, Hyderabad and Kashmir. Evidently neighbourly non-interference was on a shorter fuse within the confines of what had been pre-Partition India.
Within East Bengal/Bangladesh, Pakistan’s military lockdown was followed by the monsoon shutdown. From June till August the rivers flooded and the countryside became impassable; supplies for the Pakistani forces ran short, and for the general population even shorter. Across the border in India the refugee camps turned into quagmires. The number of cholera cases there rose to 46,000. Both sides became dependent on international food aid. Meanwhile another source of Indian concern brought the prospect of intervention still closer.
Quite apart from the strain of the refugees, Mrs Gandhi and her advisers were increasingly alert to the impact of East Bengal’s defiance of Islamabad on disaffected peoples within India itself. In Tamil Nadu the DMK Chief Minister had pointedly warned that, in India too, excessively centralised rule would only encourage autonomous tendencies. These tendencies were already evident in J and K, and more especially in the north-eastern states that actually fringed East Bengal – namely in a Communist-inclined West Bengal, an exploited and ethnically divided Assam, and a next-to no-go Nagaland. From across the unpoliceable border, the unrest and lawlessness in East Bengal must spread to these states and further destabilise them. There was much to be said, then, for a show of force on foreign territory to forestall trouble on the home front.
On the understanding that it was still the refugee burden that was exercising Delhi, in July the Secretary-General of the UN suggested that the office of its High Commissioner for Refugees should step in. UNHCR representatives could be stationed on either side of the border to facilitate the return of the displaced and as a guarantee of their security once returned. But Mrs Gandhi, notwithstanding her complaints about the migrants’ presence being ‘indirect aggression’, would have none of it. As over Kashmir, India objected on principle to any international presence; it might circumscribe its freedom of action or, worse still, expose its existing involvement with the Mukti Bahini. Even international aid workers in the camps were being expelled. Mrs Gandhi therefore declared herself to be ‘totally opposed’ to UN observers being posted on Indian territory, and opined that they could serve no useful purpose in East Bengal either, until such time as Islamabad backed down and accepted the Awami League’s mandate. ‘India opposed almost everything the UN secretary-general sought to do’ right up to the last minute.18 In October, by when the military build-up on both sides of the border was well under way, Yahya Khan expressed a willingness to accept a UN plan for withdrawing his troops from border areas; but again Mrs Gandhi declined to reciprocate in respect of Indi
a’s forces.
This last proposal about troop withdrawals resurfaced in November during a famously frosty encounter in Washington between the Indian Prime Minister and President Nixon. Kissinger would call it ‘a classic dialogue of the deaf’, with the perspiring Nixon and the bristling Mrs Gandhi ‘not intended by fate to be personally congenial to one another’.19 By now Yahya was willing to withdraw his forces from the border unilaterally. Nixon called it ‘a capitulation’, and looked to Mrs Gandhi for a reciprocal gesture. None came until, back in Delhi, she made the call for Pakistan’s unilateral withdrawal her own and simultaneously ‘authorized the Indian military to cross the border as far as necessary to counter Pakistani shelling’. According to the academics Richard Sisson and L.E. Rose, it was the resultant digging-in of Indian forces within East Bengali territory on 21 November that turned Pakistan’s civil war into the third Indo–Pak war.20
Indian apologists dispute this. They point out that cross-border shelling in both directions had started in October, and that for months before that, the Mukti Bahini had been operating inside the country with Indian support. Nothing much therefore changed on 21 November. It was not until 3 December that the war actually began, according to New Delhi. On that day, without further provocation or warning, and all of 1,500 kilometres from East Bengal, the Pakistan air force launched bombing raids on nine local airports in western India, while the Pakistan army probed western India’s land frontier in Sind and Kashmir.
Less debatably, two weeks later the war would be over. On the western front, Indian forces rolled back the Pakistan advance and overran a few Pakistani positions in Kashmir. In the east an already well-planned Indian offensive was simply brought forward. An immediate bombing raid on Dhaka airport prevented Pakistan from deploying its US-supplied fighter-jets. It also ended the shuttle of supplies via Colombo and gave India complete air superiority. The Indian navy cut off Chittagong, and by also threatening Karachi ended any chance of maritime reinforcements. And on the ground India’s half a million troops, aided by 100,000 Mukti Bahini, outnumbered the Pakistan forces by perhaps eight to one.
In desperation, Yahya Khan turned to China and the US. Nixon, busy with his own China initiative, offered only diplomatic support. Beijing followed suit; the Himalayan passes were anyway becoming snowbound. With East Bengal’s civilian population overwhelmingly hostile, the Pakistan forces could neither manoeuvre nor withdraw. ‘Military situation desperate,’ wired the province’s Governor on 9 December. ‘The front in Eastern and Western sectors has collapsed … Food and other supplies running short … Millions of non-Bengalis and loyal elements are awaiting death … If no help is expected I beseech you to negotiate … Is it worth sacrificing so much when the end seems inevitable?’21 The appeal brought authorisation for a surrender, and a week later India announced a unilateral ceasefire.
From Delhi’s perspective it was perhaps the perfect war – short, morally defensible, not excessively bloody, largely fought on foreign soil, domestically popular, and above all devastatingly conclusive. Previous Indo–Pak wars had invariably been aborted under international pressure. At thirteen days long, this one was over before the olive-branch emissaries could get airborne. As the many-pronged Indian offensive homed in on Dhaka, all the niceties of victory were observed. The Mujibnagar government-in-exile was officially recognised as ‘The Provisional Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh’. On 16 December the surrender of Pakistan’s 93,000 troops in Bangladesh was formally staged at the Ramna racecourse stadium in Dhaka. The stadium was where Mujib had been wont to address his supporters, but this time the victory was essentially India’s. The surrender was taken by the Indian top brass along with a single Bangladeshi representative in doubtful attendance.
Yahya had responded with his own ceasefire. Having presided over the catastrophic loss of half the nation, his position was now untenable. On 20 December, amid widespread unrest throughout West Pakistan, Yahya was persuaded to hand over the presidency and the Martial Law administration to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Bhutto’s first act was to release the imprisoned Mujibur Rahman, who immediately departed for Dhaka. Flying via London, where he arranged for himself to be sworn in as Bangladesh’s first President, then Delhi, where amid mutual congratulations Mrs Gandhi updated him on conditions in Bangladesh, Mujib arrived in Dhaka to a tumultuous reception in January 1972. Within the year most of the refugees had returned, an interim government was in operation and Mujib had relinquished the presidency to become the first Prime Minister of a newly independent Bangladesh.
Another partition had resolved the absurdity of a bipartite Pakistan; instead of two successor states there were now three. Many South Asians supposed that that was it. The unfinished business of the Great Partition had finally been concluded. India had assumed the role of the region’s policeman. Bangladesh and the residual Pakistan had emerged as manageable entities. Expectations ran high.
7
An Ill-Starred Conjunction
The installation of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan and of Mujibur Rahman in Bangladesh signalled another sea-change in South Asia: for the first time ever, all of the subcontinent’s now three principal states were under directly elected civilian governments. All three were committed to socialist policies aimed at removing inequalities and boosting living standards. All three were led by outstanding figures. And of this revered triumvirate, all three commanded unassailable majorities and were committed to the democratic process.
The wounds of war were quickly staunched. When in March 1972 Mrs Gandhi paid her first visit to Bangladesh, crowds of 100,000 fêted her and Mujib, and applauded the inevitable treaty of Indo–Bangladeshi friendship. A year later, the last Indian troops left Bangladesh. A year after that – so just two years after being released from detention – Mujibur Rahman revisited Pakistan at Bhutto’s invitation. He came to attend the Lahore summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, following which the 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war taken in Bangladesh were repatriated.
Though most Pakistanis would always hold New Delhi responsible for the loss of Bangladesh, even Bhutto was now talking of ‘an entirely new relationship with India’. Meeting with Indira Gandhi at Simla in June 1972, he signed an agreement in which both parties renounced the use of force and agreed to settle their outstanding differences ‘by peaceful means’. Territory taken by India on the western front was evacuated and, with minor adjustments and a name-change, the old Kashmir ceasefire line was reinstated as the ‘Line of Control’. Notable, too, was the fact that the more contentious question of Kashmir’s status and the promised plebiscite, though discussed at Simla, did not figure in the final agreement. Instead, the now sixty-six-year-old Sheikh Abdullah was released from his latest detention and allowed to make a triumphant return to Kashmir. Following talks with Indira Gandhi, it was understood that though the Sheikh would again seek – and in 1975 secure – the chief ministership of J and K, he would do so without challenging the state’s incorporation into India. Everywhere, peace was being ‘given a chance’. The fortuity of three popularly elected governments happening to coincide was paying a dividend.
But this favourable conjuncture would last barely three years; and after that it would not come around again for a couple of decades. As if ‘predestined to commit the same follies’, the populist trio of Indira, Bhutto and Mujib followed parallel paths to a common nemesis.1 All would succumb to the delusions of power, all would fall from grace, and all would be brutally eliminated. Additionally, all would leave offspring to reclaim their prime ministerial mantles, perpetuate ‘the same follies’ and court a similar fate. The legacy of the people-powered 1970s would linger on. Pakistan and Bangladesh would continue to be convulsed by the fallout from the Bhutto and Mujib governments well into the twenty-first century. India too was scarred. The war had fostered a hegemonic mind-set that would dog future relations with its neighbours. And in Mrs Gandhi it had bred the authoritarian tendencies that led to her immine
nt ‘Emergency’ and the severest test yet of India’s commitment to democracy and secularism.
Mujib was the first to go. Apparently the least vulnerable of the three, he faced much the most formidable task and brought to it the least experience of government. Bangladesh in 1972 was more desperately disadvantaged even than Pakistan in 1947. To the challenges of turning a nation into a state, improvising a government, reconstructing an economy, restoring law and order and resettling several million refugees, there had been added the physical and psychological devastation caused by the war and typhoon Bhola. Reconstruction required time and purpose along with inclusive policies, massive investment and inspired leadership. None were forthcoming.
Like the Muslim League of 1947, the Awami League of 1972, once it had achieved its primary goal of independence, had no ready-made programme to deal with the situation. Members of the government-in-exile, themselves representing different interests and shades of opinion, clashed with those who had opposed the Islamabad regime from within the country, those who had fought against it from India, and those who had been stranded in (West) Pakistan. Radical parties, some of which had boycotted the 1970 election, lobbied for the formation of a national coalition. Mujib rejected the idea. His mandate still stood and his role as Banglabandhu, ‘Bengal’s Big Brother’ and founder of the nation, was universally acknowledged. Years in opposition and detention had equipped him more for confrontation than consensus. ‘Conciliation was not part of his repertoire.’2
There was a wider human deficit too. With the departure of West Pakistan’s detested business elite, the expectations of Bangladesh’s indigenous entrepreneurs, labour leaders and surplus farmers soared. ‘Each expected that their support for the Awami League would translate into greatly expanded economic opportunities’ – and some were not disappointed.3 The government acquired the assets of all Pakistani firms, nationalised even Bengali-owned banks and businesses and was, in addition, in receipt of substantial aid. It had the wherewithal to reward supporters and did not hesitate to use it. In a display of what has been called ‘the politics of patronage’, important enterprises were placed under the direction of favoured clients who lacked competence, experience and often probity. A Five-Year Plan was trotted out but indifferently implemented. The money supply was increased substantially. Inflation raged and GDP nosedived. ‘By 1973 agricultural production was 84 per cent lower than it had been just before the war, and industrial production had fallen by 66 per cent.’4