B D Sharma
India is celebrating today the 50th anniversary of its victory in the 1971 Indo-Pak War. This day brought India a supreme glory because the emphatic and glorious victory in this war immensely raised the stature of India amongst the comity of nations. It was the first decisive victory in a major war in centuries. The Indian Armed Forces brought Pakistani Forces to its knees and effected surrender of about 93000 of its soldiers. The Indian forces wrote an epic saga of valour, grit, determination and bravery in the annals of Indian history. India came to the rescue of the people in distress in her neighbourhood. Its leadership exhibited superb qualities of statesmanship in dealing with the crisis. Apart from the outcry of Pakistan and her cohorts that India was responsible for the deteriorating the situation in East Pakistan, even USA left no stone unturned in browbeating India in
50 Yrs of Indo-Pak War
accepting its dictates on the issue. Its tilt towards Pakistan was obvious even during the crackdown on the Bengalis by the Pak army. USA ignored the pleas of India, lfirst through diplomatic channels and later by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi herself during her visit to Washington in the first week of November, 1971, to impress upon Pakistan to stop genocide in East Bengal as also to take back its people who had fled to India. President Nixon and his infamous advisor Kissinger did not pay heed to these pleas. They instead started blaming India for flaring up the situation there. They even stooped low on making uncalled for, unsavoury and mean observations during their internal discourses, as were disclosed later on, such as “If India precipitates war with Pakistan, then we cannot sit idly by”, “The Indians are a slippery, treacherous people”, “The Indians are bastards anyway”. But the resolute Indian leadership demonstrated India’s utter contempt for the American bluff. India very shrewdly strengthened her friendship with USSR and signed a strategic treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation with her which stood India in good stead both in the theatre of war as well as in the deliberations in the Security Council. Wars are wars and it brings death and devastation only. However, India didn’t only earn a lot of glory in it but the country showed a rare feat of unity and strength during the crisis. Government and the opposition worked in unison. The three wings of the Defence forces exhibited cohesive action of the highest order against the enemy. Navy and Air Force struck lethal blows to the enemy. Some untested arms of the Forces such as Special Frontier Force of Tibetan refugees got opportunity to show rare feats of bravery when they cut through the Pak forces in the very difficult terrain of Chittagong Hill Tracts. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi became an international figure overnight and the military leaders, Gen Manekshaw, Gen JS Aurora and Gen Jacob became household names.
The war exposed the true colours of Pakistan which not only gave a goodbye to democracy by refusing the majority party to form government but also unleashed a terror on her own people when they agitated to get their rights. Lakhs of persons( some sources believe three lakhs) were massacred by the Pak army and thousands of women were brutally raped by the uniformed Pakistani marauders. Ten million Bengalis were forced to leave their homes and hearths to escape the atrocities of the medieval marauders and to take shelter in India. The Pakistani establishment unleashed atrocities not only through its Armed Forces but also hired Islamists and Razakars to perpetrate atrocities on the hapless people. In order to obviate the attention of the world regarding their atrocities in East Bengal, the ruling junta started war against India. In order to give an Israeli type surprise, they conducted sudden air raids on six air fields in the western sector of India. It, however, boomeranged when India gave a resounding reply. The Pak army tattered within thirteen days and its Commander in the eastern sector, Gen AAK Niazi had no other option but to surrender before the Indian Commander Gen Aurora. Pakistan had to
face the ignominious humiliation heard rarely in the annals of war. This was all expected from the country which had fallen in the abyss of unfathomable depth. The true picture of the ruling junta under its dictator General Yahya Khan has been aptly sketched by Hamid-ur-Rehman commission, constituted after her defeat, in these words, “Due to corruption… …lust for wine and women and greed for land and houses, a large number of senior army officers, particularly those occupying the highest positions, had not only lost the will to fight but also the professional competence necessary for taking the vital and critical decisions demanded of them for the successful prosecution of the war.” Pakistan’s assertion of unity on the basis of religion and the obnoxious two nation theory laid in tatters.
But the worst role, before and during the war, was played by the so-called civilized nation of the world. Firstly she closed her eyes over the gruesome atrocities inflicted by the Pakistani army and continued to supply arms which were used in the suppression of the civil strife. The duo of Nixon and Kissinger made light of the pleas of Indian Prime Minister to impress upon Pakistan to stop atrocities on her people and take back the refugees who had become a burden on India. Its tilt towards Pakistan was obvious during Pakistan’s crackdown on the Bengalis and it became more pronounced when the hostilities between India and Pakistan started. So much so that she dispatched her aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in the Bay of Bengal to intimidate India when it became clear that the fall of Dhaka was imminent. She shamelessly encouraged her new-found friend, China also to make military moves to achieve the same ends. Washington even assured China that they will come forward to neutralize USSR if the latter tried to come for helping India against China.
Kissinger’s policy in the Indian subcontinent, at the time did upset many in the US, not only the American public, the press but also many people in the Government particularly in the State Department including the Secretary of State Rogers who was not kept in the loop. Everybody didn’t agree with Kissinger. People even in the sensitive assignments like the staff at the US Consulate in Dhaka did not hesitate to call a spade a spade. They were horrified by the violence there and wrote to their government to intervene. But there was ‘defeaning’ silence from Washington. They ultimately sent a telegram to Washington on March 28, 1971 dissenting, “Our Government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pak dominated government…Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy …We, as professional public servants express our dissent with current policy and fervently hope that our true and lasting interests here can be defined and our policies redirected in order to salvage our nation’s position as a moral leader of the free world.” This dispatch, later famed as Blood Telegram( after Archer Blood, the US consul general at Dhaka) raised an unprecedented storm in Washington. Secretary of State, Rogers terming it “the miserable” cable and informed President Nixon that the “Dhaka Consulate is in the open rebellion”. This was perhaps one of the severest indictment by the diplomats of any country against their own government. This reflected the seriousness of the situation prevailing in East Bengal then but Washington remained mum over it. Nixon and Kissinger took the plea unjustifiably that they did not intervene because they were trying to use Pakistan to open diplomatic relations with China.
The role played by USA during the war brought India’s relations with her to perhaps the lowest ebb ever. USA lost much of her standing as the champion of democracy and human rights in the world. Washington’s policy pushed India more and more towards USSR, jeopardizing Washington’s strategic and commercial interests for years.
Unfortunately the promising career of Archer Blood got a nosedive at the hands of all powerful Kissinger for speaking the truth. Though this whole gamut of violence and war calls for solemnity yet an anecdote from Garry Bass’s book ‘The Blood Telegram’, sprouts out all the same. There was considerable ridicule, he tells, about all the sanguinary names at the Consul at Dhaka. He mentions Scott Butcher, a senior officer at Dhaka Consulate, remembering drily that cables “would be drafted by Butcher, approved by Killgore, and signed by Archer Blood. The anti-Americans thought, ‘Things bode ill.'” Many people even in USA think that the war bode ill for their country also.
Follow our WhatsApp channel