India's Role in Bangladesh's War of Independence: Humanitarianism or Self-interest?

Economic & Political Weekly

December 24, 2011

India’s Role in Bangladesh’s War of Independence: Humanitarianism or Self-interest?

BYLINE: Navine Murshid

LENGTH: 7343 words

This paper assesses India’s decision to intervene militarily in Bangladesh’s War of Independence in 1971. It explores the various arguments – shared ethnicity, irredentist tendencies, lack of international involvement, and the need to tip the balance of power against Pakistan – to understand the motivations behind India’s apparent aggressive behaviour, as deemed by the international community at the time. By analysing the speeches of the key actors and reactions of or-dinary men and women, it is argued that the lack of international interest and the heavy burden that India faced due to the 10 million refugees it hosted explain the timing of and impetus for military intervention, an action with repercus-sions that are experienced even today.

On 25 July 2011, Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh, awarded Indira Gandhi, former prime minister of India, the Bangladesh Swadhinata Sammanona (Bangladesh Freedom Honour) posthumously for her “outstanding contributions to Bangladesh’s Liberation War”.1 While India’s role cannot be denied, it must be noted that in the winter of 1971, at a time when the cold war affected relations among states and military intervention was largely a tool for great powers, India’s decision to intervene militarily in East Pakistan was seen as aggressive by many.

Many questions arise as to India’s intentions. Was India’s involvement on 12 December 1971 an act of aggression or retaliation against Pakistan for an incursion on the western front two weeks earlier? Did India intervene on humanitar-ian grounds to stop “a second holocaust”, as the many speeches by Indira Gandhi suggest? Were concerns over hosting refugees an issue as India’s representatives to the United Nations (UN) and various ministers pointed out time and again over the nine-month war? Were there security issues arising out of the fact that there were militarised training camps for the freedom fighters based in India?

In this paper, I consider the different reasons that explain India’s behaviour: militarisation of refugee camps, irredentist tendencies of West Bengal, shared Bengali identity, lack of international involvement, electoral concerns over man-date, and the need to tip the balance of power against Pakistan. I contend that these are at best necessary conditions for military intervention, but not sufficient ones. It is the concern over refugees that finally make intervention justifia-ble, domestically and internationally from the Indian perspective, especially in the short run.

The literature suggests that bordering host countries may intervene militarily in refugee-producing neighbouring coun-tries in an attempt to stem and reverse refugee flows (Dowty and Loescher 1996; Posen 1996; Teitelbaum 1984). Vi-etnam, for example, intervened militarily in Cambodia in 1978, after supporting refugees fleeing Pol Pot’s regime since 1975. The Vietnamese had other reasons as well, such as, a show of power to Thailand and ending genocide in Cam-bodia (Dowty and Loescher 1996).2 However, the refugee aspect and the need to repatriate them cannot be over-looked.

More recently in 2008, Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia “fearing” attacks from Islamic forces there. The fact that Ethiopia hosts 2,58,000 Somali refugees is a pertinent factor. Because the intervention failed and Ethiopia was forced to withdraw its forces, it could not reap the benefits it had anticipated. Indeed, the situation worsened as the conflict produced more refugees on its soil. However, a successful intervention could end conflict in Somalia hypothetically, which in turn could allow refugees to return home.

The Indian case has been mentioned in the literature in the context of refugee hosting by Saleyhan (2008), Dowty and Loescher (1996), and Teitelbaum (1984), all of whom present Indian intervention in Pakistan’s “civil war” as one in response to refugee flows, but more importantly as one of India seizing the opportunity to divide Pakistan. Although the intervention took place 40 years ago, there appears to be little understanding of the causes of intervention and more specifically its timing. This paper, thus, focuses on the Indian case to provide an in-depth analysis of the motiva-tions for intervention.

The rest of the paper is organised as follows. Section 1 describes the methodology used, and Section 2 provides a back-ground to the conflict that induced Indian intervention. Section 3 presents the different arguments that explain India’s intervention in Bangladesh based on evidence from archival research, and surveys of relevant Bangladeshis as well as Indians who were in India in 1971. Section 4 analyses the impact of refugees on India more specifically, and Section 5 concludes.

1 Methodology

I analyse the motivations behind India’s support for Bangladesh’s War of Independence as well as intervention during Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971. My findings derive from three sources: (1) surveys and interviews of refugees and locals in India in 1971; (2) newspaper archives; and (3) speeches by key persons, including the different ministers as well as the prime minister of India and India’s representatives to the UN.

I conducted two separate surveys on Bangladeshis and Indians who were alive during the 1971 war. All participants in the surveys were above 55 years of age and were in India during the war. In terms of relevant sample size, I interviewed 40 Bangladeshis who were in India during the 1971 war as refugees, and 50 Indians who were locals in India during the same time (for brevity, I refer to the survey of Bangladeshis in India in 1971 as the Bangladesh survey while those of Indians is called the India survey).

The Bangladesh survey was conducted in Dhaka. Residents of alternate houses on two major roads in central Thana were interviewed. This area was chosen because of the diversity of population in terms of income levels, migrant pop-ulations, and gender, after studying the latest census report.

The India survey was conducted online using various social networking tools to make the survey available to Indian communities across the globe. This method was employed because a pilot study in West Bengal indicated that 2% of the pilot sample were near camp areas and thus unable to add anything substantive to the study. Because there were no geographic barriers to the online survey, more “effective” respondents were able to participate. Of course, the sample is self-selected.

It is difficult to access newspapers and speeches from the 1971 period in Bangladesh, primarily because the main ar-chive located in the Dhaka Public Library was burned down during riots in 1990. However, I was able to access two compilations of local and international newspapers that provided coverage of the war. The first is Bangladesh Geno-cide and World Press, compiled and edited by Fazlul Quader Quaderi, which he self-published in Dhaka, in 1972. The second is a personal compilation of newspaper clippings during 1971 (from East and West Pakistan as well as interna-tional media reports) maintained by Sheikh Ahmed Jalal, and now held at the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka. The speeches (for content analysis) were obtained from a publication of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, in 1972, which was later published in Bangladesh as Bangladesh Documents.

2 Roots of the 1971 War and the Refugee Crisis

India’s intervention in East Pakistan is one of the cases where, arguably, the refugee issue had been instrumental in cre-ating an international crisis. This section provides a brief background.

The refugee influx into India in 1971 and the subsequent independence of Bangladesh can be traced back to a root cause – partition. The Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 created two independent countries: India and Paki-stan. Bengal was divided into the two separate entities of West Bengal belonging to India, and East Bengal belonging to Pakistan. East Bengal was renamed East Pakistan in 1955.

The borders were drawn based on a report (Radcliffe Report) commissioned by the British government. On 18 July 1947, the British parliament passed the Indian Independence Act which stipulated which provinces will go to India and which provinces will go to Pakistan. The creation of Pakistan was based on the premise that Hindus and Muslims of the subcontinent constitute two different nationalities and could not coexist, especially after Jinnah left the Congress and joined the Muslim League to ensure a political space for Muslims that is mutually exclusive from the Hindus (James 1990). One can argue that it was the failure of the Congress and the Muslim League to reach consensus over pow-ersharing that created the grounds for the Partition.

The Partition of the subcontinent created two different countries with most of the Muslim majority areas of undivided India going to the newly created nation, Pakistan. This created a geographical anomaly with Pakistan made up of two distinct and unconnected parts termed West and East Pakistan, separated by India in the middle.

East Pakistan was more populous than West Pakistan but political power rested with the western elite in post-independent Pakistan, who refused to hear or address the grievances of the East. Grievances were the basis upon which several political parties emerged in East Pakistan. A dominant one was the Awami League, and its leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a very charismatic Bengali leader, drew millions of Bengalis to demand political rights. In 1970, Pa-kistan held general elections and the Awami League not only participated, but won the majority of the seats which would enable it to form the government. The West Pakistanbased military government dismissed the results and in-stead of handing over power, began mass killings of Bengalis in East Pakistan (Sisson and Rose 1990).

The final straw was the crackdown in East Pakistan on 25 March 1971 which left thousands of Bengalis dead follow-ing which Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was arrested for treason. In a dramatic move, Sheikh Mujibur declared independ-ence from inside jail. Uncannily, 24 years after independence, another “partition” took place because political elites did not want to share political power.

As the aggression of the Pakistani forces intensified, India had to open borders to allow the (new) Bangladeshi refugees safe shelter. The state governments of West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura established refugee camps along the Indian border. The conflict resulted in a deluge of refugees into India and as the violence in East Pakistan escalated, an estimated 10 million refugees fled to India (Sisson and Rose 1990). For a developing country like India, the resource pressures were immense.

The refugees had to go to India because of Bangladesh’s proximity to India. But, what started as a humanitarian effort soon developed political strings, given the rivalry between India and Pakistan. There was already a conflict on India’s western border over Kashmir. The Bangladesh “crisis” added another element and India had to calculate its moves. It served Pakistan’s purpose too: Pakistan claimed that these developments were part of the Kashmir problem, arguably, to justify what was increasingly looking like genocide.

3 Different Explanations for India’s Intervention

Camp-Militarisation

The Bengalis of East Pakistan were fighting for self-determination and hence, the kind of rebellion the refugees in India were engaged in had little to do with India’s treatment of refugees or the living conditions in camps, although the living situation was very poor. Given that a government in exile was formed in Agartala, India, which was also the base of operations, it is, perhaps, almost inevitable that the nearby areas would become militarised.

All the respondents of the Bangladesh survey (40) were upfront about armed bases in India. In fact, 10 of them were “soldiers” (the East Pakistan regimen of the Pakistan Army formed the Mukti Bahini or Liberation Army) who crossed the border several times and thereby did not have a permanent place to stay. Others were volunteers who worked in the camp hospitals as aides. All respondents above the age of 16 in 1971 had participated in the war efforts in one way or another, be it in terms of working with Radio India’s Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra (Independent Bangla Radio Sta-tion) to spread news about the war, working as journalists, broadcasters, teachers at camps, and so on. The war was not merely a military war where the ex-Pakistani military fought – it was a war where literally everyone participated, ac-cording to the respondents. All the respondents were aware of training camps being in existence in India alongside the government in exile. Rebels, therefore, did not have to operate out of refugee camps per se. They used secluded jungles near the borders as training areas.

The respondents of the India survey who lived in areas close to the refugee camps were aware of training camps as well. While most (40) felt the camp and adjacent areas were dangerous, they did not deem them to be a security threat. To the contrary, many of the respondents felt that the bases were necessary to continue the war efforts in East Paki-stan.

Although the refugee camps themselves were not militarised, they served as fertile recruitment ground. The Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) ran a story on militarisation on 2 September 1971. It reads:

Eyewitnesses report the Mukti Fauj [Liberation Force] is increasingly better organised and claim more and younger men are joining it. An intensive recruitment drive is on in the camps to enlist all men and boys from the age of 14 up.

The question that becomes relevant is whether militarisation played any role in the decision to intervene. On the one hand, militarisation is a negative externality. On the other, if the warriors are better trained, it increases the likelihood of success in their war, which would entail the end of conflict, allowing refugees to go back home (as in the current situa-tion with Karens in Thailand). Was this the reason why the government was sympathetic towards the freedom fighters? Sisson and Rose (1990) argue that the arms that the Indian government gave the freedom fi ghters were of low quality, even obsolete, which shows that India’s support was more symbolic than strategic. Was the Indian government actually worried about the militarisation aspect?

In this particular case, it is difficult to make that point either way because the topic of militarisation had not come up during any of the parliamentary debates in India during the period. There is mention of militarisation in newspaper re-ports, such as the FEER report (see above), but nothing to reveal the negative perceptions of the Government of India with regards to militarisation. Thus, although militarisation in a general sense can create aggressive tendencies, in this particular case it does not seem that way.

Shared Bengali Ethnicity

Shared ethnic ties were important as well. Despite the heavy toll that refugees imposed on the economy, all the 30 re-spondents to the India survey said they were sympathetic to the cause, and over time their feeling either remained un-changed (5), or they became more sympathetic (25). Fourteen of the 30 respondents had “Bengali friends from East Bengal” living with them and they all supported the formation of a new country, Bangladesh. One respondent who was 15 at the time said, I, of course, was too young then in 1971. All I remember are blackouts in the evenings, our windows were painted up so that light didn’t spill out and we would hear drones of fighter planes overhead! I also remember we gave a part of our rations (India had a ration card system where individuals got subsidised commodities from the state) for the refugees from East Pakistan. It was not mandatory but most families we knew gave it to fellow Bengalis. So, that was the feeling – there was a pride in [Sheikh] Mujib and a great feeling prevailed in West Bengal that the nation state of India under Indira Gandhi was helping fellow Bengalis. There is lore that madam Gandhi asked the field mar-shall Maneckshaw to send only Bengali (Indian) pilots to the war as the first foray because she could sense the Bengali pride prevalent in West Bengal!

In addition, there were some concerns as to the possible collusion of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – CPI(M) and the Naxalites (the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) – CPI-ML) in West Bengal with “leftists” in East Pakistan, who together could undermine the central government in India. West Bengal had already undergone violence and unrest owing to Maoist insurgencies in 1965 and there were periods of president’s rule imposed. If the East Paki-stani elements joined the local forces, it may be a catastrophe. It is unclear how valid such concerns were, however, because the communist elements were anti-India as well as anti-Bangladesh (anti-establishment), labelling the inde-pendence war as that of the bourgeoisie, as attested by many of the respondents in the Bangladesh survey. Although, shared ethnicity explains the support that Bangladeshis received from fellow Bengalis in India, it does not explain why India intervened militarily.

Irredentism

Some of the respondents to the India survey mentioned that Indira Gandhi may have feared moves towards irreden-tism and hence intervened to prevent that. India referred to East Pakistan/ Bangladesh as East Bengal (its original name before Bengal was divided into two part with the Partition of India), and many outsiders wondered whether that had any relation to West Bengal’s separatist interests.

According to one respondent, the main reason for India to intervene may have been “the humanitarian and justice angle”, but “it is said madam Gandhi pre-empted the unification of Bengal, which meant division of India, and thus stepped into the war to have more control”.

India’s foreign minister at the time, Sardar Swaran Singh, while addressing questions of irredentism and why India re-ferred to East Pakistan as East Bengal, argues that such questions are futile as the people of West Bengal are Indians, the implication being that they are proud Indians and would always choose the Indian national identity over Bengali identity.

[T]he use of this expression does not mean that there is any risk of West Bengal, which is a State of the Indian Union, at any time thinking of joining East Bengal, even if it becomes independent. They know the value of being equal part-ners in this great country of ours, India, where they have played a significant role in the political field, in the social and economic field; and thus I do not realise that there is ever any risk of people of West Bengal, constituent State of India, ever thinking of opting out of India, whatever is the future of East Pakistan.

That the question arose and the government had to respond to claims of irredentism indicate that there may have been some fears. There existed a problem since the insurgencies of the 1960s had alienated West Bengal from the central government to a certain degree. Popular Bengali movies of the time in West Bengal also spoke of “waiting for the day when Bengal is united”, failing to assuage loyalty concerns.

An interesting element is how West Bengal supported the war with fervour similar to India’s independence struggle in the 1930s, using similar types of rhetoric about oppression and selfdetermination. For example, patriotic songs about the spirit of Bengal were revived and played on the radio with the goal of creating unity and inspiring soldiers. “In many ways”, said one respondent of the India survey, “this was our war since it was a war about Bangla and its survival”.

However, it is difficult to separate such sentiments from the bond of shared ethnicity. While there is much to suggest that West Bengalis shared much of the ideological principles with their East Bengali brethren, the political and military apparatus did not exist to enable any form of movement to support irredentism. Such talks may have had popular value, but there were no efforts to turn the talks into reality.

Electoral Mandate

Indira Gandhi had won the national elections in March 1971 largely based on her garibi hatao (end poverty) election campaign. With refugees creating a strain on their already limited resources it was quite clear that she would not be able to adhere to her mandate. Although, locals in West Bengal were largely sympathetic towards refugees, owing to ethnic ties and would overlook Indira Gandhi’s predicament, locals in areas such as Assam and Tripura were rather disgrun-tled. The introduction of new ration cards for refugees had generated inflationary pressures, raising prices of basic food items, creating grievances among locals.

Partly for re-election purposes, Indira Gandhi perhaps had to ensure that the refugees do not impose a long-term prob-lem (Quader 1972). It is unclear whether or not this was a major issue, however. The refugee influx was an external shock and not created by her or the Congress Party. Would the voting public not recognise the difference between de-liberate and inadvertent breaking of promises?

India-Pakistan Power Play or Indian Hegemony

India maintained that during the war period, the international community and, of course, Pakistan had tried to frame the issue as an India-Pakistan one or an internal problem of Pakistan, neglecting long-term refugee concerns that brought life in West Bengal and other border areas to a standstill. Schools and universities were closed to house refu-gees, inflationary pressures crept in.

Strategically, if Pakistan could convince the world, and its population in West Pakistan, that the crisis is a product of IndiaPakistan rivalry and not of Pakistan’s military repression of its population in the East, Pakistan could escape in-ternational and (domestic) rebuke. Especially given Pakistan’s sense of national unity that was based on anti-India sentiments, to claim that rebels in East Pakistan were Indian pawns provided military and political mileage, as well as international and domestic support.

In Indira Gandhi’s 24 May speech in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament), she said it is mischievous to suggest that India has had anything to do with what happened in Bangla Desh. This is an insult to the aspirations and sponta-neous sacrifices of the people of Bangla Desh, and a calculated attempt by the rulers of Pakistan to make India a scapegoat for their own misdeeds. It is also a crude attempt to deceive the world community.

Samar Sen, India’s permanent representative to the UN, further criticised the UN bodies for allowing the perceptions of IndiaPakistan rivalry to pervade the international community without understanding the facts on the ground.

There was a great hue and cry to internationalise the problem: diplomatic moves, various moves in the United Nations through these proposals for observers, and this, that, and the other – all designed to make it into an Indo-Pakistan dis-pute. Once it turned into an IndoPakistan dispute, people will forget what the Pakistan Army is doing in East Pakistan. They can go on burning their villages, raping their women and so on. People will then forget and say that it is an In-do-Pakistan dispute. It is extraordinary, therefore, to find that today, when pressure for action is so great in some quar-ters, this background is forgotten.

Of course, it was in India’s interest to downplay the rivalry factor and focus more on the humanitarian issues involved. After all, why shouldn’t India capitalise on Pakistan’s weakness and strike when victory is almost assured, more so, when they have a legitimate humanitarian reason to do so? One difficulty in assessing the degree to which In-dia-Pakistan rivalry was relevant is the lack of evidence to support either story. Even if division of Pakistan was on the agenda, it was something that was never expressed publicly. That they did not discuss the Pakistan factor may indicate strategic behaviour, choosing to focus on the humanitarian plight because that would be more popular. However, a war with Pakistan would probably be a popular war from the domestic point of view. Why wouldn’t such concerns be made public, then? Perhaps, the question is about a long-term versus short-term outcome. While in the immediate term it was important to focus on pressing matters of the time (refugees), India may have realised that the long-term effect of re-solving the shortterm problem through intervention would be promising in terms of gaining regional dominance.

Limited Concern by the International Community

During discussion in Parliament about the effect of refugees on India’s economy, a recurring theme was the frustration that India was the sole bearer of the burden. The prime minister not only argued that it was an international crisis, but also sent emissaries abroad to gain support for Bangladesh. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi felt that the international community could pressure the Pakistani government to stop genocide. The generation of refugees, further, turned the crisis into an international one, and thus needed some kind of an international intervention, the Indian authorities felt.

Gandhi argued that “the great powers have a special responsibility” and are in a position to bring about durable peace in the Indian subcontinent through mere words. Why was the world taking such a long time to rebuke Pakistan? Inter-estingly, there is no mention of cold war politics, although it did seem to constrain world response. The United States (US), for example, wanted to use Pakistan to reach out to China in order to stem communism. At a time when the US was obsessed with communism, human rights violations and genocides did not seem to matter. However, many re-spondents of both the India and Bangladesh surveys pondered why the American public cared so little about genocide in Bangladesh while protesting the Vietnam War for essentially the same kind of issues.

Indira Gandhi on 24 May, while addressing the House, emphatically said, The problems which confront us are not con-fined to Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and West Bengal. They are national problems. Indeed, the basic problem is an international one. We have sought to awaken the conscience of the world through our representatives abroad and the representatives of foreign Governments in India. We have appealed to the United Nations. However, I must share with the House, our disappointment at the unconscionably long time which the world is taking to reach to this stark tragedy.

There had been, however, some international pressure on Pakistan to resolve the issues, although the focus was more on refugees instead of the legitimacy of the elected government. The UN, especially the secretary general, condemned Pakistani action in East Pakistan and asked the international community to assist India in its efforts to provide refuge to those fleeing conflict. One can see U Thant’s message as one where the international community was aware of the situation and even willing to help the refugee community. However, cold war politics got in the way. In an appeal dated 19 May 1971, U Thant said that

The international community has been seriously concerned at the plight of the sizeable and continuing influx of refu-gees… from East Pakistan into adjacent states of India. I fully share this concern. Mindful that one of the purposes of the United Nations is ‘to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of a humanitarian charac-ter’, I am convinced that the United Nations and its family of Organisations have an important role to play in alleviat-ing the serious hardship and suffering which these refugees are undergoing.

U Thant instructed the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to send a three-man team to judge the situation on the ground, but a stalemate ensued as the major powers chose to remain “neutral”. The US did not want to antago-nise Pakistan for fear of “losing” China, the Soviet Union did not want to get involved in another embroilment; China, having fought a war with India in 1962, was not willing to get involved either. It was following the inaction of major powers that India decided to mobilise its embassies.

On 17 June, India’s foreign minister addressed the US audience at the National Press Club in Washington DC, argued that the mere disapproval of the United States can “have a powerful impact upon the military rulerswill be a strong deterrent against the continued military action by the perpetrators.” In the initial months, India’s demands from the international community was low – strong words.

When the embassies failed to influence world leaders, Indira Gandhi went on a world tour. She spoke to President Richard Nixon in Washington DC and also gave speeches in several cities in Europe. In all her visits, she made it clear that India was running out of resources to support refugees and some form of international action would be required. At a meeting in Germany in November, her exasperation and will were clear. She was frustrated that the world (mainly the US) chose to ignore the 10 million refugee population, and ignore the situation that produced the refugees in the first place. India’s geographic location – surrounding East Pakistan in the east, north and west – resulted in India being the sole bearer of imported problems. There was also a shift in the language as time progressed: in June India was still hop-ing for “strong words” from the US; in November India’s stance had become more aggressive, stating clearly that India will not tolerate the situation for long. Gandhi said, I very authoritatively say that I will not tolerate these refugees living in India. I am very definite, and so is our entire country. We have borne a very big burden with hardly any help from outside, and when we drew the attention of the UN, we were given the answer: ‘It is an internal problem of Pakistan. We cannot interfere in it.’ There are nearly 10 million people and the UN just says ‘we are very sorry, we do not mind if mil-lions of people have been killed in Pakistan ‘it is an internal matter of Pakistan’.

Tracing the changes in words used in speeches, home and abroad, shows changes in India’s disposition regarding what a durable solution will be. As one can see, before intervening in December, India had requested the UN and the US to take action that would end the refugee influx. The different speeches given by Indian officials demonstrate that India was willing to show restraint until December 1971. The majority of the relief operations were planned to last six months. India rallied for international action, and made it clear that in absence of such action, it would be forced to intervene militarily.

There were some criticisms that India did not allow the UNHCR to operate fully in the camps. However, India’s con-cerns were that repatriating refugees when conditions remain unchanged would not be a desirable solution. India wanted UN support not only for the protection of refugees but to form a permanent solution: resolving the refugee problem would be equivalent to treating the symptoms only.

The lack of international support had multiple effects. First, it made India realise that it was the sole bearer of the refu-gee burden. Second, it signalled to India that any action she undertakes would probably have little consequence be-cause of complacency. Third, it highlighted the atmosphere of the time: greater focus on cold war issues and less on geopolitical or humanitarian issues in regions that held little strategic importance. All of these factors combined to pro-vide India with the strength to pursue its foreign policy based primarily on domestic policy, without fearing internation-al reprimand.

4 Refugee Concerns: An Estimate of Refugee Burden

Numbers of Refugees

By sheer magnitude the effect of the refugees on the Indian economy had been overwhelming. Perhaps because India was more accessible to journalists than East Pakistan was, much of the coverage in the international media regarding the crisis in 1971 was on the refugees.

Figure 1 shows the influx of refugees into India during the ninemonth period beginning in April 1971. In the first month after the declaration of independence on 26 March 1971, refugee influx was three million, i e, in the month of April alone, three million refugees entered India. By June, however, the monthly influx fell to below a million a month, and then on the influx fell rapidly to 1,66,000 in December 1971 when the war ended. Table 1 shows the number of camps in each region and the population of refugees both in and out of refugee camps. Undoubtedly, these numbers are large, but to put it into perspective Table 2 provides the proportion of refugees relative to the population of the region.

The statistic that stands out from Table 2 is the one for Tripura where the refugee population was almost as large as the local population. Not surprisingly, locals in this region were antagonistic towards the new arrivals.

According to a report in the Far Eastern Economic Review on 2 September 1971, Tripura’s Relief Secretary expressed concerns over the long-term consequences of hosting such a large number, indicating that there is likely to be animosity among locals due to perceptions of as well as real competition.

Our local population is friendly because we have assured them the refugees are only here for six months. This is tribal country. Local people… are very jealous of their land rights. If they think these people are here permanently, we may have serious trouble. Locals are already complaining because prices have gone up since the refugees have been forced to buy in the open market after the ration cut.

Finances

India allocated Rs 2.6 billion for refugees but their estimated need was Rs 4.2 billion. Not surprisingly, the authorities and the locals both felt the pressure.3

In May, India’s labour and rehabilitation minister in addition to listing the various costs associated with refugee hosting, expressed that this burden is too severe for India to bear alone, and urged the international community to help.

The extremely heavy expenditure involved in providing relief assistance to these refugees, whose number is mounting every day, is causing a severe financial strain on India’s economy. The Government of India has, therefore, urged the United Nations and Foreign Governments, through Indian Missions abroad, to share the responsibility in tackling this vast refugee problem which should be the concern of the International Community.

According to newspaper sources, a ration card was given to all refugees that allowed them rice, dal (lentils), and vegeta-bles. A stipend was given as well, but that shrank from Rs 15 in April to Re 1 in October, indicating a considerable drop in capabilities.

During the nine-month period there were significant discussions within India’s two houses of Parliament regarding the costs of hosting refugees. India’s representatives abroad also tried to involve the UNHCR and other bodies to help ease the burden. The general feeling seemed to be that India, despite its best efforts, was overwhelmed by the costs. Even in the early phase of the crisis, Indira Gandhi spoke of shortages of living space and essentials although many schools and universities became designated refugee camps. Addressing the Lok Sabha on 24 May 1971, she said:

every available building, including schools and training institutions, has been requisitioned. Thousands of tents have been pitched and temporary shelters are being constructed as quickly as possible in the 335 camps which have been established so far. In spite of our best efforts we have not been able to provide shelter to all those who have come across, and may are still in the open. The district authorities are under severe strain. Before they can cope with those who are already here, 60,000 more are coming across every day. Medical facilities in all our border States have been stretched to breaking point.

On 15 June, addressing the Rajya Sabha again, Indira Gandhi reiterated the pressures felt by the country. She pointed out that no developed country in the world has had to face such a situation so far, and yet expected impoverished In-dia to carry the burden alone.

When any country has to face a large influx – not an influx over a long period, but a sudden influx within a few weeks, of nearly six million people – it is not a joke; it is not a small thing. I would like to know from hon’ble Members: Do they know of any country in the world which has faced even one-tenth of this situation before? It is very easy to sit in this House and just criticise and criticise. If even ten thousand refugees arrive in any European country, the whole Conti-nent of Europe will be afire with all the newspapers, the Governments; and everybody will be aroused. We are trying to deal with nearly 6 million human beings who have fled from a region of terror, who have come wounded, with disease, with illness, hunger, and exhaustion.

She stressed that, in this country we have a shortage of practically everything which they [refugees] need. We have a shortage of tarpaulins; we have a shortage of corrugated iron sheets; we have a shortage of every possible thing you can think of. We have tried to round these items from every part of the country; we are rushing them to the camps. But no matter what we do – I am sorry to say – we cannot keep [supporting the] refugees.

Despite the support of local Indians, especially in West Bengal, Indira Gandhi’s words show the desperation at the na-tional level: it was no longer about the will, but the capacity to support such a large group.

India’s representative to the UN, Samar Sen, in a speech to the UN Security Council on 4 December 1971 (eight days before India intervened) expressed India’s inability to sustain the refugee burden at a time when the international community refused to believe that the situation in East Pakistan was, indeed, dire. He also expressed that India will no longer “tolerate” the situation. It is difficult to assess whether his words appeared as threats or expressions of frustra-tion. Perhaps India’s state of development did not make its implicit threats of aggression very credible.

They [the refugees] are coming because they are being terrorised, they are being butchered. That is why they are com-ing. And we cannot take any more. We have told the international community time and again that we have come to the end of our tether. The situation is intolerable.

Even if other factors such as India-Pakistan rivalry had a contributing role, the sudden and immediate cost that India felt could not be overlooked.

An evaluation of the various factors makes one thing certain: the need to end conflict on India’s eastern border. Alt-hough there may have been many geopolitical and strategic reasons that helped sway support for intervention domes-tically, the immediate cost that refugees imposed had been overwhelming – both in terms of the numbers and in terms of the finances involved. Even in June, as a result, India’s foreign minister Sardar Swaran Singh, told a reporter during his tour to the US, There are other ways of enforcing [action without] declaring war. And, I hope we will not be com-pelled to resort to those other means, which perhaps you cannot expect me to spell out at this stage.

So, even in June 1971, India was hoping that international pressure would bring an end to Pakistan’s military regime and force them to accept the election results. It also becomes clear that by May/June 1971, India’s resources were stretched thin and they were already overwhelmed by the masses of refugees coming in. India responded by trying to mobilise the international community to take some form of action. When diplomatic talks failed, the prime minister herself went on a world tour to garner support. In all the speeches, whether by Indira Gandhi or any other minister, In-dia’s representatives were clear and consistent in saying that India would be unable to support refugees for longer than six months, even though they were not very specific about what would happen after that six-month period was over. Perhaps, the intervention did not surprise anyone after all.

5 Conclusions

In the short run, intervention for India meant refugee repatriation, and in the long run, it meant a divided Pakistan and regional dominance. While the long-term incentives can be deemed constant for a country such as India seeking pre-ponderance, they have little explanatory power in terms of explaining the timing of intervention. It is this gap that an explanation based on refugees fulfils. Having ensured that the international community will remain deaf to the calls for help, India was able to utilise a costbenefit analysis based purely on national interests (refugees, costs, inflation, living space), realising that at the systemic level there will be gains to be had without the costs as an externality (regional dominance). In this light, intervention was certainly India’s best response to the crisis.

Critics would probably argue that it was India’s rivalry with Pakistan that brought India to war. Others would argue that Pakistan’s incursion on India’s western border (Kashmir) provoked India’s action on the eastern border. In response, I would point out that India and Pakistan had gone through a series of border disputes over Kashmir since 1947. India could have used its ethnic ties to East Pakistan to destabilise Pakistan during those times as well. Why did India wait until 1971 to use East Pakistan/East Bengal as leverage? I would argue that the refugees created a unique situation that required Indian action in order to end the crisis and ease the burden on India’s economy. The refugees were more than a pretext for war because the 10 million burden that they imposed had dire consequences on the average Indian living in camp areas. The rivalry with Pakistan may have been a contributing factor, but not the primary reason why India intervened in Bangladesh’s Liberation War.

In the last 40 years, India has risen dramatically, both in economic and military terms, especially relative to its neigh-bours, most notably Pakistan. Did Pakistan’s demise or division aid that process? If the answer is a definitive yes, then India’s action in 1971 could be justified along such lines, at least in retrospect. However, Pakistan has maintained that East Pakistan did not add much to its economy, as a result of which its secession did not have much impact. In con-trast, one can argue that the loss of East Pakistan meant the loss of cultural and ethnic diversity, the loss of a moderate voice in an Islamic state, and the loss of democratic principles which eventually stunted Pakistan’s rise, despite reaching nuclear parity with India. Moreover, in 1971 India signalled to the world that it will not sit idle when its national inter-ests are at stake. Even though India’s action at the time was based on the state of the economy affected by the refu-gees, the longer run effect has been to establish itself as a credible regional power.

Notes

1 The Hindu, 25 July 2011, http://www.thehindu. com/news/international/article2293016.ece

2 There were many refugees in Thailand as well, but Thailand did not intervene. Part of the reason that Vietnam did and Thailand did not may be that the refugees in Thailand were better looked after by international NGOs and the UN. Refugees in Vietnam were less privileged and had little access to international NGOs or UN. So, while Thailand benefit-ed monetarily from hosting refugees, Vietnam did not. Thailand did, however, use low-scale violence to force repatria-tion.

3 $1 = 7.50 rupees approximately in 1971. The Indian rupee was pegged to the gold standard until December 1971.

References can be viewed at: (http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16914.pdf)

Figures can be viewed at:( http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16914.pdf)

Tables can be viewed at ; (http://www.epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16914.pdf)

LOAD-DATE: December 26, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Magazine