Pakistan Cut to Size | D R Mankekar

Pakistan Cut to Size | D R Mankekar

Preface
TF Pakistan has been cut to size, it is entirely
Yahya Khan’s handiwork. India had nothing to do with it. Make no mistake. Indeed, a wag in Delhi quipped that the RSS had planted Yahya Khan in Islamabad as their agent to undo the partition !
Yahya Khan raised the axe on the body of Pakistan the day, March 25, 1971, he launched on the brutal crack-down in Dacca, and then hacked re. peatedly at the body like a demented desperado, as for nine months he butchered Bengalis. Yahya Khan will go down in that country’s history as the architect of Pakistan’s disintegration.
For India this was a war to end wars by Pakistan. The Indian Armed Forces put in its place the arro. gant Pakistan Army debauched, corrupted by politics, drunk with power. With captive women kept in their bunkers in the fighting line, how could one expect the Pakistani soldiers to retain the will to fight? How could those allowed to indulge in rapine and rape, function with discipline and keep fighting fit?
Nevertheless, it is true, Pakistan has been cut to size – from one-fifth to one-tenth the size of India, and now takes its place alongside Iran and Afghanistan. Economically it is in ruins. Politically it is a demoralised, humiliated nation, thanks to selfish and corrupt leaders who for 24 years misled the people. When people asked for bread, they fed them on the poisonous drug of Indophobia.
All that is now coming home to roost. President Bhutto, the inheritor as well as part creator of this
frightful legacy, deserves everybody’s sympathy, for he has a hopeless task before him.
This book strives to tell that awesome story. But it mainly presents the saga of a finely orchestrated performance by the Indian nation, in which the political, the diplomatic and the military constituted distinctive components, each making its own contri bution to the ultimate harmonious whole. It is an inspiring tale, not only to listen, but also to write. It should serve as a tonic to a nation for long depressed with frustrations and disappointments.
A professional writer always strives not only to present the truth but to present the truth credibly, so as to carry conviction with his reader. This writer feels handicapped in having to write a story which sounds hyperbolic, notwithstanding his effort to find some fault with the complex politico-diplomatic-military operation lest it lose credibility! A longer hindsight would possibly have yielded a few bones to pick in it. But right at this moment, the “classified” documents are still in the process of compilation, or maybe it is too early for ‘leaks’ to help one to pick holes in the operation.
Pakistan Cut to Size has to be taken as the sequel volume to my earlier book Pak Colonialism in East Bengal, published in September 1971. In effect, the narrative in this book starts at the point where the earlier one stopped.
I take this opportunity to express my thanks to General Sam Manekshaw, Air Chief Marshal P. C. Lal and Admiral S. M. Nanda, the three Service Chiefs, and their staff, as also to Mr. K. F. Rustomji, Director-General, Border Security Force, and Maj. Gen. M. A. G. Osmani, Commander-in-Chief, Mukti Bahini Forces for extending to me their cooperation and helping me with all available unclassified mate. rial, which makes this book worthwhile writing and reading.
This book is dedicated to the heroism of the War
Widows who have sacrificed their dearest so that the nation may live – in glory and prosperity. We salute these heroes and express our gratitude to them.
D. R. MANKEKAR
New Delhi, 12 February 1972

Prologue
TT is an eloquent commentary on the state of pre
sent-day international affairs that in the civilized era of the U.N. Charter, compassion should have flown out of the window and the ruling passion in the world should be cynicism.
When India went round for nine months bearing the placard “Please help to send ten million refugees back to their homes,” one heard no more than sym pathetic noises and tut-tuts. India’s fervent plea on behalf of the Bengalis’ struggle for liberation from the West Pakistani colonial yoke failed to strike a sympathetic chord in the world chancelleries-many of them attributed ulterior motives to India’s championship of the Bangladesh cause. They thought, and said it in so many words, that India was seizing on the opportunity to pursue her diabolical aim to dismember Pakistan.
So much so, the world blinked with incredulity when they read Mrs. Gandhi’s first reaction to India’s unqualified victory in the 14-day war. “Dacca is a free capital of a free country. We hail the people of Bangla Desh in their hour of triumph,” she declared. “All nations who value the human spirit will recognise it as a significant mile-stone in man’s quest of liberty.”
She might as well have crowed over her great triumph, as many others in her place would legiti
mately have-and one could indeed imagine the kind of speech Yahya Khan would have declaimed if the roles had been reversed and Pakistan had won ! Mrs. Gandhi lost no time in announcing that Indian troops will not remain in Bangladesh “a day longer than absolutely necessary.” This assurance she further reinforced on February 7 when she an nounced after her Calcutta talks with the Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, that the Indian troops would actually be withdrawn by March, 25, 1972, the anniversary of the Pakistani crack-down on the Bengalis. Indeed, one British newspaper commented: “Considering the magni. tude of the victory, New Delhi was surprisingly restrained in its reaction. Mostly Indian leaders seemed pleased by the relative ease with which they had accomplished their goals.”
The role of compassion during the campaign in Bangladesh was underlined by the strict instruc tions given to the Indian army to avoid destruction of property and loss of civilian as well as military lives, which prompted the Indian generals to encircle and bypass entrenched Pakistani troops at various strategic points and General Sam Manekshaw repeatedly to broadcast messages addressed to the Pakistani Commander in Dacca asking him to surrender and avert loss of lives.
The civilized and humane treatment given by India to the 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war– which was not just correct as required by the Gene va Conventions, but truly humane and gentlemanly-bowled out and indeed moved the Pakistani prisoners. One Pakistani officer prisoner-of-war said to me in Dacca, “You defeated us in the field. You have now truly vanquished us.”
They had been told by Pak official propaganda that the Indians would heap cruelty on them, in other words, do to them what they did to Indian soldiers captured by them there were bodies found of In
dian prisoners taken by the Pakistanis in the field of battle which were sadistically mutilated, with eyes gouged out and limbs hacked and private parts cut off. This is hard to believe; and because it is hard to believe, it was doubly and triply checked before putting into print here.
Addressing Parliament on December 16, Mrs. Gandhi said, India’s pledge to the people of Bangladesh had been redeemed. She shared the people’s elation on the occasion but recalled the following lines from the Gita: “Neither joy nor sorrow should disturb one’s equanimity or blur one’s vision of the future.” She then emphasised: This is victory, but a victory not only of arms but of ideals.”
This is strange language entirely out of place in a world of crass realpolitik. So the world presisted in looking askance at such sentiments expressed by India and thought there must be some catch somewhere in it!
And yet there can be no doubt that this altruistic spirit percolated down to the officers and ranks of the Indian Army as they marched through the swamps and paddy fields of Bangladesh, bringing sense of security to villages terrorised by the Pak Army for nine months. Those who met and talked to the Indian army officers and jawans during and at the conclusion of the war in Bangladesh could not help remarking upon the high sense of responsibility and correct conduct imbuing their bearing! amidst the Bengali population. The noble cause they were fighting for was the grand motive force behind the Indian Army’s tremendous self-confidence and resoluteness in action as they marched to Dacca.
There was of course self-interest involved in India’s Bangladesh policy. But the architect of Pakistan’s disruption is not India, but Yahya Khan. India’s self-interest in desiring a friendly country at least on one of its flanks does not vitiate the
fundamental motivation behind that policy, which springs from a noble impulse to help in the liberation of an oppressed neighbour with whom Indians have close ethnic, cultural and blood ties.
The London Economist has compared India’s intervention in Bangladesh to that of Napoleon III in northern Italy in 1859. The journal wrote: “France then had a clear interest in forcing the Austrians out, but there was no more doubt about the Italians wish to get them out than there has been about the Bengalis’ wish to break the hold of the West Pakistani soldiery whom they had come to regard as an occupying force.”
It is difficult to believe that the White House failed to gauge the depth of the Bengalis’ abhorrence of Pakistani rule and their grim determination to get rid of it. Or that Washington failed to realize that any power, however super, trying to perpetuate the Pakistani misrule in East Bengal was committing a grave crime against humanity.
But the Economist was wide of the mark when in another editorial it accused India of presuming to intervene in a neighbouring country to restore democracy there. Nobody in India, from the Prime Minister downwards, ever claimed to do that in Bangladesh. They only pointed at the Awami League’s overwhelming victory as a democratic demonstration of the Bengalis’ right to rule their country as they wished Indians, as many others in the world, were deeply moved by the Bengalis’ hapless struggle against naked tyranny and sought to help their liberation. And that desire was propelled by the supreme need to send back home the ten million refugees piled up on Indian territory. That aim could not be achieved without helping the Bengalis to seize power in their own country.
But it is true that we in India take our democracy seriously-and that is why democracy has endured in this country for 25 years, notwithstanding all the
political Cassandras in the world.
President Nixon has possibly to be forgiven if he applied his own norms, based on cynical realpolitik as evidenced in the US policy in Vietnam, to India’s insistence that it had no other interest in Bangladesh beyond that country’s liberation from a tyrannical colonial rule, or that it had no territorial designs on West Pakistan.
In his 5,000-word apologia in the course of his message to the US Congress, President Nixon has repeated the allegation that India intended to destroy the Pakistani army and capture Pakistani territory in the West, and that India had refused to give him an assurance on the point.
The Anderson Papers’ revelations prove that his claim was a distortion of facts. The ghastly truth was that while Washington wanted to extract an assurance from India that it would not try to con quer Pak-occupied Kashmir, it was not prepared to press that demand too far because it could not insist on a similar assurance from Pakistan whose much bruited military objective in the war in the West was the conquest of the Kashmir Valley.
The secret minutes of the White House meetings disclose that when it was decided to wring from India an assurance on the point, one of the participants did point out that such a demand from India might handicap Yahya Khan’s intentions in Kashmir, and therefore they should not press that point too hard on India!
India’s Ambassador in Washington, Mr. L. K. Jha, has corroborated that fact. He pointed out that when Mr. Joseph Sisco, US Assistant Secretary of State, asked him for an assurance in regard to Kashmir, Mr. Jha in return wanted to know what were Pakistan’s own intentions in Kashmir. It was not until after five or six days that Mr. Sisco could convey Pakistan’s assurance on the subject — by then Yahya Khan’s ambitious assault on Chhamb
had failed, and with that his hope of annexing any territory in Kashmir had been blasted.
Any observer in New Delhi, journalist or diplomat, with elementary knowledge of the working of the Government of India’s mind on Kashmir, has known for a long time that India is not interested in capturing the territory of Pak-occupied Kashmir, which is ethnically and geographically different from the rest of the State and of no strategic or economic value for the state of Jammu and Kashmir but, on the other hand, could be a strategic liability. All that India has desired is a readjustment and rationalization of the cease-fire line so as to impart greater security to the adjacent Indian territory.
This has been India’s position for the last twenty years, during which period it has been repeatedly suggested to Pakistan and the UN Security Council that New Delhi was ready for a settlement on the basis of the present cease-fire line with a more rational readjustment of it. Nothing has happened since then to make India change its ideas on the subject, certainly not now when, thanks to Pakistan’s pact with Peking, that part of Kashmir has developed a common border with hostile China.
There is again an element of “double-talk” about President Nixon’s claim that he had nearly succeeded in persuading Yahya Khan to accept an autonomy formula for Bangladesh that satisfied the Awami League representatives in Calcutta and that Mrs. Gandhi threw a spanner into it by launching on her military campaign in the east.
It was clear as a pikestaff that the kind of autonomy plan that Yahya Khan was prepared to accept would have been rejected out of hand by the Awami League leaders in Calcutta, nor would they have acquiesced in any proposal without Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s approval or while the Sheikh continued to remain in jail.
It was again too naive on the part of Washington to think that after all that had happened in East Bengal during the intervening nine months, the Awami League leaders would accept a mere autono my plan that spoke of a referendum to ascertain the people’s wishes at a future date – such was the formula, as it was later disclosed when the details became available.
It was apparent that so late in the day as October 1971, the only formula that would have worked was complete independence on the basis of the 1940 Lahore resolution on Pakistan, which spoke of two independent and separate Pakistans in the West and the East respectively.
All evidence available shows that Yahya Khan was not prepared to accept such a formula even at that late hour, when it was no more within his giving – when his troops had built an unfordable moat filled with Bengali blood and corpses, between West Pakistan and East Bengal, in addition to the 1200-mile geographical gap separating the two States.
In the closing days of Pak rule in East Bengal the Pakistanis were so completely isolated and dreaded that the civilian and military top brass dared not move about in Dacca’s streets without armed escort. Common soldiers went out in large groups for mutual protection against attacks from the local people. Tension, hatred, bitterness and fear filled the air.
There was not a family in Dacca which did not have a couple of members whisked off by the military – men tortured and shot, women raped and assaulted. For weeks after the war ended, Dacca newspapers were full of ads of missing men, young and old – missing because they were taken away by the Pak military for “interrogation” and never came back – a tell-tale evidence of the nightmare the Bengalis went through during the nine months of horror until their liberation on December 16.
Thus Dan Coggin of Time described the scene in Dacca in the last few days as the Indian army closed in on the city, in these words: “The mood of the overwhelming majority of Bengalis was less one of apprehension than pent-up anticipation. Said one Bengali journalist: “Now we know how the Pari sians felt when the Allies were approaching’.”
The Bengalis excitedly watched from housetops IAF aircraft raiding the airport in Dacca and rejoiced when they scored direct hits and cried when one was shot down by the ack-ack.
A local journalist told me in Dacca of how his old mother wept when she saw an Indian aircraft shot down, as though it was a personal tragedy for her – which possibly it was, in a sense.
When stray bombs fell on civilian targets, the Bengalis invented reasons to explain away the mistake. Mr. Coggin remarked: “I was surprised at the extent to which India could do no wrong in the eyes of the Bengalis. They showed me through rocketed houses where about 15 people had died. Several Bengalis whispered that it must have been a mistake, and I heard no one cursing the Indians.”
The emotional Bengali who had until recently cowered before the swaggering uniformed Pakistani was indeed touched by the modesty, courtesy and friendliness of the Indian soldier. Indian army personnel in Bangladesh had been strictly instruc ted not to accept gifts and free meals. Officers visiting Dacca’s clubs insisted on paying their own bills and courteously declined free drinks from kindly Bengali hosts who used to different behaviour from uniformed men, could not believe their eyes.
Mr. Peter Hazelhurst of the London Times in a despatch from Dacca narrates the story of how one day he found an excited crowd gathered round two Indian soldiers and a rickshaw. He thought it was the usual altercation over the fare between the rick
shaw driver and his passengers. It turned out that the row was over the rickshawman refusing to take money from the Indian jawans and the latter insisting on his taking his fare! The point of the story was that the rickshawman was not used to such normal conduct from uniformed men.
There have been cynics in the West who asked: “But why did you allow so many to come to your country? You could have stopped them at the border?” But then India has done it before. Right through her history she has suffered from this “weakness”. This country welcomed waves of Jews fleeing from their persecutors in the Middle East a thousand years ago. It also offered shelter to the Parsis escaping the religious fury in Islamic Iran. A decade ago, to the intense ire of Peking, India gave asylum to thousands of Tibetans running away from the Chinese communist occupation.
At a moment when Peking is stridently charging! India with expansionist and colonialist ambitions, it is worth noting that throughout its long history, India has never coveted another’s territory, nor invaded another country nor even fought a war on foreign soil. This is a unique record in the annals of a world so replete with imperialist wars and conquests. It is in striking contrast to China’s history punctuated with wars fought in, and imperialist yoke imposed on, other countries.
For more than a thousand years Hindu culture and influence dominated and permeated the entire region of Southeast Asia from Burma and Ceylon to Vietnam and Indonesia. It was not the sword but the message of universal peace and goodwill that India brought to this vast region. “We in Vietnam, more than any other country in Asia, know the difference between the Indian and Chinese civilizations,” the late President Ngo Din Diem of Vietnam told this writer in 1956. “For this is where the two great civilizations confronted each other, one
coming from the West, bringing to us human and spiritual values and the other from the north, coming with blood and thunder.”
“This was India’s war of compassion; it would not have been fought without this element,” wrote Evelyn Wood (Art. in the Statesman, Jan. 9, 1972). “Tactically, the destruction of Pakistani forces in Bangladesh could have been accomplished without entering that territory. But the aim was to restore the country to the East Bengalis.”
Then he added, “It is not surprising that the USA and several European countries find the war hard to understand; it is long since the counsel of loving one’s neighbour has motivated their culture.”
It is indeed this compassion that turned a confirmed dove like Jaya Prakash Narayan into a hawk demanding of India to go to war against Pakistan over the Bangladesh issue.
Indians are made that way. We can’t help it.

Controlled Escalation
ON March 31, 1971, that is, six days after President
Yahya Khan’s crack-down in Dacca, the Indian Parliament unanimously demanded immediate ces sation of the use of force and of the “massacre of the defenceless people of East Bengal.” The resolution assured the people of Bangladesh that, “their struggles and sacrifices will receive the wholehearted sympathy and support of the people of India.”
Indira Gandhi herself moved that resolution and declared: “The tragedy which has overtaken our valiant neighbours in East Bengal so soon after their rejoicing over their electoral victory has united us in grief for their suffering, concern for the wanton destruction of their beautiful land, and anxiety for their future.”
From that date to December 3, when Yahya Khan precipitated an open war between India and Pakistan, Mrs. Gandhi’s conduct of her country’s policy on Bangladesh was a perfect example of controlled escalation. Right through the nine-month process, she showed a firm grip on India’s policy as it evolved under the heat and pressure of the tragic events in East Bengal. During the period in every speech and statement she made, the phraseology in which they were couched, in every step she took in the political field at home or the diplomatic arena
abroad, she displayed the sureness of touch of a master and a rare sense of timing.
On April 4, addressing the AICC meeting at New Delhi, Mrs. Gandhi stated that India could not remain a silent spectator of events in East Bengal. But she said she would keep emotions in check. “We must act in a constructive way and not do anything which adds to the difficulties of the people there,” she cautioned. The All India Congress Committee adopted a resolution pledging all-out support to the people of East Bengal
By the end of April the number of refugees from East Bengal had reached the figure of three million; by June it jumped up to 5 million. The rate of the influx was 60,000 per day. It was now computed that the figure would reach 10 million by October, 1971. It was assuming the dimensions of a socioeconomic problem in the already disturbed region of West Bengal
Meanwhile the Indo-Pak tension intensified, with General Yahya Khan publicly accusing India of arming the Mukti Bahini. On April 3, President Podgorny of the Soviet Union cautioned President Yahya Khan on the course of tragic events in East Bengal. As though by way of tit for tat, Mr. Chou En-lai served notice on India that China would sup. port Pakistan “as usual” if India attacked Pakistan. In Lucknow, Mrs. Gandhi promptly declared at a press conference that China’s support to Pakistan would not deter India from taking any action its Government considered necessary.
In Bombay the American Ambassador John Keating created a stir by publicly stating that he considered that the holocaust in East Bengal was “no more an internal affair.” The shocking events in East Pakistan were the concern of the international community, he said.
At the same time, pressures, particularly from eastern India, were developing in favour of New Munna Khan
Delhi immediately recognizing Bangladesh as a separate political entity. While going along with, and reflecting the sympathy and mood of, the Indian people on the subject, Mrs. Gandhi now had the additional problem of having gently to apply the brakes on the recognition demand.
That demand became incessant after the provi. sional government of the Republic of Bangladesh was proclaimed from Mujibnagar, on a strip of territory along the border in East Bengal, on April 17. To this clamour Mr. Jaya Prakash Narayan added his weighty voice.
On the issue of recognition, however, Mrs. Gandhi’s mind was clear. Her reply was a cate gorical ‘no’. She considered it dangerously premature and inopportune, unless the country was pre. pared for the subsequent steps that would follow such an action. The sure consequence of such a step was rupture of diplomatic relations between India and Pakistan, which was likely to precipitate an armed conflict between the two countries, with unpredictable international repercussions. Her stock reply to those clamourers was: “Not yet. At the appropriate time. Leave that for the Government to decide.”
From Patna, Jaya Prakash Narayan issued a passionate call for active support to the freedom fighters in Bangladesh and immediate recognition by the Government of India. An energetic drive for the collection of funds for the cause of Bangladesh was launched in the country. Voices were raised, particularly in the affected eastern region, in favour of military intervention by India in East Bengal. The plea put forward was that a war would cost less and would be briefer in duration than the maintenance of five and a half, and possibly 10, million refugees in India indefinitely, apart from the combustible socio-economic consequences to the country.
The staggering dimensions of the tragedy being
enacted in East Bengal came to light when the thirty odd foreign correspondents, holed up in the Intercontinental Hotel in Dacca during the crack-down, were thrown out by Yahya Khan and they broadcast the lurid facts of the unprecedented holocaust of March 25 night and the subsequent days. These eye-witness accounts, confirming earlier press re. ports, shocked and spurred Indian public opinion in its clamour for action on the part of New Delhi to relieve the situation in East Bengal and to halt the massacre. The Indian External Affairs Ministry issued a strong statement charging the West Pakistani military machine with “planned carnage and systematic genocide in East Bengal.”
In less than four weeks of the crack-down, the Pakistani Army appeared to have crushed the nationalist rebellion and the leonine violence that Yahya Khan had unloosed on the Bengali people seemed to have paid. It happened that on the day, April 17, the Bangladesh Government was proclaim ed, the Pakistan Army claimed to have got on top of the situation in East Bengal. For the moment, the prospect for the Bengali nationalists appeared bleak.
In view of the near-unanimous demand for the recognition of Bangladesh from the Opposition leaders in Parliament, the Prime Minister called a meeting of her Cabinet at short notice. The Cabinet however once again came to the conclusion that the time had not yet come for recognition. Mrs. Gandhi conveyed the Cabinet decision to the opposition leaders and declared that the refugees were the responsibility of the international community.
Jaya Prakash Narayan now went on a 46-day world tour to plead the cause of Bangladesh in foreign capitals. He returned home and demanded not only immediate recognition of Bangladesh by India but a liberation war against Pakistan, if need be.
The Government of India addressed a strong note to Islamabad, which stated that India reserved the
right to claim from Pakistan appropriate compensation for affording relief to millions of refugees. “The Government of India therefore holds Pakistan fully responsible for creating such conditions forthwith as would facilitate the return of these refugees,” said the note.
By the middle of May, one could discern a new militancy, in Mrs. Gandhi’s speeches, that marked the next phase in India’s evolving policy on Bangladesh. In a speech in Ranikhet on May 17, she warned that unless the situation improved, India would have to consider “specific action”. She told Pakistan that India was not deterred by any of her threats and said, “If a situation is thrust upon us, then we are fully prepared to fight.” Mrs. Gandhi then challenged Pakistan’s claims that everything was normal in East Bengal. If that were so, she said, Pakistan should immediately call back the refugees.
The Prime Minister then appealed to the democratic countries of the world to impress upon Pakistan to stop its military atrocities in East Bengal. She said the international community should realize that what began as Pakistan’s internal affair was gradually becoming an internal problem of India.
Later, on May 24, addressing Parliament Mrs. Gandhi made an important policy statement. “We all felt our country was poised for rapid economic advance and a more determined attack on the ageold poverty of our people,” she said in a pensive mood. “Even as we were settling down to these new tasks, we have been engulfed by a new and gigantic problem, not of our making… so massive a migration in so short a time is unprecedented in history. Three and a half million have come in the last eight weeks. On the present estimates the cost of relief to the Government of India may exceed Rs. 180 crores for six months.”
Refuting Yahya Khan’s charge, the Prime Minister indignantly added, “It is mischievous to sug.
gest that India has had anything to do with what happpened in Bangladesh. This is an insult to the aspirations and spontaneous sacrifices of the people of Bangladesh 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.”
Mrs. Gandhi then raised her voice and declared: “I must share with the House our disappointment at the unconscionably long time which the world is taking to react to this stark tragedy.” She emphasised, “Not only India but every country has to consider its interests. I think I am expressing the sentiments of this House and of our people when I raise my voice against the wanton destruction of peace, good neighbourliness and elementary principles of humanity by the insensate action of the military rulers of Pakistan. …Conditions must be created to stop any further influx of refugees and to ensure their early return under credible guarantees for their future safety and well-being. I say with all sense of responsibility that unless this happens there can be no lasting stability or peace on this subcontinent.”
The Prime Minister added, “We are convinced that there can be no military solution to the problem of East Bengal. A political solution must be brought about by those who have the power to do so. World opinion is a great force. It can influence even the most powerful. The great powers have a special responsibility. If they exercise their power rightly and expeditiously then only can we look forward to durable peace on our subcontinent. But if they fail — and I sincerely hope they will not – then the suppression of human rights, the uprooting of people and the continued homelessness of vast numbers of human beings will threaten peace.”
It was a grim prospect that India now faced. A
volatile element comprising millions of desperate, hungry and mentally unhinged refugees had been poured into the simmering cauldron of eastern India, already disturbed by anarchical communist activity and tribal unrest. This witch’s brew aboil generated for India the gravest crisis of the last twenty-four years – a crisis that might indeed leave permanent, indelible scars behind.
When they flowed in on such a massive scale, the refugees brought in their train many problems to the recipient country, such as security and health hazards, economic disequilibrium, social tensions and a dire threat to law and order in the affected regions. A cholera epidemic in the first weeks of the influx took a toll of 2,000 victims before it was controlled.
The total cost of looking after nine million refugees (the number reached by October) according to the figures given by the Finance Minister Y. B. Chavan, came to Rs. 525 crores. Of this amount, other nations had promised to provide Rs. 112.5 crores. The balance of Rs. 412.5 crores had to be borne by India. Staggering as the burden was, with all its implications on the country’s economy, that was just one aspect of the problem.
The financial and economic strain – with the resultant socio-economic tensions in the affected region- flung a spanner into the Government of India’s ambitious development plans. This was most unfortunate. After a prolonged period of depression, Indian economy was at last looking up, thanks to successive good monsoons and the green revolution and return of political stability to the country following the thumping majority won by Mrs. Gandhi’s party at the mid-term elections. Many were the dreams conjured up by the Government and people of a better life based upon this combination of happy circumstances. The refugee explosion blasted those hopes and dreams.
The Government had repeatedly proclaimed, for all the world to hear, that the refugees were on Indian soil temporarily, that they must go back to their homes, but that they could go back only when favourable conditions could be created in East Bengal, and that those favourable conditions could be created only when Islamabad handed over power to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League, who were the elected representatives of the people of East Bengal.
But who was to create the favourable conditions for the refugees to go back? Only Yahya Khan could do that. Or, if he failed to do it voluntarily, the international community, that is, the UN or the super powers should persuade Yahya Khan to see sense. Failing that, the only other alternative left was for India to take a direct initiative to create the necessary conditions for the refugees to go back home.
So far as India was concerned, there was an element of compulsive urgency about the need to send the refugees back home. The problem was fast undermining the country’s internal as well as ex. ternal security by building up tensions in the subcontinent to a flash-point.
Mrs. Gandhi’s Government had now made up its mind. From this time on, therefore, the Government was prepared to contemplate the extreme alternative, if forced to by circumstances and when every other avenue of remedy had failed. India was however still determined not to leave any stone unturned to persuade the international community to intercede with Yahya Khan and put pressure on him to produce a political settlement acceptable to the Awami League in East Bengal.
At this point of time, when the freedom fighters appeared to have been dispersed by the juggernaut of Yahya’s repression, the hope that the Mukti Bahini could successfully fight back and oust the
well armed Pak Army from the land, was slim indeed. At any rate, it appeared then that even if the Mukti Bahini eventually succeeded, it would be months if not years before they accomplished their objective of overthrowing the Pakistani regime. India obviously could not wait till then for a solution of the refugee problem mounting up in its lap.
June and July were the months of gloom in New Delhi. The refugee influx into India continued with out interruption. The Mukti Bahini had not yet emerged out of the cocoon in sufficiently large and effective numbers. Yahya Khan was threatening total war with India, if India attempted directly to send back the refugees to their homeland. The visit of Dr. Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s chief adviser, to Islamabad and from there a secret flight to Peking, with the subsequent sensational announcement of a visit to the Chinese capital by the US President, underlined the close collusion between Washington, Islamabad and Peking.
The international community seemed impervious to the mounting crisis in India. At home, an increas. ingly restive public opinion was no more satisfied with the Government’s repetitive reply to the clamour for recognition: “Not yet. At the appropriate time. Leave it to us.” The inevitable question now was: where do we go from here?
The praise heaped on Mrs. Gandhi for her res. traint in the face of great provocation from Pakistan was fast souring into a suspicion that India lacked the guts to tackle drastically a grave crisis that was jeopardising its very existence. Friendly diplomats in private exhorted Indian leaders not to wait upon others to pull India’s chestnuts out of the fire, but go ahead and do the job themselves.
It was clear to Mrs. Gandhi that a demonstration of Government’s will to act on its own to resolve the crisis was called for. There was hectic activity in the External Affairs Ministry. Mr. D. P. Dhar, now
appointed Chairman of a Foreign Policy Co-ordination Committee at the Foreign Office, flew to Moscow. This was followed by the Soviet Foreign Minister Mr. Andre Gromyko’s visit to New Delhi. On August 9, the sensational news of the signing of the Indo-Soviet Treaty was announced to the world.
Amid the atmosphere of mounting tension, this news was received with a great sense of relief and satisfaction in the country. The treaty was hailed by all sections of political opinion. Article 9 of the Treaty was particularly noted, which provided for consultations between the two countries in case of war or threat of war to either of them, with a view to removing that threat. With the signing of this Treaty, the Government and the country breathed easier.
From the ramparts of the historic Red Fort in Delhi Mrs. Gandhi in her Independence Day speech, on August 15, still insisted: “We don’t want war. We do not rattle sabres. But India is prepared for any emergency.”
In September, as things were hotting up along the Indo-Pak border, Mrs. Gandhi embarked on a final, supreme effort to persuade the international community to get round Yahya Khan to agree to a peaceful settlement of the Bangladesh problem.
She first visited Moscow, and at a banquet, she pressed the urgency of creating conditions in which the East Bengal refugees could return to their homeland, and then poignantly stated: “The growing agony of the people of East Bengal does not seem to have moved many Governments. Our restraint has been appreciated only in words. The basic issues involved and the real threat to peace and stability in Asia are being largely ignored.”
Mrs. Gandhi pleaded: “We cannot but be perturbed when a fire breaks out in a neighbour’s house. What happened in East Bengal can be no longer regarded as Pakistan’s domestic affair. More
than nine million East Bengalis have come into our country. We cannot be expected to absorb them. We have problems enough of our own and we certainly do not need to add to our vast population.”
Returning home from Moscow, at a press conference in New Delhi on October 19, Mrs. Gandhi declared: “We do not want to provoke war or do anything because of which a war situation may develop. But it is not a one-sided matter. We cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” This was in reply to a question from a foreign correspondent who wanted to know her response to President Yahya Khan’s Id day proposal for a dialogue with
her.
In answer to another question, Mrs. Gandhi said: “Nobody can prophesy these things. We can only say that we have been doing and will continue to do everything possible to avoid conflict. But the situation is a grave one. All along the border troops have been brought closer to the border on the other side. Naturally we have to look to our interests.”
Then she sardonically added: “Everybody admires our restraint. We get verbal praise, but the others are not restrained and they get arms as well.”
On October 23, the Indian Prime Minister went on a three-week tour of seven Western capitals. “The trip was necessary in the present situation to put across to the world leaders the reality of the situation in the sub-continent,” she said at a public meeting in New Delhi, defending her action in leav. ing the country at a moment of grave crisis. “The final decisions ultimately rest in our hands. But because the situation is so grave it is important that India should not speak or act in haste or anger.”
Mr. John Grigg commented in the London Observer: “Mrs. Gandhi is a dove with sharp claws. If her efforts to find a peaceful solution failed, she would not shrink from war.” Then he added,
“Without Mrs. Gandhi’s leadership, India by now would have reacted violently to Pakistan’s vicarious and unarmed but nonetheless overwhelming in vasion of its soil.”
In a TV interview in London on November 2, the Indian Prime Minister declared: “We in India are determined that we are not going to be saddled with another country’s problem. All the refugees must go back.”
When finally, after the fullest deliberation, Mrs. Gandhi took the plunge, there was awesome resoluteness and a sledge-hammer finality about her statements. Her unshakable determination and courage in action were an inspiration to the Indian troops in the field and the nation as a whole.
As Washington’s pressures on New Delhi intensified, on December 2, Mrs. Gandhi declared at a meeting of Congress workers in Delhi: “Times have changed during the last five years. If any country thinks that by calling us aggressors it can pressurize us to forget our national interests then that country is living in its own paradise and it is welcome to it.”
She added, “The times have passed when any nation sitting 3,000 to 4,000 miles away could give orders to Indians on the basis of their colour superiority to do as they wished. India has changed and she is no more a country of slaves. Today we will do what is best in our national interest and not what these so-called big nations would like us to do.”
As the UN Security Council busied itself with resolutions that called for the withdrawal of troops and cease-fire in the India-Pakistan conflict, on December 10, Mrs. Gandhi told a political rally in Delhi: “Nothing will deter us from driving the occupation force out of the region and helping the people of Bangladesh to live in peace and prosperity.” She said that in spite of criticism of India by the United Nations, “we shall never shirk our
responsibility, and the enemy shall be crushed.”
During the tense fourteen days, Mrs. Gandhi’s speeches and statements came as a tonic to the nation. Her letter to President Nixon, written at the conclusion of the war in Bangladesh, was an example of the power her words breathed during that period as well as her sense of timing. Equally masterly was her unilateral declaration of ceasefire in the west, following the surrender in the east, which at once silenced harsh critics among the world community.
“Lip-service was paid to the need for a political solution, but not a single worthwhile step was taken to bring this about,” said Mrs. Gandhi’s letter to President Nixon, and then asked: “Mr. President, may I ask you in all sincerity: was the release or even secret negotiations with a single human being, namely, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, more disastrous than the waging of a war?”
The letter continued: “We are asked what we want. We seek nothing for ourselves. We do not want any territory of what was East Pakistan and now constitutes Bangladesh. We do not want any territory of West Pakistan. We do want lasting peace with Pakistan. But will Pakistan give up its ceaseless and yet pointless agitation of the last 24 years over Kashmir? Are they willing to give up their hate campaign and posture of perpetual hostility towards India?”
Mrs. Gandhi concluded: “Be that as it may, it is my earnest and sincere hope that with all the knowledge and deep understanding of human affairs you, as President of the United States and reflecting the will, the aspirations and idealism of the great American people, will at least let me know where precisely we have gone wrong before your repre. sentatives or spokesmen deal with us with such harshness of language.”
By November the incidents on the East Bengal
border began to turn into skirmishes. The Pakistani shelling across the border, ostensibly to punish the Mukti Bahini guerillas, intensified and provoked retaliatory action from the Indian side. On November 22, Pakistanis were reported advancing with tanks on the Indian positions at Boyra, on the Indian side of the border, in the Jessore sector.
This time the Indian troops picked up the gauntlet. The resulting action was more than a border incident. To compound the seriousness of the clash, four Pakistani Sabre jets later came over Boyra and Indian Gnats chased them and brought down three of the Sabres.
On December 3, the balloon went up. Yahya Khan precipitated a war with India, with his “preemptive” airstrike on Indian airfields.
By then, the Indian Armed Forces headquarters were all set to face any trouble Yahya Khan might start on either or both fronts. Indeed, never had a military plan been worked out to such perfection. As expected of any vigilant defence service, by the end of April 1971, the Indian armed Forces Chiefs had already begun to have a good look at the Bangladesh problem from the military view. point.
The Chiefs of Staff Committee were seized of the problem by the middle of May, when they first formally discussed the military implications of the Bangladesh question. By July, General Sam Manekshaw’s outlines of strategy for operations in both theatre had been completed. By the end of October the actual operational plan was ready. By midNovember, all movements were completed and the ordinance factories had already stepped up production to meet the extra needs of operations of a military operation, if need be.
A most satisfying feature of the December 1971 operations was the perfect co-operation and co-ordination between the three Services and the team
spirit permeating the personal relations between the three Service Chiefs. This underlined the amiability of the three personalities presiding over their respective Services and their genius to get on with each other. Unlike as in the past, there were no bickerings between the Service-Chiefs or between their staffs.
The IAF was always ready at hand to answer promptly every call from the Army for air support. Indeed, Air Chief Marshal P. C. Lal’s plan made ample provision for such eventualities by earmarking an adequate number of aircraft specifically for that purpose, and he was too willing to re-allot extra aircraft if any particular occasion demanded, as it happened in the Chhamb and Shakargarh battles.
Similarly the perfect co-ordination between the Air Force and the Navy turned the daring naval attack on Karachi on December 4 and 8 into a brilliant success. The IAF’s timely intervention compelled the PAF to keep their heads down so that the Indian Navy could finish their task and get home without any molestation from the air. The combined operation off Cox’s Bazaar in the east, towards the fag end of the fighting was another example of fine team-work between the Army and the Navy.
The co-operation between the Armed Forces Chiefs and the Government was equally admirable. There was a thorough understanding between them and the Government put full confidence in their Armed Forces, so that the latter enjoyed ample freedom of action to take military decisions and improvise as the developing situation dictated, without having to look over the shoulder for Government’s approval. In this matter, Mr. Jagjiwan Ram proved an ideal Defence Minister who, once the broad political and military decisions had been taken, implicitly trusted his Service Chiefs to implement them.
Nor did General Manekshaw have any problems with the Finance Ministry, and he got large emer
gency expenditure sanctioned in a jiffy by the Finance Minister Mr. Y. B. Chavan and his officers. General Manekshaw, as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and carrying the main burden in his capacity as Chief of the Army Staff, enjoyed the implicit confidence of the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister. During the fourteen-day conflict, the Prime Minister’s doors were always open to the Army Chief and he met Mrs. Gandhi every day.
Every one involved in this fourteen-day drama however conceded that above all it was the resolute leadership of Mrs. Gandhi that set the tone for the entire operation, and was responsible for the perfect orchestration of the diverse instruments that were brought into play for its smooth and speedy success.
The Gathering Storm
AS a late monsoon receded, war clouds banked up
over Bangladesh. It was middle of October before the last rains pattered out. By then the Mukti Bahini’s activity had gathered momentum. Batches of young men in their hundreds, burning with patriotic fervour and specially trained in the guerilla techniques and philosophy, joined the fray, and soon got into the hair of the Pakistani troops.
Living a nightmare existence, startled by their own shadows and finding every blade of grass in the land hostile to them, the Pakistanis ran berserk, and soon got into the hair of the Pakistani troops.
In the early weeks after the Pakistan Army’s crack-down on Bengali nationalists, President Yahya’s juggernaut of repression seemed to have had no difficulty in stamping out the sporadic, spontaneous, disorganised resistance largely from the Bengali officers and men who had deserted the Pak army’s Bengal Regiment, East Pakistan Rifles and the Armed Police. The prospect was indeed bleak.
On May 3, the Christian Science Monitor correspondent had written: “For the time being however Bengali nationalism lies crushed beneath an over whelming weight of armour, and Bangladesh seemed destined to join Biafra in the skeleton cupboards of history.”
But on November 21, the correspondent of the Associated Press of America from Dacca cabled:
“The Pak Army and the guerillas are locked in a grim struggle sapping the army’s ability to fight India if the two countries start an all-out war. One. third of the 55,000 square miles of East Bengal is out of army control — although not necessarily in the possession of the Bahini. More than 50,000 guerillas are now operating along the border and inside East Bengal. Fighting the guerillas are 3 divisions of the Pak Army plus the Frontier Scouts numbering 80,000, virtually all from Punjab and North-West Frontier, thinly spread along the 1,300 miles of border.”
The correspondent added, “For the first time young West Pakistani officers, some stationed in Dacca, talk of the need to remove Yahya Khan if the civil war continues without signs of abatement.
As the freedom fighters’ pressure on the Pak Army increased, President Yahya Khan convinced himself that it was all the handiwork of India, and by way of punishing the latter, he intensified the shelling of the territory on the other side of the border.
Thus, even while Mrs. Gandhi, just returned from an odyssey of seven major Western capitals, was pleading in the Indian Parliament that the big powers should be given a chance to persuade Yahya Khan to see sense, the fluff began to fly on the India-Bangladesh border.
Mrs. Gandhi assured Parliament, “International opinion had now shifted from tragic indifference to a growing sense of urgency in seeking a political solution to the Bangladesh issue with the elected leaders.” The same day (November 15), Mr. Vidya Charan Shukla, Minister of State for Defence Production, reported 90 air violations over Indian territory since July 23, the day the Government issued orders to shoot down intruding planes.
Again, the following day, addressing leaders of the opposition parties, the Prime Minister pleaded that nothing would be lost by allowing time for purposeful efforts that might be made to end the
stalemate. “We must not take a decision in haste or anger,” she insisted. “All possibilities have to be explored and examined before any decision is taken.”
In keeping with his threat of a “total war” against India if the latter intervened in Bangladesh, President Yahya Khan had, on October 12, deployed the Pakistan Army in forward positions on the West Pakistan-India border too. Ten days later, India reciprocated by moving its troops also to the Western frontier. Thus tension infected the West too.
Islamabad’s propaganda line was that India was plotting to invade East Bengal, and that, indeed, the Mukti Bahini were none other than disguised armed Indian infiltrators from the Indian Border Security Force. Ironically enough, the first victim of that propaganda line would appear to have been the Pakistan Army headquarters. Completely sold on that line, Lieutenant-General A. A. K. Niazi, GOCin-C, Eastern Command, Dacca, now shifted the priority from stamping out the internal nationalist rebellion to sealing off the border against Mukti Bahini traffic and defending the frontier against an Indian invasion.
With his 70,000 troops pitted against 75 million hostile people, General Niazi obviously could not take on the two tasks simultaneously. So he moved nearly two-thirds of his forces to the border to guard the key access points into East Bengal, while unleashing a reign of terror inside the province to Cow down the Bengalis. In a mad witch-hunt, the Pakistan Army now killed 1,000 persons and arrest ed several thousands in the course of a thorough sector by sector search in Dacca city.
But the vacuum thus left behind was promptly filled to fruitful purpose by the Mukti Bahini elements still within. The Bahini now displayed increasing aggressiveness. Their guerillas disrupted Pakistani communications, blew up bridges, ambushed army convoys, attacked their ships carrying arms and supplies in ports and rivers and cut off
Pakistani garrisons from each other and from the headquarters in Dacca. So much so, the Pakistani troops dared not move out after dusk except in platoon strength, but with no guarantee of safety.
The Bahini forces overran ten Pakistani positions from Khulna in the south to Rangpur and Sylhet in the north — Kalaroa in Khulna district, Chougacha in Jessore district, Amarkhana, Raiganj and Hatibanda and Barakhata in Rangpur district and Jaki. ganj and Atgram in Sylhet district. In the Kasimpur area, the Bahini shot down one Pakistani jet fighter near Nabonnager. South of Faridpur was in the Mukti Bahini’s hands long before November, while Madhopur in Mymensingh and Nawabganj, south of Dacca, were also by now brought completely under their control
On November 10, the guerillas blew up a train carrying Pak troops near Kurigram, killing eight including an officer.
On November 15, four Pakistan Air Force planes strafed Belonia station which was earlier taken by the Bahini, and killed 40 civilians.
On November 18, the Bahini sank two ships in the ports of Khulna and Chalna — the “La Sira” and the US-gifted mini-bunker “Mini-Labour”. Meanwhile, the guerillas drove out the Pakistanis from the Ghosgaon and Haluaghat areas of Mymen singh district. In Kushtia district a 512 miles area came under the control of Mukti Bahini. In Rangpur district, the Mukti Bahini fought a twenty-four hour battle to liberate Bhurngamari.
The freedom fighters had now become so daring that they carried out their depredations right under the nose of General Niazi and repeatedly blew up the power plant supplying electricity to Dacca city and struck terror in the hearts of collaborators. The AFP correspondent reported from Dacca that a number of bomb blasts rocked Dacca and Narayanganj, the industrial town, and that the latter’s power supply was partly damaged in one explosion. A
series of three bombs went off in a floating dockyard on the river Sitalakhya, damaging six pumps.
On November 20, the Bahini forces shot down a Pakistani helicopter over Meherpur in Kushtia district, while 140 freedom fighters attacked and burned down the Munshiganj police station, about 14 miles from Dacca.
On November 22, the Pakistanis fired ten mortar bombs near Titala village in Tripura.
According to the New York Times correspondent, a quarter of the region in East Bengal was controlled by the guerillas. “Even in the heart of army-occupied territory, Pakistani control is tenuous,” he wrote. “Seemingly, the entire population other than West Pakistan troops are in conspiracy.”
In an interview to the correspondent of the Financial Times (London), India’s Defence Minister stated that over 10,000 Pakistani soldiers had been killed by the Bengali guerillas since the end of March, 1971. Mr. Jagjivan Ram however assured the correspondent that India would not be the ag. gressor. It would step up aid to the guerillas and might even recognize the Bangladesh Government but would not launch a direct attack in East Bengal.
Of all the sectors of the 1,300 miles long frontier, the Boyra sector of the 24-Parganas – East Bengal border – was witnessing the intensest activity. As early as November 17, a Pakistan force of a battalion strength tried to push into Indian territory. The Border Security Force foiled two attempts by the Pakistanis. In retreating they left behind seven bodies including that of a major.
The Pakistanis came back again on Sunday, Nov. ember 21, this time with a much larger force, accompanied by a squadron of tanks, advancing “menacingly” towards the Indian positions in Boyra. The engagement lasted two days, at the end of which the Pakistanis had lost 13 of their Chafee tanks, three of them captured intact.
On the second day of the battle, at 2.49 P.M.
four PAF Sabre jets came over, intruding over four miles into Indian territory. Indian Gnats at once engaged them and shot down three, while the fourth fled home. Two of the pilots were captured.
With this battle, the tempo of the fighting suddenly intensified. On November 24, Mrs. Gandhi told Parliament that the Indian forces had been instructed to enter East Bengal territory in self-defence and that in the Boyra battle on November 21 and 22, the Indian forces had chased the Pakistani forces across the border
An Indian Army spokesman described the Boyra fighting as “limited defensive action on the part of the Indian troops, who had returned to their bases on the Indian side of the border after the operation. Mrs. Gandhi however emphatically denied that India had launched an all-out attack on East Bengal.
The correspondent of The New York Times described the Boyra action as a “policy of gradually increasing military pressure” against Pakistan on the part of India, “leaving the bulk of the fighting inside East Pakistan for the present to Mukti Bahini.” He observed : “Indians may hope these tactics will enable the East Bengalis to win independence or at least a satisfactory measure of autonomy that would allow the early return of nine million refugees from India without precipitating a major India-Pakistan conflict. This is an unlikely prospect.”
On November 22 night, Pakistan complained to the UN and charged that 12 regular Indian divisions attacked East Bengal in four sectors!
Further north, the Pakistanis pounded Karimganj, near Jalpaiguri with artillery and mortar. The Indian Forces returned the compliment. The exchange lasted eight hours. In the action, eight Indians and ten Pakistanis were killed.
In Pakistan, President Yahya Khan declared that a “grave situation” had arisen following a “threat of aggression” and proclaimed a state of emergency in the country. But in New Delhi Mrs. Gandhi saw
no occasion to proclaim a state of emergency in India. At the UN, the Pakistani delegation gave out that it was considering calling an emergency session of the Security Council to discuss the situation in the sub-continent.
Meanwhile in the Sylhet sector, the Bahini attacked Sutarkhandi-Charkhai road leading to Sylhet, and cleared a 50-mile stretch along the Karimganj sub-division’s border with Bangladesh. This was preceded by an eight-hour artillery and mortar exchange. In the neighbouring district of Mymensingh, the guerillas advanced far into the interior. In the Kushtia district, they captured all but one of the 22 border posts, and a large area under the jurisdiction of Gangli, Meherpur, Darumhuda and Jibbannagar police stations came under their control.
In the Jessore sector, the Bahini took Kaliganj and Kulia, south of Satkhira. They also captured five enemy tanks in the freed areas of Jessore district. Further north, they advanced deep into the Rang. pur and Dinajpur districts. The Pakistanis with drew from Amarkhana, Raiganj and Halibandha in Rangpur district. In the south, in the Khulna district, the guerillas choked off the important Chalna port by sinking a Greek ship at its entrance. They also overran Jakiganj and captured a large quantity of arms including 80 rifles, 5 LMGS, 48 anti-tank mines and plastic bombs and mortars.
At the same time, in the extreme north-east, the Bangladesh government established its civil admi. nistration in the liberated Amalsid-Jakiganj area in eastern Sylhet
On November 28, in the Balurghat-Hili area, in the north, the focus of intermittent action for the preceding seven days, climaxed into a fierce 48-hour battle. In the action the Pakistanis suffered 80 casualties and lost four tanks, while Indian casualties were 15 and one tank lost. The Indian Army spokesman however described it as “local action.”
The next day the Pakistanis had to give up Chougacha and Jibbannagar, six miles inside the border in the Jessore sector.
Thus the confrontation now escalated to the brink of an open armed conflict between the two neighbouring countries – a consummation Yahya Khan seemed to be devoutly working for, so that his political discomfiture in East Bengal could be converted into an international Indo-Pakistan dispute that could precipitate a UN intervention and presence in the Indian sub-continent. He could then freeze the status quo in East Bengal and impede the rising tide of guerilla activity within and avert a possible military intervention by India in the troubled eastern province of Pakistan.
On November 24, the Chinese Ambassador to Islamabad, Mr. Chang Tung declared that his coun try would stand by Pakistan in any hostilities against India. The same day, a high-powered Chinese delegation, headed by Mr. Li Shui-ching, Minister in the Ministry of Machine Building, arrived in Islamabad to confer with President Yahya Khan and witness the inauguration of a Rs. 17-crore Chinese-aided heavy machinery complex at Taxila, in the North-West Frontier Province.
At the inaugural function the next day, President Yahya Khan said that the point of no return” had been reached in Pakistan’s relations with India. He accused India of aggression against Pakistan and assured his people that the Chinese Government had promised “full support” to Pakistan against any “foreign aggression”.
The previous night, at a banquet in honour of the Chinese guest, Yahya Khan almost prophetically dec. lared: “In ten days time, I may not be here in Pindi. I may be fighting a war.” For the war he promised did come off within the prescribed ten days. In an interview, Pakistan’s President told the American Journal, Newsweek that “the Chinese will not tolerate an attack on Pakistan” and they
would provide all assistance “short of physical intervention.”
Mr. Mohamad Ali, leader of the Pakistani delegation to the UN General Assembly, in an interview with Reuter in Morocco, emphasized that China would assist Pakistan even if the Sino-Pakistani frontier was “closed by bad weather.”
Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who earlier in the month, led a deputation to Peking seeking a defence pact with China to counter the Indo-Soviet Treaty, told UPI: “China will give any measure of support we need. It depends upon what we ask.” Pressed further, he said, “China is fully and enthusiastically supporting Pakistan. We can expect the maximum assistance.” And then Mr. Bhutto gratuitously added: “India should have no illusions on this.”
Peking enigmatically talked of “joint efforts to overcome difficulties and of “reasonable settlement negotiated between the East and the West.” Islamabad at once interpreted these amphibological phrases to mean that China would intervene if India attempted to separate Bangladesh from Pakistan by overt or covert massive military invasion.
Indeed, it was clear that Islamabad’s strategy against India in any likely conflict very much hinged on China’s active support if not military intervention. Yahya Khan looked forward to the Chinese activating the northern front and thus tying up a large chunk of the Indian army so as to deter the latter from a full-scale action in East Bengal.
In the meantime, on the diplomatic front, Islamabad looked up to President Nixon to come to his rescue in the UN Security Council, seconded by the Arab and the Islamic bloc. In Washington, Mr. William Rogers, US Secretary of State, called the Indian and Pakistani ambassadors to urge their respective countries to withdraw forces from the borders. On December 1, President Nixon in a message to Mrs. Gandhi stated that President Yahya
Khan was agreeable to withdraw his troops unilaterally and suggested that India also do so.
The unflappable Mrs. Gandhi replied: “Pakistan should begin by withdrawing troops from Bangla desh. That would be a gesture of peace on the part of Pakistan to resolve the crisis in Bangladesh.” She then declared: “For the sake of peace and India’s security, Pakistani troops should get out of East Bengal.”
An official spokesman pronounced the long-term objective of India’s defensive operation in East Bengal as the return of the refugees, and declared, “there could be no withdrawal to original positions while the danger of shelling and attacks persisted.”!
The successes achieved by a three-pronged drive launched by the Mukti Bahini in the northern districts of Bangladesh underlined the new tempo of the guerilla offensive activity. They captured the important railway station of Ruhia, which links Dinajpur town with Thakurgaon. In the same sec tor, they also took Pachagahr and expelled the Pakis. tani troops from Boda. In the Rangpur sector, the Mukti Bahini evicted Pakistanis from Nageshwari. In the Sylhet sector, the Bahini stormed into Shamshernagar.
On December 2, further escalation occurred when at midday three Pakistani Sabre jets attacked Agartala, the capital town of the Indian State of Tripura and killed six civilians and injured 42. Simul taneously, Pakistani artillery based on Akhaura, on the Pakistani side of the border, launched an attack on Agartala. Thereupon, the Army Headquarters, in accordance with the Government’s earlier deci sion, ordered the Indian forces to cross the border in defensive action.
On December 3, the Indian Prime Minister was in Calcutta, visiting refugee camps. Addressing a mass rally in the city, she affirmed that it was “our duty” to see an end to repression in Bangladesh. Then she emphasized, “We have done nothing in a huff,
but have proceeded in a cold and calculated manner step by step. We have argued our case. But then there was reluctance in the world to go into the causes of the heavy influx of evacuees from Bangla desh and to try to remove those causes.”
Mrs. Gandhi then stated: “India stood for peace, but if a war is thrust on us, we are prepared to fight. For the issues involved are our ideals as much as our security.” She denied that India wanted to weaken or break up Pakistan. “No country would want an unstable neighbour,” she said. “But at the same time, India could not ignore the fact that it had thrice been attacked by Pakistan.” And she firmly stated that India could no longer be pressured and prevented from doing what she considered to be in her national interest. “The outside world is yet to know what India is,” she sardonical ly concluded.
Mrs. Gandhi reiterated her view that the only solution to the Bangladesh problem was withdrawal of Pakistani troops from East Bengal. “For it was the presence of Pakistani troops that caused the crisis,” she asserted. “But this simple solution did not seem to appeal to some world powers which expressed anxiety about the situation in the Indian subcontinent. On the other hand, they proposed posting UN observers along the border though it was difficult to see how such a move could restore peace and enable the refugees to return.”
Then she declared, “Today India can stand on her own legs, if all foreign aid is stopped. We are not dependent on any one and we have the strength to overcome all difficulties.”
That day, even as the Indian Prime Minister uttered those prophetic words, President Yahya Khan had jumped the gun. At 5.30 P.M. he ordered a surprise lightning air attack on nine Indian airbases, imitative of the Israeli pre-emptive attack on the Egyptian airbases in the last Arab-Israeli war which at one stroke decimated UAR’s air force.
Neveftheless, India’s unpreparedness to such precipitate attack by Pakistan on the Western front on December 3 was underlined by the fact that while Mrs. Gandhi was in Calcutta, Defence Minister, Jagjivan Ram was in Patna and Finance Minister Chavan in Bombay and President V. V. Giri was attending a reception on the lawns of Parliament House when the air raid alert was sounded at 5.45 P.M. Mrs. Gandhi received the grave news while still in Calcutta. She rushed back to New Delhi at about midnight and on arrival in the capital, lost no time in summoning a meeting of the Indian Cabinet to discuss the development and its implications.
At 20 minutes past midnight, she came on the air to tell the country that Pakistan had declared a full scale war against India. The war in Bangladesh had become a war on India,” she said. She assured the nation that the wanton and unprovoked aggression by Pakistan would be repelled. She proclaimed a state of emergency in the country. Then raising her voice, she declared that aggression must be met and expressed confidence that the people of India would meet it with fortitude, discipline and utmost unity. This was a moment of great peril to the country and people must be prepared for a long period of hardship and sacrifice.
Mrs. Gandhi emphasized that what was at stake was not merely India’s territorial integrity but the basic ideals which had given strength to this country. India had urged the world to help bring about a peaceful solution of the Bangladesh problem and prevent the annihilation of an entire people whose only crime was to have voted democratically. She regretted that the world had ignored the basic causes and concerned itself with certain repercussions.
As she spoke to the nation, the Indian armed forces, poised for a strike on the western as well as the eastern front, were given the green signal.
The Battle of Obstacles
AT the end of the thirteen-day campaign in Bang
ladesh, a correspondent asked Lieutenant-General Jagjit Singh Aurora, GOC-in-C, Eastern Command, what he would call the war he had just won. The General replied that he would name it “The Battle of Obstacles”. Indeed, as the Indian forces raced towards Dacca with a tight deadline of two weeks and stumbled upon a river every six miles, the only analogy that could have come to their minds was a “cross-country obstacle race”.
But, one looking at the map of “Sonar Bangla,” disfigured by a myriad rivers, is very much reminded of a snakes-and-ladders board-all snakes, no ladders, the latter having been knocked out either by the Mukti Bahini or by the retreating Pakistani troops. Thus the battle for Bangladesh was also primarily the engineers’ war, but for whose ingenuity and skill the campaign would have taken many more weeks to conclude. As it is, thanks to the engineers, the Indian Army was right on the enemy’s tail and gave him few chances to look round and give a fight.
In this war, as never before, India’s strategy as well as objectives were clear-cut, and its armed forces thoroughly prepared. The Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, the Government and the country saw it coming on for some months and laid out detailed contingency plans. Unlike as in the past
two wars of 1962 and 1965, when the Government and the Army were caught napping, this time they had at least six months, if not longer, to deliberate on the military problems that might be thrown up by the combustible events in Bangladesh after March 25, 1971. The Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee had plenty of time to reflect and cross the t’s and dot the i’s of their contingency plans.
In the Western theatre—if the fighting spread to that region too, and she never desired a general war with Pakistan-India’s strategy was to fight a holding, “offensive-defensive” operation, while in the east, which to India was the main theatre, her forces were to drive at maximum speed to her military objective of forcing the Pakistan Army to throw in the towel and hand back the country to the Bengalis, and to her political objective of sending back the ten million refugees to their homes in conditions of safety and honour.
President Yahya Khan’s strategy, on the other hand, was to turn the West into the main theatre of war, where he was at a more advantageous position, while producing a stalemate in the East until his influential friends in the international community succeeded in their efforts to bail him out in that distant, militarily untenable region.
Indeed, foreign correspondents shuttling between Pindi and Dacca, were repeatedly advised by the Pak Army spokesman to stick to the Western front where they were promised the decisive fighting and big news. Yahya’s aim was instantly to chop off the State of Jammu and Kashmir from India by cutting through the jugular vein in its neck with a powerful stab at Chhamb, south-west of Jammu-where, in 1965, he had nearly pulled off the trick.
The soldier-president thus gave the highest priority to this task as he considered it imperative for him to offer to his people-by way of fulfilling Pakistan’s long-standing ambition the coveted Kashmir in compensation for the likely loss of East Ben
gal, which he had militarily written off the moment the hostilities began. (Incidentally, this concept of Pakistan’s strategy corroborated Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s charge that in Islamabad’s de fence plans East Bengal was considered expendable).
But, alas, things went wrong for Yahya Khan from the word go. His so-called pre-emptive airstrike at nine Indian airbases did come as a surprise to New Delhi, but it proved a poor parody of the brilliant Israeli swoop over Egyptian airbases in June 1967 that at one stroke crippled UAR’s airforce.
For one thing, the Indians too had closely studi ed the finer points of the six-day Israeli-Arab war of 1967 and imbibed its lessons. They had taken anticipatory counter-measures by dispersing their aircraft and ensuring them sound and foolproof protection. For another, whereas the famous Israeli attack destroyed at one stroke 400 of the Egyptian planes, the Pakistani initial attack made hardly any dent in the Indian Air Force, apart from doing minor damage to the runways at some air. fields.
Indeed at the end of the 13-day India-Pakistan conflict, the Pakistanis claimed to have destroyed no more than 57 Indian planes, which is a flea-bite for the IAF’s reported strength of 600.
In the eastern theatre, the Pakistanis fared even worse. Obsessed by an unimaginative, static, Maginot-minded strategy, they clung to well-prepared, fortified, concrete-bunkered defence positions at key access points to the province and lay in wait for the enemy to crash into them in frontal attacks. The Indians, bless their souls, refused to oblige, but instead got round, and then bypassed those strongholds, leaving behind just enough troops, often a Mukti Bahini force, to prevent the Pakistanis breaking out of their redoubts.
To the chagrin of the Pakistanis, the Indians
avoided the highways and took to the byways, to the dust tracks and paddy-fields, and surprised them by sitting behind them on their line of retreat. Sometimes, they would deliberately leave open an escape route and lie in wait to ambush and destroy the retreating Pakistani force.
The gusto and pride with which General Aurora’s officers spoke of these tricks played by them on the enemy, one would imagine it was a football or hockey centre-forward describing a clever pass that culminated in a goal.
In a terrain cut up by big and small rivers, the Indian technique of isolating the Pakistani formations from each other and depriving them of cohesive action paid great dividends. Thus the rivers which were the defenders’ assets were turned into a liability. In these manoeuvres the Mukti Bahini, with their familiarity of the terrain and local contacts, proved invaluable. They disrupted the Pakistanis’ communications, ambushed them, watched and reported their movements to the Indian forces and brought other vital intelligence. They also organized local transportation facilities for the latter by way of mobilizing river craft, rickshaws, bullock-carts and manual labour.
General Sam Manekshaw had enjoined upon the Indian troops to scrupulously avoid damage to local civilian property and loss of life and to drive on to Dacca for all they were worth. And that was exactly what they were all doing, as they seemed to have had no time for anything else and poured into East Bengal in a multipronged offensive from five main directions.
When Mrs. Gandhi in the early hours of the morning of December 4 broke the news to the nation that Pakistan was at war with India, the Indian forces had crossed the Bangladesh border at a dozen points, and once in, each prong further subdivided itself to snake out towards different local objectives. Broadly speaking, the prongs from
the west were headed for the Brahmaputra, and those from the east had the Meghna as their final objective-the two main river systems that protect and hold in a wedge Dacca, the capital of East Ben
gal.
In the West, Lt.-Gen. Raina’s 2 Corps moved in three columns—one came from Jibbannagar and made for Darsana, another struck straight east from Boyra towards Jessore town, and a third struck in the direction of Khulna via Satkhira, further south.
In the northwest, 33 Corps’ main thrust came from Balurghat, which bypassed the strongly-held redoubt of Hili and captured successively Ghoraghat, Nawabganj, Pirganj, and Phulbari, and thus got behind Dinajpur, yet another fortified Pakistani stronghold. A subsidiary thrust in this sector pushed to Thakurgaon. But generally speaking, the region north of Rangpur was left to Mukti Bahini to clear. Indeed, the bulges in the extreme north had already been straightened out quite some time ago and thus any possible Chinese threat from the Chumbi Valley had been minimized.
From the north-east, Lt.-Gen. Sagat Singh’s 4 Corps sent a divisional force into the Sylhet sector in the direction of Maulvi Bazar. But the main thrust came from Agartala, further south, which essayed out in three prongs: the first struck northwest with Ashuganj on the Meghna as its objec. tive, the second moved straight eastwards towards Narsingdi, yet another pivotal point on the Meghna, and the third swung in a south-westerly direction to Laksham, with Chandpur as its ultimate objective, a third vital ferry point on the Meghna that winds round Dacca like the mythical serpent guarding the capital.
By the end of the first day’s fighting in Bangla desh, the Indian Army’s bag included Uthali in Jessore district and Darsana in Kushtia in the west; Thakurgaon in Dinajpur district and Charkia in Rangpur in the north, and Shamshernagar in the
Sylhet district in the north-eastern region.
Meanwhile, between the Indian Air Force and Navy, they had sealed off East Bengal from West Pakistan and the rest of the world. The air force had smashed the jet runways of Dacca at Tejgaon and Kurmitola and the navy laid a watertight blockade around the East Bengal ports. Before the day closed, the IAF had destroyed 14 of Pakistan’s 18 Sabre jets based in Dacca, while the Indian aircraft carrier Vikrant struck heavy blows at the Chittagong harbour and Cox’s Bazar and sank a number of gunboats, destroyed runways and hangars and set ablaze fuel dumps.
The second day’s record was even more spectacular. This was the Indian Navy’s day. This youngest of India’s three Services, straining at the leash all these twenty-four years, now seized with both hands the opportunity that came its way. Its Western Fleet bearded the Pak Navy in its very lair. It ventured right into the Karachi waters and attacked and sank four Pakistani warships in cluding two destroyers and then went further in and bombarded the harbour.
Not to be outdone, the Indian Navy’s Eastern Fleet won an even more precious prize by sending to the bottom of the sea the Pak Navy’s pride, its biggest submarine, the US-gifted Ghazi (“Defender of the faith”) five miles off Vishakhapatnam. The great event occurred on the night of December 3, the day the Indo-Pak conflict broke out, but not publicly announced until four days later when positive evidence was available. The Ghazi would appear to have left Karachi towards the middle of November and was haunting the waters around Vishakhapatnam shadowing India’s only aircraftcarrier Vikrant.
Meanwhile, Vikrant was busy with a round-theclock bombardment and air attacks on Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar and as far up as the river ports of Khulna, Chalna and Mangla and shooting up gun
boats and interdicting river and coastal traffic.
On land, 4 Corps’ middle prong captured Akhaura, the vital railhead in the Comilla sector, from where the Pak artillery constantly shelled Indian territory in Tripura and inflicted many civilian casualties.
On the Meghalaya sector, the Pak garrison at Kamalpur post, surrendered to 95 Brigade after a gallant resistance. 160 men of 31 Baluch were taken prisoner.
The days of chivalry are not yet passed, at any rate, so far as the Indian Army is concerned. The bravery and tenacity of the young Pakistani commander at Kamalpur, Capt. Ashar Malik was handsomely acknowledged by the Indian Army Chief, General Manekshaw who declared, “militarily his performance was excellent and issued instructions that the Pakistani officer should be shown special courtesy as prisoner of war.
In the northern sector, the Pakistanis were ejected from Pirganj and Hitabanda in the Rangpur district:
On December 6, two days after the fighting started, New Delhi announced its recognition of Bangladesh. Mrs. Gandhi declared in Parliament: “The people of Bangladesh battling for their existence and the people of India fighting to defeat aggression now find themselves partisans in the same cause.” She added, “With the unanimous revolt of the entire people of Bangladesh and the success of their struggle, it has become increasingly apparent that the so-called mother-state of Pakistan is totally incapable of bringing the people of Bangladesh under its control.”
Islamabad reacted violently. Within five hours of Mrs. Gandhi’s announcement, Pakistan broke diplomatic relations with India. The same day the United States suspended $ 87 million economic aid to India on the plea that it did not wish to “make a contribution to the Indian economy which will
make it easier for the Indian Government to sustain its military effort.”
Meanwhile, the Indian forces captured Feni, a vital rail-road junction that connects Dacca with the Chittagong port in the south. Actually Pakistani troops withdrew from Feni without resistance. In the western sector, the Jibbannagar column having taken Darsana, captured Kotchandpur and advanced towards Jhenida, a Pakistani arms and supply dump.
In the Mymensingh sector, 95 Brigade after taking Kamalpur, also captured Bakshiganj, drove south and bumped into a Pakistani stronghold at Jamalpur. In the eastern sector, the third column bypassed Laksham, swung right and took Hajiganj, on the way to Chandpur, a vital ferry point on the Meghna. The other prong that struck northwards from Agartala, closed in on Brahmanbaria, en route to Ashuganj, yet another town on the Meghna, which is bridged with Bhairab Bazar on the other bank. In the northeast, in the Sylhet sector, Munshiganj, Kanairghat and Sultanpur fell rapidly to the advancing Indian column.
In Dacca, the next day, Major-General Rao Farman Ali, Military Adviser to the Governor of East Pakistan, admitted at a press conference that the Indian forces were already 30 miles inside the border in the western sector and stated that the main Indian thrust came from the north-west. He also said that Indian warships were blockading the strategic port of Chittagong. The General thus prepared the Pakistanis for reverses and loss of territory when he told the press conference: “We are fighting a defensive battle in the east and by the very nature of the operation are likely to lose territory.”
On the fourth day of the fighting, the Indian Army in Bangladesh registered spectacular gains. The garrison entrenched behind fortified and bunkered positions in Jessore Cantonment, gave up practically without firing a shot. After three days of probing, the investing Indian force “punched
a hole” north of the Jessore district.
At Jessore Cantonment was based the headquarters of Pakistan’s 9th Division, and facing it, incidentally, was India’s 9th Division commanded by Major-General Dalbir Singh. Jessore’s prepared defences were reported to have spread out a couple of miles around, and included concrete bunkers, barbed wire and mine fields.
After the initial major clash to the north at Duburghati, the considerable Pakistani forces, an estimated 5,000, in Jessore seem to have withdrawn, retreating southwards with the major river port of Khulna as their destination. The Indian 9th Division pursued them as they fell back systematically, in stages, fighting three delaying actions on the way.
Fifteen miles south of Jessore, the retreating Pak force fought a bloody rearguard action, before moving further south. It was a skilfully executed withdrawal operation. They were accompanied by their wives and families, numbering about a thousand. The bulk of them reached Khulna, however only to surrender, nine days later, to the Indian 9th Division commander Major-General Dalbir Singh.
Slightly north of Jessore, the Indian forces also took the vital communications centre of Jhenida, while in the north-eastern sector, Sylhet fell. Troops dropped by helicopter – for the first time in this war – liberated this important city, following which the Indian forces captured a string of towns – Meherpur, Jhenida, Sunamganj, Hajiganj, Fenchuganj, Charkhai, Chatak and Moulvi Bazar, In the North, in the Mymensingh District, the Mukti Bahini freed, on their own, Lalmanirhat.
At Jhenida, the Indian Army Engineers scored a victory of their own when they built a twenty-mile road overnight along which the next morning the infantry, artillery and tanks passed to surprise the Pakistanis from behind. The Pak forces had drawn up their main defences on the road leading from Kaliganj following the 4th Indian Division’s advance
from Darsana. When the Pakistanis suddenly found the Indians behind them, they fled in panic.
Some foreign correspondents have been sceptical about the engineering feat at Jhenida. I discovered that the 90,000 duckboards, with which the Army Engineers had armed themselves, did the trick. The duckboards were specially manufactured in India to meet the problems the Indian Army was to face in the marshy terrain of Bangladesh.
With Jessore fallen and the Indian forces 40 miles from Dacca, General Sam Manekshaw broadcast the first of his series of messages to the Pakistani troops in Bangladesh, which was also dropped in the form of leaflets from the air over the Pakistani military positions.
The message was addressed to “Officers and jawans of the Pakistan Army” and invited them to “lay down your arms before it is too late.” It then warned: “The Indian forces have reached all round you. Your air force is destroyed. You have no hope of any help from them. Chittagong, Chalna and Mangla ports are blocked. Nobody can reach you from the sea. Your fate is sealed. The Mukti Bahini and the people are all prepared to take revenge for the atrocities and cruelties you have committed.”
The message concluded: “Why waste lives? Do you want to go home and be with your children? Do not lose time; there is no disgrace in laying down your arms to a soldier. We will give you the treatment befitting a soldier.”
That message came like a psychological hammer blow to a crumbling morale and put the fear of God and Mukti Bahini in the Pakistani troops.
The Indian avalanche now gathered momentum. The advancing forces from the east found Comilla abandoned, even though in the nearby Maynamati cantonment a Pakistani garrison was holding out, with no hope of escape. Their escape route had been sealed off, while the Indian forces pushed to
wards Daudkandi, on the river Meghna.
Further south, the Pakistanis from Comilla were retreating in the direction of Narayanganj, near Dacca, and Barisal, another river port in the southwest. It was reported that Narayanganj and Barisal were the two collection and escape points for the retreating Pakistani troops.
In the north, Lt.-Gen. Sagat Singh’s 4 Corps’ other column after capturing Brahmanbaria, reached out for Ashuganj, also on the Meghna. His third column striking southwards, got round Laksham to advance towards Chandpur, on the Meghna, further south.
In the western sector, a vital gain was the capture of Magura, east of Jhenida, an important road-rail junction. In the north, another Indian column occupied Pirganj, cutting off the Pakistan Army’s Rangpur-Bogra road link as well as the escape route from areas north of this developing axis. Meanwhile, the Mukti Bahini took Ramgahr in the Chittagong hill tracts.
The Pakistani defences were now crumbling all over Bangladesh. The number of Pakistani surrenders multiplied. Evidence was available that the Pakistani troops were fleeing south in an attempt at a Dunkirk-like operation, grabbing at every kind of river craft on the Madhumati and the Ganges. That of course provided some exhilarating hunting to the IAF fighters.
The Indians finally crossed the Meghna at Ashuganj, 40 miles north-east of Dacca, thus conquering the last major obstacle between the Indian Army and the capital. At this point the river was 1200 yards wide. The London Times reported that Dacca was expected to “fall early next week.” And the paper’s Pindi correspondent cabled: “Official ac counts of the fighting in East Pakistan have an increasingly surrealistic tone.” Meanwhile, in the far north, a brigade-strength Pakistani force was encircled in Rangpur.
On December 9, the Indian Army registered some
outstanding strategic gains when they captured all the three key towns on the Meghna which protects Dacca from the east, namely, Ashuganj, Daudkandi and Chandpur. At Ashuganj, they found the bridge connecting with Bhairab Bazar blown up by the Pakistanis and the latter point well defended. The approach from the other two towns meant crossing a couple of more rivers before getting to their objective.
Meanwhile, in the western sector, the Indian troops and Mukti Bahini moved from Jhenida to the bank of the Madhumati and engaged the enemy on the other side of the river. In the Kushtia area, the Indian prong reached the renowned Hardinge Bridge over the Padma to find it partly destroyed.
The Indians did not wait for the bridge at Ashuganj to be repaired. They crossed the river by other and unorthodox means. They pressed into service all helicopters available as also river craft. The operation, which involved ferrying tanks and heavy artillery, started on December 10 and lasted a full day. Ten helicopters flying non-stop landed 656 troops at five different points of the river, be. sides using all kinds of river craft to ferry more troops and artillery guns, tanks and other equip ment. The IAF meanwhile had silenced the radio station in the capital by a direct hit.
In the meantime, the intrepid Brigadier Hardev Singh Kler’s 95 Brigade beat to the post the 57th Indian Division driving from the east. On December 11 he paradropped an entire battalion (500) at Tangail, 61 miles north of Dacca, and then dashed south, leap-frogging over a dozen broken bridges on the way, to be the first Indian Army man to reach Dacca.
The brigade had that very morning won the hardfought, three-day battle at Jamalpur. At Jamalpur, the Pak 31 Baluch fought like the devils. Early in the battle, Brigadier Kler gave the encircled Pakistani force a chance to save lives and avoid a mas
sacre by surrendering. But the commander of the Pakistani battalion, Lt. Col. Sultan Ahmed sent back a spirited reply, under the impression that the Indian officer opposite was bluffing and that the enemy was no more than a company in strength.
His proud reply read:
“We here in Jamalpur are waiting for the fight to commence. It has not started yet. So let’s not talk and start it. Forty sorties, I may point out, are not adequate. Please ask for many more …. Give my love to the Muktis. Hoping to find you with a sten in your hand next time, instead of the pen you seem to have so much mastery over.”
And the Pakistani colonel sent wrapped with his letter a 7.62 mm bullet.
Thereupon the Indians resumed the attack. That night Col. Sultan Ahmed sent out six waves of 100 men each, one after the other, to assault the Indian positions. The latter allowed the first wave to come
Thereafter it was murder. At the end of a five. hour action, 200 bodies were counted. Of the 1,500 men of 31 Baluch, only 196 were left to tell the tale.
By 5.30 A.M. on December 11, the battle had died down. At 6.30 A.M. a very young Pakistani lieutenant, Ifti Khar was heard persistently calling on his wireless set: “Hello, any Indian station. This is Pakistani station. I want to surrender.” Finally he came out waving a white flag to Mirpur bridge, two miles west of the city to make the surrender contact.
On December 10, the Bangladesh forces were brought under General Aurora’s command, and a unified command was announced.
In the far south in the Noakhali district, the Mukti Bahini liberated the town of Noakhali on the FeniChittagong axis, thus sealing off one more possible escape route for the Pakistani forces. The same day, Laksham in the Comilla sector, and Chalna, a major port in the river Pasur, south-west, were
also taken. At Laksham, the Pakistanis put up stout resistance before being forced to give up. Here two officers and 450 other ranks were taken prisoner.
The column at Bhairab Bazar reached Narsingdi on December 12, 22 miles north-east of Dacca. Hundreds of Pakistanis were captured in moppingup operations in Laksham and Chandpur, which underlined the state of demoralization among the Pakistani troops. In the Comilla sector, the bag was 18 officers, 23 JCO’s, 948 other ranks belonging to 39 Baluch, 15 Baluch and 30 Punjab.
In the northwest, the entire district of Rangpur had been sealed off, trapping at least a full brigade of Pakistanis within an advancing wall of Indian armour and infantry. Mymensingh in the north had fallen too. But the Indian column moving from the north-east, in the Sylhet sector, seemed to find it harder going, while in the west, the other column pursuing the Pak 9th Division retreating southwards from Jessore to Khulna, was meeting tough resistance.
It was estimated at this stage by intelligence sources that at least 40,000 out of the 80,000 Pakistani troops had managed to make a series of strategic withdrawals towards Dacca. Aerial reconnaissance photographs indicated that they were taking up positions in an area some eight miles outside the city and that all the heavy artillery they could muster had been set up behind them. But it was later apparent that few of them actually reached Dacca, while many fled towards the river ports in the hope of escaping to the sea.
Thus as the second week of the war opened in Bangladesh, the outlook for the beleaguered garrison in Dacca and other isolated Pakistani redoubts in the province was getting positively bleak. In the preceding two days, more than 1,000 of the Pakistanis had surrendered as the Indian forces success. fully isolated and cut off the more remote areas of
the country from all possible routes of escape.
On December 11, Colin Smith reported in the London Observer under a Rawalpindi dateline that the Pakistan Government was “completely resigned” to the loss of East Pakistan – “For them (people in the streets of Pindi) the question is no longer if or when their Army will leave the East, but only how.”
The same day, Major-General Farman Ali Khan in a message to the UN proposed a five-point plan that sought cease-fire and evacuation of West Pakistani civilians from the east, transfer of power to elected representatives of the people in East Bengal and a phased withdrawal of the Pak Army. But Yahya Khan promptly countermanded the request before it could be considered by the UN.
A Government spokesman at Pindi described Gen. Farman Ali’s message as “unauthorized”. Under questioning, the military spokesman said that was far as we are concerned he (General Farman Ali) never sent a message to the UN.” Subsequently Pindi issued a written denial in the name of Farman Ali, which came as a surprise to the latter, according to foreign correspondents then present in Dacca with whom he had discussed the matter.
Nevertheless, Yahya Khan kept exhorting General Niazi in Dacca to keep on fighting and promised him that “something big” was in the offing and hinted at a likely armed intervention by the Chinese from the north, and later, a rescue operation by the US 7th Fleet task force speeding to the Bay of Bengal from the Southeast Asian waters.
The London Times correspondent reported from Pindi: “The most common belief here is that Gen. Yahya Khan has told General Niazi, the commander of the army in the east, to hang on for as long as he can to give the western forces a breathing-space in which to make another attempt to seize Kashmir.”
Meanwhile, General Sam Manekshaw, India’s

Army Chief, repeated his appeal, this time addressed to General Farman Ali, guaranteeing protection and just treatment to the forces that surrendered. The message stated: “I wish to repeat that further resistance is senseless. My forces are now closing in around Dacca and the garrison there is within the range of my artillery.”
The Eastern Command headquarters in Calcutta announced: “The Indian Army’s multi-pronged thrust towards Dacca entered the critical stage as advancing columns in concert with the Mukti Bahini were reaching towards Dacca’s defence perimeter.” The spokesman said the Indian forces were moving on Dacca from three directions. “We will be in a very strong position around Dacca within 24 to 48 hours.”
At the same time, other Indian forces encircled Khulna, where the Pakistani garrison was holding! out behind prepared defences. The Indian column pushing south from the east after taking Feni, was now south of Sitakund, 21 miles from Chittagong.
The evacuee foreign nationals arriving in Calcutta from Dacca on December 12, reported that the morale of the Pakistani troops was very low and that 1,000 Mukti Bahini were already fighting inside Dacca.
On December 13, Henry Stanhope reported in the (London) Times: “Indian encirclement is tightening tonight like Knights in a game of chess, to threaten beleaguered Dacca.” But Gen. Niazi in
the last man, in the face of advancing Indian forces, who were nine miles from the city. He told correspondents: “It does not matter if we don’t have enough men to defend the city. It is now a question of living or dying and we shall fight to the last
man.”
The Curtain Rings Down
THE curtain went up on the final act of the 12-day
drama when on December 14 Dr. A.M. Malik, Governor of East Pakistan and his cabinet resigned en masse and took asylum with the International Red Cross organization at Hotel Intercontinental, by then declared one of the two neutral zones in Dacca (the other being the Holy Family Hospital).
The development was precipitated by the IAF’s “intervention”. It happened thus. Air Chief Marshal P. C. Lal’s boys got wind of the cabinet meeting being held that day at Government House and decided to “do something about it.” All that morning the Governor had been unable to decide whether to resign or to hang on, Reuter reported from Dacca. With a few rockets judiciously landed on the left wing of the Government House, where the cabinet was meeting at the moment, the IAF helped Dr. Malik to make up his mind.
To the din of bombs and rockets crashing, Dr. Malik pulled out a sheet of paper and with a shaky hand wrote out his and his cabinet’s resignation. With him at the moment were a UN official Mr. John Kelly and Mr. Gavin Young of the Sunday Observer (London), who had been trapped with him in his bunker.
In a nearby room, Dr. Malik’s Austrian wife and daughter sat huddled. “Should I send my family to the hotel now or would tomorrow morning be all
right?” Dr. Malik asked Gavin Young, who described the scene in the Observer in these words:
“I opened my mouth to say ‘Right away -just as another raid started. The jets made a shattering row. The ground crashed and heaved outside. ‘We are refugees now too,’ choked Malik. There seemed nothing to say to that. Kelly looked at me, silently saying ‘what induced me to come back here?’ Then Malik produced a shaking pen and a sheet of office paper. The Ministers mumbled, heads together. Between one crash and the next, Kelly and I looked at the paper and saw that it was addressed to President Yahya Khan and that Malik had at last resigned
Then the raid still seething round us, Malik, a devout Muslim, took off his shoes and socks, gracefully washed his feet in a small washroom opening into the bunker, spread a white handkerchief over his head, and knelt down in a corner of the bunker and said his prayers. That was the end of Government House. That was the end of the last Government of East Pakistan.”
The resignation effectively threw all responsibility for a last-ditch stand on the Pakistani Army Commander, Lt. Gen. Niazi who the previous day had vowed to fight to the last man.
Earlier, 16 senior civil servants, led by the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. M. A. Chaudhury had sought refuge in the Hotel Intercontinental.
Ironically enough, later that same afternoon, Yahya Khan signalled to Niazi, giving his consent to a surrender by the Pak Army in East Bengal. A few days earlier, he had refused it to General Farman Ali. The cable was jointly addressed to Gen. Niazi and Dr. Malik and enjoined: “You should now take all necessary measures to stop the fighting and preserve the lives of all armed forces per sonnel, all those from West Pakistan and all loyal elements.”
The delegate of the International Committee of the
with highest puhave been
Red Cross in Dacca, Mr. Renaud, in a telegram to the Red Cross headquarters in Geneva, reported :
“Highest East Pakistan Government officials have resigned their posts and asked for protection of the Red Cross neutral zone. According to Geneva Conventions, they have been received. Please inform with highest priority Indian and Bangladesh Governments. Make sure also armed forces are informed. We have contacted this end forces at Dacca, but security not guaranteed.”
The Government of India agreed to give protection to the resigning officials. The debacle was gathering momentum. The Pakistanis now appeared to be making a desperate stand in the Khulna area before surrendering. With both Chalna and Mangla ports blocked by naval action, the Khulna garrison had no escape route and was doomed.
Meanwhile, in the north-west, with the liberation of Goraghat and Govindganj, the 75-mile long road from Hili to Baibanda was now cleared of Pakistani troops. In the north, Bogra, a Pak divisional headquarters, fell to the Indian forces. Similarly, further down, in the western sector, the entire district of Kushtia had been cleared of Pakistani troops. In the far south, the Navy, landed a battalion-plus in the Cox’s Bazar area in order to seal off Chittagong-incidentally, an amphibious operation too was witnessed in this 13-day campaign, in addition to the paradrop in Tangail and “helitroops” in Sylhet and Ashuganj.
As its columns converged on the doomed city from the north, east and south, the Indian Army opened an artillery barrage on Dacca city. As AllIndia Radio reported that a part of the Dacca garrison had surrendered, news came that an American naval task force from the US 7th Fleet in the Pacific, headed by the nuclear-powered aircraft-carrier Enterprise, was speeding to the Bay of Bengal, with the aim of establishing a beachhead in order to
evacuate US nationals and Pakistani soldiers and civilians from East Bengal.
This was revealed by India’s ambassador in the USA, Mr. L. K. Jha, at a press conference in Washington. Indian reaction to the report that a US naval task force was on its way to the Bay of Bengal to bail out Niazi’s garrison, was to put Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar, the main sea outlets, out of action. IAF planes and Indian warships plastered the Chittagong harbour and set it ablaze.
By now the Indian troops had crossed all the waterways separating them from Dacca, including the Lakhya on the city’s eastern outskirts, and were mortaring the capital from only a mile or
so outside. The column in the south at Daudkandi began moving northwards to strike at the soft under-belly of Dacca North of the city, another column was making for the town of Tungi.
Meanwhile, in the north-western sector, Indian forces pursuing the fleeing Pakistanis from Kushtia towards the Madhumati at last succeeded in crossing the river at Magura and were advancing towards Faridpur and then to Dacca, from the west. The Indians had been held on the west side for five days as the Pakistani troops from the opposite bank fought tenaciously.
In Dacca itself the Pak Army moved into the civilian areas, positioning the Eastern Command headquarters in the University buildings and the divisional headquarters in a tuberculosis hospital. At this point of time, besides Dacca, Pakistani troops held Chittagong, Kushtia, Rangpur, Dinajpur and Rajshahi.
Came Wednesday, December 15. Lt.-Gen. Niazi addressed a message to New Delhi enquiring about the possibility of a cease-fire. It was routed to New Delhi through US Embassy channels. It was reported from Dacca that the Pakistani General, on the verge of a breakdown, had been persuaded by UN officials to make his tentative enquiry. General Niazi’s message was countersigned by MajorGeneral Rao Farman Ali Khan, military adviser to the Governor of East Pakistan, whose own peace initiative to U Thant a few days earlier had been killed by President Yahya Khan.
Gen. Niazi’s message did not offer to give up his Weapons but to withdraw his men to certain areas agreeable to the Indian forces from where they could all be repatriated to West Pakistan. Reuter reported from Dacca that as General Niazi hesitated, he was being pressed by diplomats and UN officials to be more realistic. “His skies were full of Indian fighter-bombers blasting at targets in the beleaguered city, where it was thought he might
have moved his headquarters,” said the dispatch. The General was said to be on the point of a breakdown.
In reply, Gen. Manekshaw signalled : “Since you have indicated your desire to stop fighting, I expect you to issue orders to all forces under your command in Bangladesh to cease fire immediately and surrender to my advancing forces wherever they are located.” The Indian Army Chief gave his solemn assurance that personnel who surrendered would be treated with dignity and respect that soldiers were entitled to under the Geneva Convention. He also promised to get the Pakistanis wounded well cared for and the dead given proper burial.
“No one need fear for their safety, no matter where they come from. Nor shall there be any reprisal by forces operating under my command,” the message added. It stated that no sooner here. ceived a positive response than he would direct General Aurora, Commander of the Indian and Bangladesh forces in the eastern theatre to refrain from all air and ground action against the Pakistani forces in Bangladesh.
As a token of his good faith, General Manekshaw said he had ordered that no air action should take place over Dacca from 17 hours Wednesday, December 15. This message was broadcast several times.
The message concluded that he had no desire to inflict unnecessary casualties on Gen. Niazi’s troops as he, Manekshaw, abhorred loss of human lives. “However, should you not comply with what I have stated, you will leave me with no alternative but to resume my offensive with the utmost vigour at 9 hours on the morning of December 16.” The message added that in order to facilitate discussion he had arranged for the radio link on a listening watch from 17 hours IST on Wednesday.
The next day, it was all over bar the shoutingand some shooting by the Mukti Bahini in Dacca city. At 4.30 P.M. on Thursday December 16, at a
solemn ceremony, Lieutenant-General A.A.K. Niazi, Commander of the Pakistan forces in East Bengal, signed the surrender papers and presented them to Lieutenant-General Jagjit Singh Aurora, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, India’s Eastern Command.
The historic event climaxed a suspenseful drama. Gen. Niazi’s reply to Manekshaw’s ultimatum failed to come through until half an hour before 8.30 P.M. on Thursday, the deadline, after which the Indian offensive was to resume. At 8 A.M. Niazi’s response flashed through, which requested an extension of the moratorium by six hours and for an Indian Army staff officer to come down to negotiate the terms of surrender. The extension was promptly granted, this time the shooting pause also applied to the ground forces.
Among the conditions Gen. Niazi sought for his surrender were (1) the facility to regroup his forces in designated areas, (2) a guarantee of safety for the forces and for all those settled in Bangladesh since 1947, and (3) an assurance that there would be no reprisals against those who had helped the administration since March 1971.
General Manekshaw had however demanded an unconditional surrender and promised strict adherence to the spirit of the Geneva Convention.
At 1 P.M. that day, Major-General J.F.R. Jacob, Chief of Stafl, Eastern Command, flew by helicopter to Dacca with the instrument of surrender.
Meanwhile, at 10.40 that morning a battalion of the Indian Army had entered the outskirts of Dacca without any opposition and accepted the surrender of Major-General Mohammed Jamshed, Commander of the 26th Pakistan division.
At 2.45 P.M. Gen. Jacob signalled to say that the instrument of surrender had been accepted and initialled by Gen. Niazi. At 3.30 P.M. four more battalions of the Indian Army and Mukti Bahini entered Dacca city under the command of Major
Gen. Gandharv Nagra. Gen. Nagra’s forces were boisterously welcomed.
Gen. Aurora, accompanied by the Air and Naval Chiefs of the Eastern Command, Air Marshal Dewan and Vice Admiral Krishnan and Major Khondkar, Chief of Staff of the Mukti Bahini, flew into Dacea by helicopter from Agartala, having got there, from Calcutta by another plane.
By the time the surrender was signed, the Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini had captured over 8,000 Pakistani soldiers and more were holding out in the cantonments of Khulna and Maynamati and in the northern towns of Dinajpur, Rangpur and Saidpur.
The surrender ceremony was enacted at the historic Race Course from where nine months earlier Sheikh Mujibur Rahman hurled defiance at Presi. dent Yahya Khan.
General Niazi signed the surrender documents and presented them to Lt.-Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora. The latter signified his acceptance of the surrender by putting his signature to the documents. Gen. Niazi then, with a swift move, stripped off his epaule tte of rank from his right shoulder, unloaded his revolver and handed over the bullets to General Aurora, and finally pressed his forehead to that of India’s Eastern Army Command Chief as an act of humble submission and surrender.
The instrument of surrender signed by Gen. Niazi stated that the latter’s forces would “lay down arms and surrender at the places where they are currently located to the nearest regular troops” in the command of Lt.-Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora and that the “Pakistani Eastern Command shall come under the orders of Lt.-Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora as soon as this instrument has been signed. Disobedience of orders will be regarded as a breach of the surrender terms and will be dealt with in accordance with the accepted laws and usages of war.”
The document further stated: “Lt.-Gen. Aurora
gives his solemn assurance that personnel who surrender shall be treated with dignity and respect that soldiers are entitled to in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Convention and guarantees the safety and well-being of all Pakistan military and paramilitary forces who surrender. Protection will be provided to foreign nationals, ethnic minorities and personnel of the West Pakistan region by the forces in the command of Lt.-Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora.”
The Race Course maidan was packed with a delirious mass of seething humanity. People bearing myriads of Bangladesh’s gold, crimson and green flags shouted themselves hoarse with “Joi Bangla”, “Joi India” and “Joi Indira”. They lifted Gen. Aurora on to their shoulders and hugged every Indian officer and jawan within reach.
Thus rang down the final curtain on the gory drama, produced and directed by General Yahya Khan, that snuffed out East Pakistan from the map and raised on its ashes Bangladesh. The happy end was of course not directed by Yahya Khan-that part of the scenario was prepared by Indira Gandhi.
Afterwards, as they relaxed and exchanged notes on the 12-day war, Gen. Niazi told Gen. Jacob that he had recognized defeat and had wanted to surrender at least seven days before he actually capitulated. But direct orders from Yahya Khan prevented it. For several days Yahya had assured Niazi that he would be rescued either by the Chinese or by the US 7th Fleet. Then abruptly he dropped this line and instructed Gen. Niazi to stop fighting if he considered it necessary.
Once the surrender ceremony was over, the international free-masonry among generals asserted it self, and the erstwhile adversaries were, to the chagrin of the embittered local populace and wonderment of the Western journalists, found fraternizing with each other and enquiring about each other’s families. And Niazi, noted for his bawdy jokes, had
already started doling out his stock of dirty stories to his conquerors, who were in a benign mood.
The foreign correspondents commented with surprise that General Aurora should have permitted the Pakistani officer prisoners-of-war to retain their weapons, and sat with them at the same table for meals of chicken pulav and mutton curry.
Anyone visiting the cantonment in Dacca, where the Pakistani POWs were quartered, found to his surprise that the latter moved about freely within the cantonment area, carrying out their allotted tasks. They marched to their assigned duties in the streets in batches of fifty or hundred, escorted by just a couple of armed Indian soldiers. Of course it was very true that the Pakistani POWs dared not try to escape, as that meant getting out into the city and risking being set upon by the irate Bengalis.
It turned out that the Pakistani forces in East Bengal totalled more than the estimated four and a half divisions, as the Indians rounded up 93,000 soldiers all over the province. Very few of them had managed to escape; so effective was the Indian army net spread around them.
Indeed, Indian Army Chief, General Sam Manekshaw’s repeatedly broadcast message to the Pakistani troops in Bangladesh in the second week of the war, promising them honourable treatment if they surrendered, must have greatly contributed to the surrender, much earlier, of many of the Pakistani officers and jawans. But for that appeal, it is possible that Pakistani soldiers, fearing harsh treatment from the Indians on surrender, would have fought on at least a couple of weeks longer.
The Pakistan Army in Bangladesh had stocked enough ammunition and supplies to last another couple of months, if they had decided to fight on. However hopeless their cause might have been Pindi’s strategic plans had prepared Gen. Niazi’s army to hold out till February, by which time Yahya
Khan calculated that the USA and China would be able to induct UN intervention in the Indo-Pakistani conflict and enforce a cease-fire that would enable Yahya Khan to retain his hold on East Bengal, and meanwhile even capture the much-coveted Kashmir for Pakistan.
Those were of course the plans of men and mice, and tragically for Yahya Khan they went agley.
Though there is plenty of evidence to show that at the senior level, particularly at the Eastern Command headquarters in Dacca, demoralization had set in the Indian Army officers spiritedly deny that the Pakistanis in the forward areas had no heart in the war. Wherever the Pakistanis decided to hold out they fought ferociously. At Hili they held their ground with admirable tenacity, though it was the courage of a desperate, doomed, beleaguered garrison left with no other alternative than to fight to the last man. Indeed, it would be correct to say that wherever the Pakistanis were fighting from prepared positions, they fought with grim determination.
At cease-fire on December 16, the Pakistanis were still entrenched in Dinajpur, Rangpur, Rajshahi, Khulna, Maynamathi near Comilla and in a part of Sylhet, though looking rather silly at finding that the Indians had bypassed them to get to their main objective, which was Dacca. The Pakistanis seemed to emulate the tactics of the French Army in the first months of the Second World War who sat behind their Maginot line waiting in vain for the Germans to crash into them, while the Germans got round them.
Nevertheless, in every action and manoeuvre, the Indian units got the upper hand, and there was not one event in the entire 12-day fighting which could be considered a setback or reverse for the Indian Army. The fact is that the Pakistani army was outgeneralled all along the line. Starting from the initial manoeuvre that enticed the Pakistani forces to
wards the 1,300-mile border and then got them scattered in penny-packets, to the strategy of spliting them into compartmentalized units in a rivertorn terrain and thus disrupting their cohesiveness, the Indian generalship scored to the last T.
Gen. Manekshaw’s three ultimatums addressed to the Pakistani Command in Dacca in the second week! of the conflict not only hastened the end of the war and minimised avoidable bloodshed but served as hammer-blows of psychological warfare that made up General Niazi’s mind for him.
Moving into East Bengal in a multi-pronged drive from five directions, General Aurora’s Army raised before General Niazi visions of an overwhelmingly superior force descending upon him from all directions, whereas General Aurora had only seven and a half divisions with him to raise all that dust. That constituted only a marginal superiority over Pakistan’s four and a half divisions plus thousands of paramilitary groups equipped with, in some cases, more sophisticated weapons, and failed to give India the prescribed 3 to 1 superiority essential for an offensive action into enemy territory.
Indeed, even that marginal numerical advantage was cancelled out by a terrain that was trisected by three river systems and then again dissected by a myriad minor rivers, streams and boglands, that provided a formidable natural defence to the Pakistanis, if only the latter could exploit it.
It is not as though General Niazi had no contingency plan. He had one in his drawer that envisaged withdrawal of his garrisons by stages to Dacca, with duly specified “delaying” and “stopping points at the Ganges and the Madhumati respectively and Meghna in the east. But then as the Indian columns drove past the Pakistani garrisons like a tornado, Gen. Niazi dithered a bit too long and then found it was too late to put through his contingency plan: the enemy had got too far in by then.
Yet another surprise for General Niazi was that
he expected the major thrust to come from the West, and expected little or no Indian activity on the Tripura front, which was considered an impossible front for India, logistically-speaking. On the other hand, it turned out that the main thrust aimed at Dacca came from the east, while Niazi’s troops were all facing the west !
Then again, they had all been assured by Pindi that the Indians’ objective would be limited to carving out a territory west of the Brahmaputra in order to settle the East Bengali refugees that had flooded India, and that India would not be interest ed in conquering the whole of East Bengal. Thus General Niazi’s plans were primarily designed to meet such a threat, mostly from the West. The calculations all went wrong.
Nor did General Niazi expect the Indians to give a wide berth to the more comfortable tarmac roads and swirl around his garrisons through the paddy fields, dust tracks and marshlands and sit on his doorstep in ten days’ time. So that in Dacca itself –in the absence of the troops from the north expected to withdraw into the citadel he had some 22 thousand troops, most of whom were noncombatants, and therefore did not constitute a cohe sive fighting force. The very low morale of the top brass, both military and civilian, among the Pakistanis, did the rest.
Summing up his conclusions at a press conference in Calcutta the day after the surrender, Gen. Aurora observed : “I think that individually the Pakistan soldiers, units and sub-units, fought extremely well, with resolution and competence. But I consider their overall plan on how to fight the war was faulty.” He was of the view that if General Niazi had concentrated his forces between the natural barriers of the rivers Meghna and Madhumati, they could have kept the war going for several months.
The Army Commander thought that in many
respects the Pakistanis had superior weapons. They had more automatic weapons and more recoilless anti-tank guns, whereas the Indian army had more tanks in the East than the regiment-plus the Pakistanis had. Gen. Aurora had great praise for the Russian amphibious PT 76 tanks which were ideal for the soft, paddy-field-covered terrain of Bangladesh in contrast to the American Chafees that the Pakistanis mostly used in the East.
Then again the Indian army had the great advantage of not having to worry about harassment from the air, thanks to the IAF’s initial action of sweeping the Pak air force out of the skies in the East.
For the rest, the Indian press made its own contribution to hastening the victory by erroneously reporting that a brigade had been paradropped 61 miles north of Dacca when it was only a battalion, and thus further scaring the beleaguered garrison in Dacca !
General Aurora paid a glowing tribute to the Mukti Bahini and said that his troops had the great advantage of having the Mukti Bahini helping him. They gave valuable information and helped the Indian forces to cross obstacles.
In this war the Army Engineers played a pivotal role and therefore earn a special mention. They moved like lightning and worked like the devils. Putting together bailey and pontoon bridges, shoring up diversions, laying miles and miles of roads and surfacing dust tracks with duckboards, the Engineers made possible the Indian Eastern Army’s whirlwind progress through a river-torn country.
At Kabadak, in the south-western sector of Jessore, a 300 ft. long bridge with two furlongs of approaches on either side, was constructed in three hours. Indeed, this feat was repeated forty times during the twelve days’ campaign. The widest gap was on the Madhumati-where they had to put across a 1,400 ft. long bridge.
From Hili to Baibanda the river Karaloya was 400 ft. wide. The Atrai on the Thakurgaon-Saidpur road was 1,300 ft. wide, with many streams converging into it. And there was a river to span every six miles the Indian troops marched, whichever direction they took. Then again roads had to be maintained and country paths to be converted overnight into motorable roads fit for heavy artillery and tanks.
All these problems were taken in their stride by the young and energetic officers of the engineering corps who showed remarkable initiative and in ventive spirit and improvised and made do with any material available at hand to throw a bridge across. Among other spare parts, they carried with them Bailey bridge spans and hundred of pontoons and light metal boats and mobilized 10,000 civilian trucks to transport a large variety of “instant” bridging and road-making equipment.
As they served up the fast-moving Indian forces with bridges and roads out of nowhere, so to say, they seemed to wave a magic wand and pull the stuff out of their hats.

An Irremovable Object
MEANWHILE, in the Western theatre, an irresisti.
ble force met an irremovable object, and blunted away in the process. And soon the irremovable object inexorably moved forward.
was the front where the Indian Army was content to fight a holding war, what is in military parlance called a “defensive-offensive” operation, while its paramount job in the east was being accomplished. Nor did India have any territorial ambitions in West Pakistan.
Notwithstanding the supreme effort that Pindi was bound to make to break through to Poonch, Akhnur and Jammu and carve off Kashmir from India, an ancient ambition passionately nursed by Pakistan, the Western theatre was to witness in large part a static war, in contrast to the whirlwind campaign, noted for its mobility and heterodoxy, staged in the east.
In the bleak, arid regions of the north, with temperatures far below zero and fighting mostly consisting in snatching pickets perched on snow-capped mountain-tops, this was hardly the campaigning season. For the Indian Army however this was the chance to rectify the anomalies along the ceasefire line, eliminate the threats to its lines of communication and consolidate its defensive positions.
In the central sector, along the Punjab frontier,
the two sides were so strongly entrenched that any activity beyond probing, sniping and straightening out bulges and enclaves in each other’s territory, would prove too costly. In this sector the two armies mounted guard behind fortified positions, network of concrete bunkers and pillboxes, while a deep water-filled anti-tank canal separated them from each other. For any full-fledged offensive, either side needed here not merely the usual 3 to 1 but even a 5 to 1 numerical superiority to break through the hard crust before advancing into the other’s country. Such a great numerical predominance did not exist on either side. In these conditions, only a surprise attack might do the trick. But along a frontier where the two armies have been staring at each other, all set, for a couple of months, if not longer, no such surprise was possible.
Thus apart from a head-on clash in the JammuSialkot sector in the north, only the vast naked desert region of the Rajasthan-Sindh frontier and the Rann of Kutch far south were available for either side to sharpen their military wits on each other. In that battle of wits, the Indians scored every time.
Almost simultaneously with the so-called preemptive airstrike on the evening of December 3, Pakistani ground forces launched attacks across the Indian border at Chhamb, Poonch, Sulemanki and Khemkaran.
Islamabad’s allegation that the Pakistani airstrike was provoked by an Indian land offensive launched at five points along the West Pakistan border has been refuted by circumstantial evidence as well as the testimony of foreign correspondents operating from Islamabad at the time. The latter have in their dispatches from the Pakistani capital borne witness to the intensive troop movements in the Sialkot sector towards the border on Decem
ber 2, twenty-four hours before the attack started.
Murray Sayle of the Sunday Times was positive. Cabling from Islamabad, Sayle stated: “But the third act, general war in the west as well as in the east, began not with Indian aggression’, as the United States hastily claimed last week, but with Pakistan’s desperate pre-emptive strike.”
At a briefing in New Delhi on December 3 even ing, an Indian official spokesman disclosed that UN observers had witnessed the Pakistani troops crossing the cease-fire line in Kashmir on December 3 night.
Louis Kraal, correspondent of the American news magazine Time averred that Pindi had actually taken the decision on December 2 to launch on a war with India on the West Pakistan border. And he testified: “A train loaded with military vehicles chugged by, and wheatfields bristled with camouflaged gun emplacements. Families were moved out of the army cantonment at Sialkot, and civilian hospitals were advised to have blood plasma ready beside empty beds.”
Major Rashid Abbasi of 18th Azad Kashmir Regiment, captured wounded in the field on December 4 morning in the Chhamb sector, confessed in an Indian hospital that at 8-30 P.M. the previous day, Pakistani artillery opened up preliminary to a big armour thrust in Chhamb, and that he himself commanded a company that attacked Deva Mandilea and took possession of his objective by 5.30 A.M., which the Indians soon after recaptured.
In point of fact Pakistan launched on the war with three major thrusts — one in Chhamb and the other in Poonch, both in the Jammu sector, and the third across the Jaiselmer border in Rajasthan. In the event, the latter spent themselves out within the week, while the first thrust dragged on for nine days, sucking in more and more Pak battalions and luring them to their
death. This, the Indian Army did with ease.
Lt.-Gen. Tikka Khan, the “Butcher of Baluchistan and Bangladesh”, now commanding II Corps at Sialkot, launched what he considered a crushing blow against India with a massive thrust at Chhamb. He put in two brigades plus a regiment of tanks, supported by heavy artillery and PAF support from the air.
Simultaneously, an offensive was directed at Poonch further north with a view to eliminating the Poonch bulge. From here the column could get to Uri and astride the Uri-Srinagar road. The at tack however petered out in the next five or six days, thanks largely to the persistent and deadly air assaults, day and night, carried out by the IAF on the enemy lines at Kahuta, their base. The major thrust that the Pakistanis were planning in this sec. tor was decisively aborted.
At Chhamb, however, General Tikka Khan’s Corps continued to bash its head against the Indian Army’s prepared positions. At the end of four days’ fierce fighting, the Pakistani assault failed to penetrate the Indian defences on the eastern bank of the Munawar Tawi, though the Chhamb town, on the western bank, was quickly taken by the Pakistanis and subsequently changed hands again and again.
Like the proverbial King Bruce and the spider, Tikka Khan was grimly determined to “try and try again.” On December 5, he flung an additional brigade and regiment of armour into the fray. When after another five days’ fighting, he failed to penetrate the Indian defences on the eastern bank of the Munawar Tawi, Tikka Khan threw in a fourth brigade besides three more armoured regiments, while the PAF tried their best to bolster his effort from the air.
The IAF picked up the gauntlet and soon gained the upper hand in the skies over the battleground.
Indeed, the Indian Air Force planes made a pivotal contribution in frustrating Pakistan’s objective in the Chhamb sector. The Indian airmen not only chased away the enemy aircraft from the region but well-nigh incapacitated Tikka Khan’s armour.
By December 12, the Pakistani offensive faded out, having paid the exorbitant price of 3,000 casual ties and 50 tanks knocked out. And while the battle of Chhamb was raging, the Indian forces eliminated the “chicken neck” east of Akhnur and clear ed the “Akhnur dagger” of the enemy.
Such then was the fate met by the Pak GHQ’s most ambitious and most rehearsed offensive at
Chhamb, commanded by its most ruthless though not the ablest, General, who true to his reputation displayed more brutal force than soldierly skill and sophistication. For the only tactics Tikka Khan seemed to know was to deliver frontal attacks on the adversary, again and again, and get smashed up.
Incidentally, it was noted both in the east and the west that if the Pakistani Army was not given an opportunity to fight a head-on frontal battle, they remained in their embattled positions helplessly, not knowing what to do with themselves.
At the end of a week’s fighting, the Pakistan Army had nowhere broken through the main Indian defence line ‘a failure which so infuriated the Pakistani rank-and-file set out to ‘crush India’,” reported Murray Sayle in the Sunday Times, “that they shot every dog, cat and cow in Chhamb because they were Indian !”
On the other hand, by then, the Indians had absorbed the first assaults and gone over to the offensive at least at four points along the western front.
Along the entire Punjab border there was however only minor activity. The Pakistanis took the Hussainiwala enclave on the Western bank of the Sutlej near Ferozepore, while the Indians returned the compliment by taking the Pakistani enclave in the Dera Baba Nanak area further north.
By about December 5, Lt.-General K. K. Singh’s Corps initiated three probes into the Shakargarh bulge with a view to eliminating a constant menace to the Indian life-line to Jammu and Kashmir at Pathankot-two prongs pushed from the Sambha area in the north and the third from the Gurdaspur area in the south-east. It was heavy going, what with rivers, nullahs and minefields protecting a brigade-strong Pakistani force, supported by a regiment of armour and heavy artillery,
It was not until three days later that the Indian attack could be mounted. The battle raged for a week, rising to a crescendo on the last day of the fighting on December 16. While Indian forces from the north-west advanced towards Shakargarh, yet another column established a bridgehead across the Basantar, seven miles south of the town. The Pakistanis made two attempts to throw back the Indian columns moving down from the north-west while they laid a heavy smokescreen to conceal their armour
The pivotal phase of the battle was now reached and the IAF joined in with gusto. The area around Shakargarh was strewn with 45 Pattons, all destroyed in the course of December 16. With seven more enemy tanks knocked out the next day, the tally went up to 52 in a little more than 24 hours. By the afternoon of December 17, the battle died down. Of the 207 tanks the enemy lost in the war, 95 were accounted for in Shakargarh.
In the course of this push in the Shakargarh sector, the Indian Army had occupied 830 square miles, and but for the cease-fire enforced on Dec. ember 17, Shakargarh would have fallen in their lap like a ripe apple.
Thus while Lt.-Gen. K. P. Candeth’s Western Army was engaged in a grim struggle in the Sialkot sector and in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the Pak Army along the Punjab border, fur. ther south, along the Rajasthan and Gujarat fronti er, the intrepid Lt.-Gen. G. G. Bewoor quickly got off the mark.
In the Rajasthan sector, yet another big battle developed quite early, within two days of the out. break of war. This too was initiated by the Pakis. tanis who launched a powerful thrust across the Jaiselmer desert and advanced 15 miles into Indian territory to Longenwala where it bumped into a company of Indian troops. The objective of the
thrust was to capture Ramgarh and thus undercut an Indian drive towards Rahimyar Khan, which is hardly 25 miles from the Indian town and lies on the strategic railway line connecting Karachi with north West-Pakistan.
Two-brigade strong, supported by a regiment of armour, the Pakistani force was pushing towards the Shahgarh bulge en route to Ramgarh. Major Kuldip Singh, commanding the Company facing the Pakistani force held out gamely and refused to yield ground until reinforcements arrived. Meanwhile, the IAF gallantly stepped into the breach and staggered the enemy’s advance.
The battle raged for four days before the invading column was flung back across the border, after suffering disastrous losses. Indeed, the 9mile stretch from Longenwala to Ramgarh was littered with the Chinese T59 tanks. The next morning the IAF was still taking pot shots at the retreating enemy and at their vehicles, artillery pieces and tanks. In the bargain, the Pakistanis had to surrender a stretch of 7 to 10 miles territory on their side of the border.
In the far south, along the Rann of Kutch and southern Rajasthan border, the Border Security Force were playing havoc in the sparsely populated desert region of Sind. One BSF unit crossed the border at Nagarparkar and in no time captured Virawah, an important road junction beyond Nagarparkar. With that achievement they had got possession of a 570 sq. miles bulge. Another BSF unit moved across from Khavda in the direction of Chad Bet. Yet a third struck eastwards from Kilnor in south Rajasthan and captured Chachro. In no time the BSF columns from Kutch and those from south Rajasthan joined up somewhere north of Chachro to carve off another 1,200 square miles of territory.
In all Gen. Bewoor’s Southern Command forces had collected 3,500 square miles of Sind territory
across Kutch, Barmer and Jaiselmer sectors.
At the close of the second week of fighting, all eyes were focussed on the eastern theatre, and there appeared to be a comparative lull in the west. Ferocious fighting continued however around Shakargarh town in the Sialkot sector. In the Kargil region the Indian troops busied themselves with picket-hopping, and had bagged 36 posts in the area. In the Rajasthan sector, the battle for Naya Chor was still raging. In the Kutch sector however the Indian forces had taken the entire enclave of Chad Bet, covering an area of 280 square miles, besides the 570 square miles of the Nagarparkar bulge captured earlier.
At this late stage in the war, as if to provide the comic relief, Peking repeated its performance of 1965, and addressed a protest to India almost on the eve of the cease-fire. On December 16, China addressed a protest note to New Delhi which accused an Indian Army unit of crossing the ChinaSikkim border and carrying out reconnaissance in Chinese territory some six days earlier, on December 10, 1971.
The note stated that on December 10, between 1510 and 1655 hours, seven Indian armed person nel in two batches successively crossed Sese La on the Chinese-Sikkim boundary and intruded into Chinese territory for reconnaissance. “This is a grave encroachment upon Chinese territory,” the note declared.
New Delhi promptly rejected the Chinese charge as “totally without foundation,” and stated: “We do not and cannot accept the protest.”
On December 16 at 4.30 P.M. Lt.-General A. A. K. Niazi, commander of the Pakistani forces in East Bengal, surrendered to Lt.-General Jagjit Singh Aurora, and the fighting ceased in the eastern theatre. The same night the Indian Prime Minister announced a unilateral cease-fire in the western
theatre too. President Yahya Khan, after some humming and hawing, accepted the offer and complied.
The balance sheet of the war in the west showed that India was in occupation of nearly 3,000 square miles of West Pakistani territory as against some 50 square miles of Indian territory taken by Pakistan in the Chhamb sector, south-west of Jammu and the Hussainiwala enclave in the Feroze pore area.
Apart from liberating Bangladesh, India captured the following territory in the West:
In the Kutch sector 850 square miles; 1,200 square
miles of territory in Sind along the Rajasthan border apart from penetrating 48 miles along the old Rajasthan-Sind railway to Naya Chor; 830 sq. miles in the Shakargarh area, south-east of Sialkot: 30
square miles of the Khemkaran enclave on the Punjab border.
In addition, up north in Kashmir, India readjusted the cease-fire line so as to ensure the security of Indian territory. Thus the Indian army captured as many as 36 posts in the Kargil region that dominate the strategic Zojila-Leh road linking Srinagar with Ladakh. The Indian Army also secured strategic positions in Gulmarg, Uri, the Lippa valley, south of Titwal, the Buina bulge north of Titwal, Gurais in northern Kashmir and the Tilel valley east of Gurais.
In terms of military hardware, India destroyed 94 Pakistani aircraft out of a total strength of 290, 214 tanks out of 300 and 22 naval craft, while India lost 44 aircraft, 73 tanks and a frigate.
At the end of the 14-day hectic war, India had the satisfaction of attaining two supreme objectives: (1) liberation of Bangladesh and return of the 10 million refugees; and (2) driving home to the rulers of Pakistan beyond doubt the futility of trying military conclusions with India.
The 14-day war in the Indian sub-continent had proved disproportionately costly. As against the 12,000 casualties suffered by India in the 22-day war of 1965, this time the total casualty figure was as much as 10,633, though the fighting lasted a week less. The Pakistani figure for casualties, which has yet to be released, is bound to be much heavier as, in the West, the Pakistanis, as aggressors, would inevitably have suffered infinitely heavier casualties and in the east, as the vanquished, they lost even more men. In the east the number taken prisoner alone was 93,000.
Indeed, at the end of the conflict Pakistan found its armed forces in tatters, being left with just 10 army divisions (including two armoured) of a total of 14 divisions, with less than half its air force and a mere remnant of its navy. The army equipment
captured by the Indian Army in East Bengal alone is computed to be enough to equip two army divi. sions.
This time, not even Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto could pretend that Pakistan had won the war. The catastrophic outcome of the war for Pakistan was so apparent that even the common man in that country could not be fooled, hermetically sealed though he was from the unpleasant truth by a rigid censorship and fed on imaginary victories at the front. The people compelled the reckless military dictator, Yahya Khan, to abdicate.
Thanks to the folly of the rulers in Islamabad, and in particular the obduracy of Yahya Khan, Pakistan had lost East Bengal for good and has been reduced from one-fifth to one-tenth the size of India, losing 54 per cent of its population –downgraded from being the much-bruited largest Islamic power in the world to the position below that of the newly-carved state of Bangladesh and even that of India, and humbled and ranked among the minor powers in west and south Asia. In other words, cut to size.

The Offensive Component
OF the “defensive-offensive” operation undertaken
by India in the western theatre, the Air Force and the Navy provided the “offensive” component! Between the two, they well-nigh mortally wounded the Pakistani war machine in the very first week of the fighting.
IAF planes scoured the Pakistani skies attacking at will airfields, defence installations, supply trains and fuel dumps, besides providing effective air support to Indian ground forces. The Navy in two deadly assaults in one week decimated Pakistan’s Navy so that it was never heard of thereafter. Meanwhile, its Eastern Fleet threw a watertight blockade around the Bangladesh ports that completed the isolation of that province from West Pakistan.
The Pakistan Air Force’s sudden and unexpected “pre-emptive” airstrike at dusk on December 3 at Indian airbases in the north entirely failed in its purpose, which was to cripple at one stroke the Indian Air Force, in imitation of the deadly Israeli swoop on the Egyptian airbases in June 1967. The airstrike did come as a surprise to New Delhi. But it proved a poor parody of the brilliant Israeli coup de grace against the UAR’s airforce.
For one thing, the Indians too had closely studied the finer points of the six-day Israeli-Arab war of 1967 and imbibed its lessons. The IAF were ful
ly prepared to face even a full-scale pre-emptive attack from the enemy. They had already dispersed their aircraft and protected them behind heavy concrete shells. Besides, the airfields had been fully provided with ack-ack and air defence.
For another, where the famous Israeli attack destroyed at one stroke 400 of the Egyptian planes, the Pakistani initial attack, which came in twos, threes and fours at a time, made hardly any dent on the IAF. The Pakistani air assault, for some strange reason, was mounted at dusk, which denied them an effective follow-up so essential to drive home the advantage. In contrast, the Israeli airstrike on Egyptian airbases in 1967 was launched at 6.45 in the morning, when 70 Israeli aircraft carried out 700 sorties on 19 Egyptian airfields that practically wiped out the Egyptian Air Force.
The total number of raids carried out by the PAF the first night were 18 till 4 A.M. Earlier in the evening, for the socalled pre-emptive strike, the Pakistanis sent Sabres and F104s, in threes and fours, totalling 16 raids.
The PAF carried out a total of 80 sorties in the western theatre and 60 in the east. Whereas, the IAF chalked down a total of 7000 sorties during the 14-day war – 500 per day. In the eastern theatre, 60 per cent of the IAF activity was by way of support to the ground troops.
Indeed, at the end of the 14-day conflict, the Pakistanis claimed to have destroyed no more than 57 Indian aircraft, which is a flea-bite for the IAF’s reported strength of 600, whereas the PAF had lost more than one-third of its planes. No wonder there. fore that its pilots proved shy of confrontations with the Indians after the first two days of the fighting.
Between 1740 and 1945 hours on the evening of December 3, 1971 16 Sabres and Starfighters of the PAF struck at the Indian airfields at Amritsar,
Srinagar, Avantipur, Pathankot and Faridkot, as also at a radar unit near Amritsar. More raids fol. lowed later in the night under a full moon on airfields at Amritsar, Halwara, Ambala, Agra, Pathankot, Jamnagar, Jodhpur, Srinagar, Sirsa and Uttarlai.
These attacks did minor damage at one or two of the airfields which were repaired in a few hours, and the runways were fully serviceable. The IAF lost no planes on the ground and the repair organization patched up the few craters in quick time.
But the PAF airstrike did serve to disturb a hor. nets’ nest, in that it provoked the IAF to sting back viciously. The inspiring order-of-the-day issued by Air Marshal M. M. Engineer, AOC-in-C, Western Air Command, to his men before they took off on their first mission on Pakistani targets on the night of December 3/4 underscored at once the noble spirit in which India was embarking on the war and the righteous anger roused by the Pakistanis’ “cynical contempt for all civilized values.”
The order described Pakistan as an “unscrupulous enemy” and declared :
This is the third round, and we owe it to posterity that we destroy the evil war machine which has consistently disturbed peace in the Indian sub-continent. It will be your privilege to hit the enemy where it hurts him most. The fury and courage of our air-crew, the efficiency and endurance of our ground-crew, and the unflinching faith of each officer, airman, and civilian in the final victory of our great country, is to be the nightmare of our enemies.
It was fury indeed. On the very first night, the IAF knocked out 33 planes out of the 94 destroyed during the entire 14-day war. In the course of the next four days, 39 more Pak planes were knocked
out, and during the remaining eight days, Pakistan lost another 22 aircraft, thus accounting for onethird of Pakistan’s air force, which was reported to number 290.
On an average, the IAF carried out 500 sorties per day. On the second day alone, the IAF con ducted 100 sorties as against 20 by the PAF. On the opening night, IAF aircraft, including Canberra bombers swooped over the Pakistani airfields at Murid, Mianwali, Chander, Sargodha, Risalmala, Shorkot Road, Masroor (Karachi military airfield) in West Pakistan and the two major airbases at Tejgaon and Kurmitola in East Bengal. These attacks were followed by dawn raids mainly with S-22s and Hunters. The targets were the runways. hangars, aircraft on ground, radar units, fuel dumps and ammunition storages.
The intensity of these attacks over the 36-hour period beginning midnight of December 3/4 had obviously a stunning impact on the PAF, and the latter’s strikes thereafter at Indian airfields and radar stations fell off to a meagre 15 to 16 sorties a day, most of them hit-and-run raids at night. It is also possible that Pakistan was economizing on its aircraft, as it looked forward to the war lasting two or three months and wanted to conserve its airforce resources over that period.
Another reason for the PAF’s failure seriously to carry the air war into Indian territory has to be found in the fact that the air force in Pakistan functioned as a subordinate service to the Army and thus lacked the freedom to plan its own air war and was used primarily as air support for their troops fighting on the ground
The IAF, in contrast, was a fully autonomous service, taking its own decisions and coordinating its activities with those of the other two Services. The IAF’s threefold role in this war, as in any, was (1) to provide effective air defence to its own
country; (2) to carry the air war into the enemy territory with a view to crippling its war machine; and (3) to supply air support to the Army fighting on the ground. In addition, the IAF was also charg. ed with the duty of providing maritime reconnaissance services to the Navy.
The IAF played a pivotal role in at least three battles on land in the Western theatre, in all of which without the decisive aerial intervention, the outcome of the engagements might well have been very different.
On December 5, at Chhamb, where the fiercest battle of the entire war, both in the west and the east, was fought, General Tikka Khan made a sup. reme effort to overrun the Indian positions on the east bank of the Munawar Tawi. The situation was getting quite critical, when it was decided that the IAF should intervene massively in the battle. The evening before, the air effort available at the various airfields in support of the Army operations had already been allocated and aircraft were getting ready to start on their missions in the morning, when word came round that a maximum effort should be diverted in support of the Indian forces hard pressed in the Chhamb sector.
Indian fighter-bombers immediately went into
their tanks, guns, vehicles and troop concentrations with bombs, rockets and cannon. With night. fall the Canberras took over from the fighter-bombers and dropped their load of thousand-pound bombs on enemy gun positions. The air attack was kept up for three days, and by the second day, the IAF had established local supremacy over the battlefield against the PAF. The enemy was at last Aung back to the other side of the river and an immediate threat to the Indian positions in Jammu was decisively removed.
About the same time, further south, in the Raj.
asthan sector, a powerful Pakistani thrust, supported by armour, had penetrated fifteen miles in the Jaiselmer region and threatened to overrun a numerically smaller Indian formation at Longenwala. The IAF intervened to deadly purpose. Between December 5 and 9 Indian Hunters destroyed 27 tanks and thus crippled the regiment, while dispersing the Pakistani troops and their vehicles. Thus the Pakistani assault was completely dissipated after penetrating 15 miles into Indian territory, thanks largely to the IAF’s part in the battle.
Strangely enough, the Pakistani column fighting here got little air support from the PAF which seemed to be concentrating its effort in the higher priority fighting on the Sialkot-Jammu border.
Yet a third point where the IAF played a decisive role was in the Poonch sector, again in the first few days of the war. Intelligence reports indicated that the Pakistanis were planning a major offensive into Poonch from Kahuta, in the Pakoccupied Kashmir. It was decided to liquidate the threat and the IAF was given the assignment.
As the location and type of targets came in the way of the fighter-bombers tackling the job in daytime, bombers were sent out at night after moon rise. The enemy concentrations received 72,000 pounds of high explosive bombs, delivered accura. tely, as ground observations later confirmed. The enemy guns, till then very active, fell silent, the troop concentration dispersed, disorganized, and the projected offensive was aborted.
The Indian thrust in the Shakargarh sector owed much of its success to the vigorous intervention by IAF fighter bombers which struck at enemy reinforcements coming up towards the battle area as also concentrations of tanks, guns and vehicles at Pasrur, Zafarwal, Narowal and Jassar.
The Indian run-away column knocking at the gate of Naya Chor, forty-five miles inside Sind, within
three days of the war, was effectively supported by IAF Maruts and Hunters.
In contrast to the omnipresent IAF which was found simultaneously at different battlefields and varied tasks, all the time roaming the skies on the sub-continent, the Pakistan Air Force restricted its raids over Indian territory mostly to the hours of darkness and they were few and far between.
In addition, the IAF maintained combat air patrols over Indian airfields, particularly those near the border, to protect other aircraft taking off or landing. Then again, IAF aircraft also gave protection from the top to those others engaged in close support of the ground forces. Some of the IAF MIGs kept air defence patrols at night over areas which were regularly visited by PAF.
In the field of reconnaissance, the IAF flew a number of search missions opposite to the Ganganagar sector designed to track the location and movements of Pakistan’s main Armoured Division. These frequent air missions inhibited the activity of that division. Then there were the interdictor missions which struck enemy roads, railway lines and bridges, especially behind the location of the Pak Armoured Division.
A factor that induced the rulers of Pakistan, and particularly those in Dacca, to throw in the towel was the IAF attacks right inside the enemy country. A raid by Hunters on the oil refinery at Attock on December 6 kept the storage tanks burning for hours. The gas plant at Sui was blasted and set ablaze. The attacks on Masrur airfield by Canber. ras by night and Hunters by day left Karachi stripped of its air cover.
“The almost constant air raids over Islamabad, Karachi and other cities have brought deep apprehension, even panic,” cabled Time correspondent, Louis Kraal from Rawalpindi. “It is not massive bombing, just constant harassment – though there
have been several hundred civilian casualties. Thus when the planes roar overhead, life completely halts in the capital.”
If the Indian Navy’s daring assault on the Pak Navy on December 4 was not interfered with by the PAF from the air, it was mainly because of the IAF yeoman service rendered earlier in the day by devastating attacks on the city’s military airfield. The next morning as the Western Fleet steamed home from its exploits in Pakistani waters, the IAF Hunters provided air cover to its ships.
The IAF’s attacks on the oil installations off Karachi at Keamari by day on December 4 and on the night of December 8/9 that left the area a blazing inferno, must have brought the morale of the Pakistani armed forces quite a few notches down. It was reported that Karachi lay under a pall of smoke for some days thereafter and Pakistan is estimated to have lost 50 per cent of its oil holdings in the Karachi area in the single night raid on December 8.
On the last day of the war, on December 17, the IAF ranging the skies from Skardu in the north to the Lahore marshalling yards in the centre, to enemy troop concentrations in the south at Naya Chor, hastened Islamabad’s decision to accept the cease-fire unilaterally offered by New Delhi.
In the eastern theatre, the timely and accurate rocketing of the Government House in Dacca on
December 14 made up Governor A. D. Malik’s mind Il for him and produced an en masse resignation of
his Government, which was the beginning of a quick end to the war.
On the morning of December 14, an intelligence report brought the information that an important meeting of Dr. Malik’s cabinet was to be held at the Government House at Dacca at mid-day that day. Air Marshal H. C. Dewan’s Eastern Air Command was given the task of attacking the Government House exactly at mid-day. After being briefed from a tourist guide-map, Indian MIGs and Hunters shot off to their targets. They were overhead, as the cabinet met in the left wing of the Government House and struck at that part of the building accurately with rockets and cannon fire that did just enough damage to persuade the Governor to write down his resignation and hand it to the local Red Cross Representative.
The information had also been received that General Niazi’s headquarters had moved from the cantonment to the Dacea varsity campus. That afternoon fighter bombers attacked the university buildings. The air attacks on the buildings were kept up the next day. By the evening, the ack-ack guns went silent, and later in the evening General Niazi sued for time to negotiate a cease-fire.
In the eastern theatre, where a war of move. ment was being fought at a whirlwind speed, the IAF’s primary role was to reduce the military and natural obstacles in the way and accelerate the pace of the land forces’ drive to Dacca.
The bomber attack on December 3/4 night on Dacca’s two main jet airfields of Tejgaon and Kurmitola, from where the Sabres of the only PAF squadron based in East Bengal took off, was followed by a round of sorties by fighter bombers on the two airfields besides others all over the province. Towards the end, nearly two-thirds of the flying effort was directed to the support of the army.
In the very first 48 hours of the war, the enemy airforce was swept off the skies of East Bengal. Thereafter, the IAF’s main task was to support the land forces and attack military targets such as gunboats and other military traffic on the rivers. The IAF ensured freedom of movement for the Eastern Fleet vessels around the coast, while the Indian troops fought their way into the country without fear of attack from above. The heavy craters made
in the two airfields grounded the few Sabres still left intact. Later nine Sabres were found in the hangar which were deliberately smashed by the Pakistanis before surrender. The damaged runway had grounded them.
The interdiction operations in Bangladesh were primarily directed against river traffic, as much of the military supplies as also troops were carried by boats. On December 8 and 9 extensive attacks were carried out on river jetties and craft moving along the waterways, which choked off this vital means of communication for the enemy.
In a country where an advancing army stumbles on a river every six miles, the airforce came to its rescue by ferrying troops across by helicopters. IAF’s MI-4 helicopters airlifted nearly 4,000 troops with supporting arms and equipment across river obstacles at Narsingdi, Baidya Bazar, Raipur and Sylhet. These helicopter operations imparted a new dimension to the mobility of infantry.
For the first time in the history of Indian armed forces, Indian paratroopers were dropped in action when on December 11 a parachute battalion des cended on Tangail, 61 miles north of Dacca from 50 Dakotas, Packets and AN-12s. The drop was carried out with clock-like precision and the battalion was kept supplied on subsequent days first by paradrops and eventually by Carribou aircraft using an improvised strip.
In addition, the IAF carried out reconnaissance missions for the Navy which ranged the Indian waters in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal and covered areas around the Andaman and Nicobar islands, thus contributing to the freedom of movement of the Navy’s surface ships by keeping enemy submarines submerged.
When one of the Pakistani submarines, for example, sank the frigate Kukri, maritime reconnaissance missions were flown round the clock in the
area. The submarine dared not come to surface to charge its batteries.
Addressing airforce officers and men at Adam pur at the conclusion of the 14-day war, Air Chief Marshal P. C. Lal observed : “I do not like war myself. But it is our duty to be ready to protect our country against any misadventure by the enemy. We have gained valuable experience in the 14-day war which we shall use to our advantage if necessary.” No sensible person should dare attack India again, he said. But past experience showed that the leaders of Pakistan had not been wanting in the “display of indiscretion. Therefore, we have to keep alert and be ready to ensure that none dare threaten our security.”
The Air Chief Marshal said the defence forces had helped create a new State Bangladesh in 14 days, which was unparalleled in world history. East Pakistan was no more and never would be. All this had been possible with the help of men of the IAF, the Army and the Navy who worked hard and made great sacrifices. Of the valiant men of the IAF who had laid down their lives in the war, he said they had blazed a glorious trail in the skies in the de. fence of their motherland.
I have wondered what makes the air force officers different-so intellectually inclined ? Is it because they have their heads in the clouds most of the time? Or is it that they all the time walk the razor’s edge of life and death ? In contrast, it is interesting to note, the Army officers, who have their feet always planted firmly on the terra firma, are generally down to earth, matter-of-fact in their approach to life. On the other hand, the Navy officers seem philosophic in their mental make-up-possibly en. gendered in them as they stood on the bridge and watched the ever-receding horizon and the waving waves of the never-ending ocean and contemplated eternity!
The Great Spectacular
THEY called her names. They spoke derisively
of her and made jokes about her. They dubbed her a “white elephant” and they referred to her as the “sick widow”. When in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani conflict it was reported that she was in dry dock, they sarcastically asked: “When was she not?”
Then came the memorable fortnight of December 1971, and the “old lady” bestirred herself and hit the headlines and made history. All those jeerers now came to cheer her, rubbing their eyes with incredulity. They were contrite and sincerely apologetic.
To Admiral N. Krishnan, FOC-in-C, Eastern Naval Command, is however attributed the grand slam I retort. To the scoffers he quipped: “After all what’s wrong with a lady getting indisposed once a month and dry-docking every nine months !” Every ship needs to be serviced once in nine months, even as every motor-car has to be serviced every 1,000 miles of run. This is normal practice. And it just happened, a pure accident, that when the IndoPakistani conflict broke out in 1965, Vikrant was on its nine-monthly visit to its hospital !
Truth to tell, even during that unforgettable fortnight in December she was actually sick. But as though to belie the malicious lies uttered and jokes cracked at her expense – or maybe, she did not want to miss the bus this time too – she shrugged
off her ailments and sallied forth. Indeed, she performed like one inspired, and covered herself with great glory.
This, in brief, is the stirring story of the stellar part played by INS Vikrant, Indian Navy’s only aircraft carrier, in the Bay of Bengal, during the Bangladesh war. “She was really not an old dere. lict,” remonstrated Admiral S. M. Nanda, Chief of the Naval Staff, and I detected a tinge of pride and affection in those words.
The Admiral is right. Vikrant was first commissioned in 1961 for the Indian Navy. She was originally British, and her construction actually started in 1943, and when three-quarters completed, the work was suspended in mid-1945, as the war was coming to an end. Through the good offices of Lord Mountbatten, the last British GovernorGeneral and a good friend of India, the ship was acquired at a price of Rs. 55 crores and was there. after modernized and fitted with angled flight deck, mirror landing aid for aircraft and new equipment throughout. All the machinery was thoroughly overhauled. Vikrant was thus as good as a new ship, when she took over as the flagship of the Indian Fleet in 1962
Two hundred and thirty metres long, Vikrant has on board one squadron of 12 Seahawk jet fighter aircraft, one squadron of six Alize anti-submarine and reconnaissance aircraft and a fleet of 3 Alouette III helicopters. While on flying operations Vikrant has on board 150 officers and 1,200 men, of whom 60 officers and 360 go with the two squadrons.
When the call of duty came to Vikrant in the latter months of 1971, as it happened, the carrier was “gravely ill.” In August 1970 one of its four boilers had burst, and it could neither be replaced nor adequately repaired indigenously. The ship had thus been pronounced unsafe for action. With
a normal speed of 22 knots, in its present debilitated condition, Vikrant was not expected to do more than 14 knots, though actually on its big assignment in the Bay of Bengal during the 14-day war, it did as much as 19 knots.
As early as July 1971, Vikrant had moved from the Arabian Sea to the Eastern Fleet in the Bay of Bengal, “in case….” On December 3, following the Pakistani air attack, the orders went out between 6 and 7 P.M. to the two Fleets to steam out to their war stations. At 6.15 P.M. Vikrant led out its task force comprising the destroyer Rajput, two frigates Brahmaputra and Beas and two Petya antisubmarine patrol boats.
In the morning of December 4, the carrier was off Cox’s Bazar, and by 10.30 the first strike by six Seahawks was launched off the angled deck. Their targets were aircraft on the ground, hangars, gun positions, oil dumps and any warships in the area.
Their second strike was on Chittagong at 3.P.M. which hit the runway, the naval dockyards and the wireless station. Whereas there was hardly any opposition in Cox’s Bazar, at Chittagong ack-ack! opened up and hit one of Vikrant’s aircraft, which however returned home safely. The carrier lost no plane, and the one slightly damaged was repaired and was soon operational.
Meanwhile, the companion ships screening. Vikrant detected an enemy submarine snooping around in the area and immediately attacked. It was believed that the submarine, of the Daphne class, was destroyed.
While the jet Seahawks attacked in the day, the slower propeller-driven Alizes raided the targets by night, keeping the Pakistani occupation forces along the coast on pins and thorns all the time. The Vikrant cruised up and down, now pounding suspected military traffic on the rivers, now bombarding the ports of Khulna, Chalna and Mangla in
the north-west and Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar in the south-east.
Vikrant’s exploits reached their peak when on December 12 its aircraft bombed several escaping ships in the Chittagong harbour, setting them on fire, and blasted two gun positions and the army barracks. The Eastern Fleet’s operations climaxed with a combined operation on December 14/15 when its landing craft landed troops at Cox’s Bazar. Indeed, it would be correct to say that the naval war in the east was Vikrant’s war. At the end of it all, the Eastern Fleet did not suffer even a scratch.
Pakistan maintained four townclass gunboats and two dozen smaller gunboats to guard the coast and the rivers of East Bengal, which were all hunted down and sunk. In all, 30 gunboats and nine ships were sent to the bottom around the East Bengal coast.
Initially, the Eastern Fleet had been instructed strictly to concentrate on military targets along the East Bengal coast. But after December 11, following the news of the US 7th Fleet Task Force speeding to the Bay of Bengal with the ostensible object of rescuing General Niazi and his troops from the mess they had made for themselves in Bangladesh, the Eastern Fleet was instructed to go all out and destroy port installations and facilities as well as ships. On December 12 Vikrant’s cannons and air. craft reduced to blazing shambles the ports of Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar, the likely rendezvous of the US Task Force on the East Bengal.coast.
Yet another feather in the Eastern Fleet’s cap was the smooth launching of the combined operation on December 15, when an army assault group comprising some 2,000 troops and their equipment was transported in the merchant vessel Vishva Vijay from Calcutta and landed by lc’s in Cox’s Bazar.
Straining at the leash for 24 years, with three wars passing them by, the Indian Navy now seized with both hands the opportunity to prove their mettle. They opened their chapter with a “great spectacular” that dazzled their countrymen and compelled notice from the world.
On December 4, at 2200 hours, the Indian Navy bearded the Pak Navy in its own lair. A task force ventured right into the Karachi waters, engaged Pak naval vessels in a forty-minute battle and sank four of them. The task force then steamed inshore and bombarded the Karachi harbour and blew up the port installations and set ablaze the oil storage tanks. The task force returned home, without any loss or damage to itself.
The Pakistani Navy was completely taken napping so much so that it did not even seriously attempt to hit back. Nor did the PAF intervene—the IAF had seen to it by an earlier air assault on the city’s military airfield which put the Pak airforce off balance and kept it immobilized.
The initial battle was fought 25 miles off Karachi harbour and was conceded to be the largest naval action since the 1939-45 War. The Indian task force sank the Pak battleclass destroyer Khaibar (2325 tons), and another destroyer Shah Jehan (1710 tons), besides two 335-ton minesweepers Tughril and Tippu Sultan. This performance was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the naval base at Karachi was reputed to have installed powerful defences and that its Navy, operating as it did from its home ground, was qualitatively as well as numerically superior to its adversary. Besides Khaibar and Shah Jehan and the two minesweepers, the Pakistan Navy had in the Karachi waters three other warships Badr, Babur and Alamgir, apart from other smaller vessels.
The performance was repeated on December 8 night when another task force steamed right in
and bombarded Karachi once again and destroyed whatever was left of it from the last attack. This time more fuel storage tanks were set on fire, so much so that passing ships and airliners reported a glow in the skies over the city for miles around for some days. Over fifty per cent of the fuel requirements of the Karachi zone was reported to have been blown up, which struck a severe blow to the Pakistani war machine.
Once bitten twice shy, the Pakistani naval vessels on this occasion, sought to dodge the Indian attack by steaming into the midst of the scores of merchant ships anchored in the harbour. Nevertheless, the second action accounted for five more ships. Thereafter the Pakistan Navy was neither seen nor heard of.
From all accounts, the Petya antisubmarine patrol boats and the Osa missile boats, acquired from the Soviet Union, proved an asset during the two naval assaults on the Pakistan Navy in its very bastion. The Petya boats were most effective and the Osa missile boats were deadly on their targets. Indeed, the use of the Osa missile against shore targets was an innovation resorted to by the Indian Navy.
Meanwhile, another unit of the task force patrolled the Makran coast stretching northwestwards to the Iranian border, paying special attention to Gwadur, the second port of West Pakistan
On their way home, the task force captured a Pakistani merchant vessel the Madhumati carrying cotton to Japan.
Then came a tragedy. On the night of Decem ber 9, the 1200-ton antisubmarine frigate Khukri was hunting the enemy off the Kathiawar coast. Off Diu the ship was suddenly hit by three torpedoes at intervals of a few seconds. Khukri sank in less than three minutes. And thereby hangs a noble tale of heroism.
As the survivors swam away from the sinking ship, some of them looked back and saw the ship going down, and the sea closing over the bridge. And they saw Captain Mulla seated in the chair of the captain on the bridge, as the ship went down. Keeping company with him was Lieutenant-commander Joginder Krishen Suri. Captain Mahendra Nath Mulla, 45, in the highest tradition of the Navy, preferred to stand by his 18 officers and 176 sailors who went down with the Khukri.
The report says: When Captain Mulla realized that the ship could not be saved, he gave orders to abandon ship and then directed his second-in-command, Lt.-Commander Suri to cast life boats, rafts and buoys into the sea. Many of the younger, inexperienced sailors preferred the false security of the sturdy steel deck under their feet to the unknown dangers of the black sea. The Captain himself pushed them into safe waters, directing them to swim away. When one of them offered Captain Mulla a lifejacket, he brushed him away with the words, “Go on, save yourself, do not worry about
me.”
There was no confusion, no panic, because the Captain’s calm had transmitted itself to his men, said the UNI report. Six officers and 61 sailors were the sole survivors left to tell the heroic story.
Besides the Khukri, the Western Fleet lost one shore-based Alize aircraft.
The biggest prize of the sea war was annexed by the Eastern Fleet on the very opening night, by way of a grand premiere for the great spectacular.” It happened off the Indian naval base of Vishakhapatnam on the night of December 3. Round about midnight, destroyer Rajput detected on its sonar the presence of a submarine a few miles off the entrance channel. It promptly delivered depth charges. Finding no immediate underwater reaction, Rajput moved away on to its assignment un
aware of the unique prize it had bagged.
Nearly half an hour later, a stupendous under water explosion was heard by the people around and near the locality, and indeed the blast smashed quite a few window-panes around. Two days later, in the morning two fishermen brought to the naval authorities at Vishakhapatnam a torn life-jacket with American markings on it. Navy divers and frogmen immediately went down at the spot indicated by the fishermen, and they saw the Ghazi, Pakistan Navy’s pride, lying on the floor of the sea with a broken nose. The submarine had gone down with 200 men aboard. This was the heaviest misfortune suffered by the Pak Navy.
The Ghazi, 2400 tons when submerged, was 311 feet long and carried ten 21″ torpedoes and had a speed of 20 knots on surface and 10 knots under water. It had a range of 14,000 miles, which means it could keep at sea for a month at a stretch. The Ghazi had steamed out of Karachi in mid-November and slunk into the Bay of Bengal by the end of the month so as to be in its allotted war station on the pre-determined D-day on December 3, on the scent of Vilcrant.
The Eastern Fleet also captured two 8,000-ton Pakistani merchant vessels Anwar Baksh and Baqir, two tugs and half a dozen other ships trying to escape under false names and colours, flying Liberian, Panamanian, American, British or Japanese flags. In addition, it seized eight other ships under charter to Pakistan Government. Yet another mer chant vessel, Pasni, 3535 tons, was captured in the far south by the Southern Naval area. At least ten ships with contraband were intercepted and taken to Calcutta port.
The blockade of the East Bengal ports was so perfect that Pakistani troops fleeing south to the port of Barisal found themselves trapped, while 16 to 20 enemy gunboats hugged the shore, not dar
ing to venture out to sea, only to be rounded up later.
The two Fleets, in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, between them, sank 22 Pakistani vessels during the 14-day fighting. The Indian Navy lost only one ship
Besides the combat role in war, the Navy carri. ed out contraband duty along the extensive 3,500mile coast of the sub-continent. An idea of the magnitude of this task could be had from the fact that one naval vessel alone challenged and identified 120 ships around Ceylon.
During the period 24 ships suspected of carrying contraband were apprehended; three vessels were still detained in Calcutta and Bombay ports. Seventeen ships were examined and released; four vessels were asked to off-load their cargo. In addition, 61 ships were intercepted in South Arabian Sea and northern Indian Ocean. Further, 36 tankers were visually identified as transiting to and from the Gulf ports, which were not intercepted.
Organizing harbour security all along the lengthy coast was yet another duty assigned to the Navy. It lay at three levels: local, the sea approaches and the high seas. This time fishing in the coastal seas was not banned, but instead the fishermen’s cooperation was enlisted and they were encouraged to go out to sea and report any suspicious movement around.
The fishermen were organized and familarized with charts and photographs of various kinds of ships and instructed as to what a submarine or a frogman looked like. Indeed, in one instance, in Tamilnadu, fishermen brought to the naval authorities some foreigners swimming in the sea suspecting their motives. The fisherfolk carried out their assigned tasks with much patriotic zeal and intelligence.
The military collapse of Pakistan both in the
east and the west much sooner than expected underlined the role that a navy can play to strangle the enemy’s economy by sealing it off from external supplies. Indeed, the navy can provide not only the bridge that links two countries but also the unfordable moat that isolates them from each other.
The Indian Navy’s performance in this war de monstrated the effective part that a navy can and must play in not only protecting the security of a maritime country but also in hastening its victory in war. This war further underlined another vital aspect of the Navy’s role which is to project a country’s image among its neighbours in a manner neither the army nor the air force can ever do.
The new geo-political picture of South Asia emerging from the 14-day war emphasizes India’s status as the major power in the entire region from the Suez to the Straits of Malacca, heaping more responsibility on the Indian Navy.
Neither the Government nor the Parliament hereafter dare treat the Navy as the Cinderella of the three Services. It has now earned and deserved a better deal from the Finance Ministry.
The Indian Navy’s place in the vast Indian Ocean area is further stressed by the fact that this ocean is now increasingly becoming the focus of attention from the two super Powers. The Soviet Fleet has already marked its presence in this ocean. So has the US Navy. Indonesia is expanding and re-structuring its navy with the help of the U.S.A. In the extreme south on either flank of the Indian Ocean, the South African and Australian navies are equally alert.
In this context, the Indian Navy must be ade quately equipped to play its due role in the region. This means that her present shoe-string budget would not do. If the Indian Navy is to deliver the goods, it must modernize itself and speedily eliminate its deficiencies.

In a modern navy the submarine occupies a supreme place. The four submarines that the Indian Navy possesses are woefully inadequate for the country’s vast maritime security needs, considering that another large country in the Asian region, name ly China has 35 submarines. India must aim at a fleet of at least 18 submarines, i.e., three squadrons of six subs each-so that each of the three naval commands gets a squadron. Similarly, the Indian Navy must equip itself with at least eighteen dualpurpose modern frigates that could also do antisubmarine work.
It is equally imperative that India should acquire one more carrier carrying vertical take-off aircraft and helicopters. Further, in view of the enormous radius of its operations in the vast Indian Ocean, it is essential that the Navy should equip itself with at least two replenishment ships, one each for the Western and Eastern Fleets, in order to give them a measure of self-sufficiency and save them the need to come all the way to their bases for replenishment.
The Andamans and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal (700 miles from the Indian coast) and the Laccadives in the Arabian Sea (200 miles from the Indian coast) should play a more effective role than hitherto in India’s schemes for its maritime security. The farthest of the Nicobar islands is less than a hundred miles from Sumatra, while being so remote from India. It is vital that these faraway islands should be converted into an Indian naval bastion at the entrance to the Straits of Malacca, so as to guarantee security in the Bay of Bengal.
It is also time that the Indian Navy made a beginning with a naval commando formation on the lines of the Marines, possibly attached to a helicopter carrier. Such a formation will prove its utility in case of any threat to the distant and isolated Indian island territories scattered both in the Bay of
Bengal and the Arabian Sea.
A concomitant of such a concept of India’s navy is the need to build adequate dockyard capacity and port facilities to support it and then also appropriate coastal defence installations along the lengthy seaboard.
All this is a necessity and not a luxury for maritime power of India’s size, particularly in the new geopolitical context. By virtue of her status and situation in South Asia, India owes it to itself as well as to its neighbours that it should have an adequately powerful navy to underwrite the maritime security and peace of the entire region, comprising India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon. By its performance in the December 1971 war, the Indian Navy has demonstrated that it can do justice to that task. But the country must give it the tools to carry out the job.

“The Fourth Element”
THE BSF (Border Security Force) came of age
during the 1971 Indo-Pak conflict, though it was only six years old. The explanation is that BSF is a precocious child, about whom its Director General Mr. K. F. Rustomji said, “Give them a stick I and they will make a gun out of it!”
Indeed, to hear Mr. Rustomji talk about his Force is to listen to a proud father speaking of his favourite son. “It is a fine force. Always in good spirits. So full of fun and laughter. Wherever they are, they seem to make the place romantic,” he told Melville de Mellow in a TV interview. And he even added, “I sometimes think that if you want to search for a really rugged Mr. India, you can find him in the BSF.”
And then it was difficult to stop the fond parent. He went on : “I think I must mention two things about the BSF. First is that they have an infinite capacity for improvisation. Secondly they carry out orders intelligently. Give them any duty, and it seems after they have done it, that they have been trained to do it from the very start.” This is great praise from an outstanding veteran police officer.
The magnificent, human and valorous role played by the BSF in Bangladesh as well as in the West corroborates Mr. Rustomji’s praise. For the Army the Bangladesh war was a quick two-week affair. But for the BSF it all started nine months earlier,
and it was much more than a straight military campaign. To them it was also an intensely human experience, in which they offered succour to the needy and distressed who streamed from across the border; solace and moral and material support to the depressed freedom fighters. To the Pakistan Army the BSF was a dreaded and hated foe that needed to be punished but was tantalisingly beyond their reach. The BSF came to be emotionally involved in Bangladesh’s struggle for liberation.
In the West, when Pakistan suddenly opened an offensive along the Punjab and J & K border, it was the BSF, manning the border posts, that took and absorbed the first shock and blunted the surprise in the attack. Meanwhile the Indian army moved in and continued the battle. For the BSF were the custodians and watchdog of the 1,400 miles border in the West and 1,200 miles border in the East. How effective the BSF was in the fighting on both fronts was underlined by the scores of gallantry awards won by its officers and jawans.
The esteem in which the Mukti Bahini held the comrades of the BSF was expressed in a message to the BSF Chief from Col. M. A. G. Osmani, Commander-in-Chief, Bangladesh Forces, dated December 7, 1971. “Casting my thoughts back over the hard, often frustrating, course of our liberation war, I recall the heartening and unreserved sup. port of an outstanding nature from the BSF,” wrote Col. Osmani. “My dedicated commanders and forces in the field had developed a sense of very close bond of comradeship with the BSF which they deeply value and which will endure.”
The refugees who came in their hundreds were received with kindness and sympathy by members of the force and offered food and medical treatment and guided to the nearest camp. Freedom fighters chased to the border by the Pakistani troops, found ready shelter and sympathy from the BSF border
posts on this side of the frontier, and with their moral and material batteries thus recharged, they plunged back into the liberation struggle.
Such refuge and solace in the earlier days of the desperate struggle, when the prospect before them seemed bleak, indeed proved invaluable to the Mukti Bahini youths. But that also attracted Pakistani wrath in the shape of attacks, artillery fire and later armed intrusions into Indian territory.
Ghojadanga and Boyra in 24-Parganas district, Gede and Shikarpur in Nadia district, Kaharpara and Khandua in Murshidabad district, Mahadipur and Dangi in Malda district, Samjhia, Radhikapur and Chakram in West Dinajpur district, Chaulhati and Khalpara in Jalpaiguri district, and Hemkumari and Gitaldah in Cooch-Behar district were frequent targets of Pak artillery fire and intrusions.
The BSF of course suffered casualties, but stood their ground and soon began to hit back and inflict heavy losses on the enemy. When normal methods to curb the enemy activities failed, BSF patrols crossed the border to destroy the enemy dens at Cilhati, Dangapara and Haripur.
The Pakistanis sent two gunboats to the Ichamati to intimidate the BSF men at Shamshernagar. The gunboats received a hot reception from the BSF, who sank one and crippled the other. The latter lay in the Khulna naval dockyard until it was later sent to the bottom by BSF rockets.
After the formal war broke out on December 3, the BSF fought side by side with the Indian Army. Broadly speaking, the BSF operated west of the Brahmaputra, while the Mukti Bahini functioned east of the great river. But the BSF was mixed with the Bahini as well as the army all over. They help ed liberate and held places like the Tetulia bulge and the Patgram bulge in Rangpur district and a number of enclaves on the Tripura border against repeated enemy attacks. In Tripura the Force took
part in every action along with the Army in clearing the Balonia bulge.
In many areas such as Dinajpur and Rajshahi the BSF fought fierce battles on their own, while in others they moved in support of the Army, protected the latter’s flanks, liquidated pockets of resistance and held the ground captured while the army moved on to its next target. For example, the BSF captured Nawabganj on its own and then when Rajshahi fell to the Army, the BSF took over the town. It joined the flotilla that attacked the river ports of Chalna, Mangla and Khulna. The BSF also took charge of the prisoners of war, guarded the arsenals and ammunition dumps.
When the Army moved down on Dinajpur on the Pachagarh-Boda-Ruhia axis, the BSF moved along the flanks and tackled Atwari, Lahiri, Phultala, Hariharpur, Debiganj, Jayganj and Khansama on either side. As the Army moved swiftly from one target to another, the BSF encircled the bypassed Pakistani garrisons and engaged them. It was in the course of such operations that the BSF reduced Gomnati, Domar, Dimla, Niliphamari and Krishanganj in Rangpur district.
In the toughest of the battles at Hili, the BSF had its own part to play. They also established the bridgeheads for the army at several points. The Force provided the base and support in the Mukti Bahini’s bid to hold on to the Tentulia and the Patgram salients which served as the springboards for the Army following the outbreak of hostilities.
By its intensive activity at Petropole, the BSF misled the Pakistanis into believing that the Indian Army’s main thrust was coming from that direction which led him to building defensive fortifications in depth on the approaches to Jessore, while the Indians’ thrust came along the Boyra-Chaugacha axis and surprised the garrison in Jessore from the cantonment side.
In the assault on Nageswari, in Rangpur district, the BSF were in the very forefront. It was in this engagement, as early as November 20, that the interpid I. S. Uppal laid down his life in a bid to silence enemy guns. An enemy machinegun mounted on a house-top was proving a grave menace to a BSF position on the north bank of the Phulkumari, on the Bangladesh border. Commandant Inderjit Singh Uppal led his own machinegun group to a position from where he could threaten the enemy machinegun at close range. In broad daylight, from an exposed point, he effectively engaged the Pakistanis. While advancing to a new position, at the head of his unit, he got a full blast of sweeping machinegun fire from the enemy and succumbed to his injuries on the spot. Uppal was awarded the Vir Chakra (posthumous).
While in the east, the BSF had to play a more subtle role, in the western theatre, they were up to the neck in the fighting, side by side with the army. Indeed they were literally the first line of defence. They took the initial blows when Pakistan suddenly attacked all along the 1400-mile border.
Up north they were manning the high altitude, snow-covered pickets of Kashmir, fighting the very elements. They independently held the northern gullies from Tilel Valley to Karen and foiled every enemy attempt to intrude into the Kashmir Valley. They also stood guard around Poonch and Rajouri to block the infiltrators from Pak-occupied Kashmir. In the fierce fighting in the Chhamb sector, the Force made their own contribution of blood and lives to the country’s defence.
But it was in the Punjab that the BSF proved their mettle and displayed rare doggedness and bravery. In this sector the jawans of the Force withstood some of the heaviest shelling of the war and threw back repeated enemy attacks on Indian forward posts. No wonder then that the BSF suf
fered its heaviest casualties in the Punjab sector and the enemy took a disproportionately large number of prisoners from among them.
If the Pakistani initial surprise assault failed to attain their objective of piercing the Indian defences and getting into Amritsar, the credit should entirely go to the BSF. For, once the Indian Army was alerted and got into position behind prepared positions, the Pakistanis had not the ghost of a chance of breaking through.
For example, the heroism displayed by Head Constable Mohinder Singh at the Border Outpost at Ranian in Amritsar sector needs to be commemorated in letters of gold. On December 3 evening, the Pakistanis launched a massive attack on his BOP in the expectation that the slender BSF resistance would instantly crumble and leave the road from Ranian to Amritsar open for them.
Mohinder Singh, with two of his comrades, took up positions to meet the enemy onslaught while shells whizzed around them. HC Mohinder Singh and his two comrades were in an advanced listen ing post, about 200 yards ahead of the BOP when the Pak attack opened. Shells rained on their positions for nearly an hour, they stood their ground. When the shelling stopped, Mohinder Singh sighted a two-company enemy formation advancing on his BOP. Immediately he withdrew with his men to warn his post mates of the impending attack.
Mr. Ashwini Kumar, IG, Western Sector, BSF (in an article in The States Jan. 8, 1972) has vividly described the action that followed, in the following words:
“The enemy mounted a frontal attack on the BOP but this was repulsed by our men. The enemy regrouped and made another assault on the BOP. This time again it was forced to lick the dust. The invaders then mounted a third attack, and fired rockets and laid down a heavy volume of LMG and
MMG fire to blast our positions. Indeed, the enemy advanced to a position barely 15 yards from the LMG bunker commanded by HC Mohinder Singh. Undaunted and unmindful of his personal safety, HC Mohinder Singh got out of his bunker and exhorted his men to annihilate the enemy. As the Pakistanis advanced towards his bunker, he shot a number of them. So determined was his stand that the Pakistanis beat a hasty retreat. During this engagement Mohinder Singh was hit by a burst of MMG fire, which mortally wounded him. But before he succumbed to his injuries, he clubbed an enemy intruder to death with his weapon.”
Yet another outstanding performance by the Border Force in the western theatre was witnessed in the Mamdot sector of the Punjab border. Initially the BSF personnel were ordered to withdraw from the BOP’s at Joginder and Raja Mohtam for tactical reasons and the enemy occupied them. Subsequently, fresh orders were issued to recapture those outposts.
Assistant Commandant R. K. Wadhwa led a twoplatoon attack on Raja Mohtam, now held by a full company of the enemy, armed with sophisticated weapons. The area was mined and surrounded by barbed wire meshwork. Wadhwa wrested the outpost from a numerically superior adversary. The enemy launched a series of counter-attacks, which were all frustrated; but in one of the attacks, a shell landed close to Mr. Wadhwa’s bunker and killed him.
In the Longenvala battle, in the Rajasthan sector, the BSF shared the honours with the Army and then fought in the flanks when the Army launched a thrust in the Khokhrapar-Naya Chor axis in Sind. In the far South, the BSF operated all on their own when they captured the entire Nagarparkar bulge and then the Chad Bet region, in all totalling over 2,000 square miles.
The BSF has a small navy of its own in the shape of a water wing for the protection of West Bengal’s riverine border south of Calcutta. Although it is based on two old slow-moving tugs and a few smaller boats, it has the distinction of having sunk an enemy gunboat. The water wing continued to patrol the riverine area in the face of the enemy troops holding their side of the bank and frequently engaging these slow-moving boats. But they always returned to base though riddled with bullets.
But the story of the BSF would be incomplete if an account of its “extra-curricular activities is not included here. Besides guarding the border the BSF personnel are deeply involved in development and welfare activity in the region in which they operate. Unlike the Army, the BSF are permanently based in the border region, and here they occupy their leisure usefully by building local roads, bridges and nullahs, running schools for local children, attending to the inhabitants’ medical needs and ensuring sanitation in the villages. They even helped farmers to learn new methods of cultivation and participated in agricultural extension programmes.
As their very name implies, the Border Security Force’s primary duty is to guard the security of the country along its border, which however em braces such varied tasks as prevention of smuggling and infiltration, protection of life and property and the border people against depredations from the other side, dealing with minor intrusions and collection of intelligence.
During the critical nine months following the Pak Army’s crackdown in Bangladesh on March 25, 1971 the BSF, keeping vigil along the frontier, was a valuable source of information on the happenings in that troubled land. It served as a link between the East Bengali freedom fighters and their Indian sympathisers. In later months, the BSF ran scores
of training camps for the freedom fighters and generally served as the latter’s friend, guide and philosopher in their darkest hour.
No wonder then that Mr. Rustomji bubbles with praise for the BSF. “You know the BSF is such a boisterous force and every day they show amazing daring and audacity, because they are so youthful and full of spirits,” he said in his TV interview. “It is extraordinary-five of them rode on camels into a (Pak) post on the border in Rajasthan, and drove the people away from there with grenades,” he recalled. “One of our boats with about 365 holes in it from a previous encounter, sailed up the river, went up to Khulna and attacked a Pak boat and sank it.
All the time, they made do with old and outdated weapons of all types repaired in their own workshops. They fought the Pakistan Army with the ancient .303 rifle and old-type LMGS and 2″ and 3″ mortars. They have moved astonishingly fast over vast distances and over all kinds of natural and man-made obstacles, thanks to their skill at improvisation and personal initiative at lower levels which is greatly encouraged.
Their role and performance in the December war has however strengthened their case to be better armed with such modern weapons as recoilless guns, artillery, anti-tank missiles and rocket-launchers. The BSF’s counterparts in China and the Soviet Union are equipped with the same sophisticated weaponry as given to their regular army.
Now that the BSF’s capacity has been tested and their varied roles in war fully demonstrated, it is to be hoped that the Government will upgrade this splendid force and arm them more effectivelysince among other things, they are also expected to fight a war!
The nation acknowledged the services rendered by the Border Security Force during the 14-day war
by awarding 110 decorations to its men. They in cluded one Param Vishista Seva Medal, one Maha Vir Chakra, nine Vir Chakras, three Vishista Seva Medals, 37 Sena medals and 24 Mentioned in Dispatches

The Mukti Bahini
WITHOUT the support of the Mukti Bahini, how
much longer would it have taken the Indian Army to reach Dacca ?
One senior Indian Army officer thought it might have made a difference of two more weeks. But in the peculiar circumstances obtaining, could India allord to spend four weeks on the operation, with out risking an UN intrusion and even a military intervention from Pakistan’s influential friends like the USA and China?
Indeed, it was later apparent that the Task Force of the US Seventh Fleet dispatched to the Bay of Bengal by Washington was intended to undermine the Indian offensive in Bangladesh and deflect the Indian Air Force and Navy to the American Task Force, so as to give the much-needed breathing time for General Niazi and his garrison in Dacca.
It seems fairly likely therefore that if the campaign had been prolonged by another two weeks, its political and military objective might have slipped out of India’s hands.
General Jagjit Singh Aurora, GOC-in-C, Eastern Command, in charge of the Bangladesh operation, himself assigned a fortnight to 18 days for the completion of his task. The Pakistani Army Headquarters at Pindi were looking forward to a war lasting at least three months, by which time Yahya Khan expected his friends in the international community
to pull his badly burnt chestnuts out of the fire.
On the other hand, Moscow was believed to have been pressing India hard to finish the job in Bangladesh in 10 days, and as it dragged on beyond that deadline, the Kremlin was reported to be getting somewhat impatient and no wonder, since the Soviet representative at the UN Security Council had by then already exercised his veto for the third time, and passionately desired to save himself fur. ther embarrassment.
Actually, by the tenth day, it was clear that the Pakistani Army had lost the gamble in the east, and it was only the obduracy of President Yahya Khan that was preventing General Niazi from throwing in the towel. By the twelfth day, even Yahya Khan had to concede defeat in the east.
So, the two crucial weeks saved by the Mukti Bahini made all the difference to the campaign and its outcome.
But without the Indian Army’s intervention, how long would the Mukti Bahini have taken to liberate Bangladesh from West Pakistani colonial rule ?
Colonel (now Major-General) M. A. G. Osmani, Commander-in-Chief, Bangladesh military forces, expressed the view that if the Indian Army had kept out, the Mukti Bahini would have driven out the West Pakistani military rulers from Bangladesh in another ten months.” In support of his view Col. Osmani pointed at the rising tempo of Mukti Bahini activity in November, which made things so hot for the Pak rulers in Dacca that they lost their mental poise and started butchering people indiscriminately.
As against this view, however, there are those who think that if the Indian Army had not in tervened, the Bangladesh struggle for liberation would have inordinately prolonged and possibly degenerated into a Vietnam, with an unpredictable political outcome. They were not sure that the ill
armed and hastily trained Mukti Bahini men could have successfully stood up against the brutally ruthless, professional Pakistani Army, equipped with the most sophisticated modern weapons, who were out to liquidate the Bengalis as a cultural and political entity through a cold blooded, systematic genocide and to breed in its place a new race “truly Islamic” and loyal to Pakistan.
Foreign observers, including journalists and diplomats, who continued to reside in Dacca during the critical months preceding the outbreak of war on December 3, however throw revealing light on the state of jitters induced among the rulers in Dacca by the activities of the Mukti Bahini, which were intensifying from day to day. That suggested that the occupation regime in Dacca could not have endured very much longer.
The AFP correspondent in Dacca reported on November 14 that official announcements of clashes between Pakistani troops and the guerillas indicated that all 19 districts of East Bengal had been hit by guerilla activity. “Official communiques reveal. ed a field of (Bahini) action stretching from Chittagong in the south to Dinajpur in the north, and from the Sylhet district in the east to Khulna and Kushtia in the west,” the correspondent cabled. “Meanwhile, acts of violence continued to shake the provincial capital, Dacca, and its surrounding areas, despite stepped up security measures.”
The dispatch then went on to catalogue a series of exploits by the guerillas, which named the blowing up, part of the railway station at Darsana in Kushtia, a wave of violence in Narayanganj, a fire, in Khulna and a bomb explosion and shooting incidents galore in Dacca itself. The most serious of the incidents was a raid by Mukti Bahini commandoes on Pak Army positions at the railway station and bazar at Saldanadi and Nayanpur Bazar, with heavy artillery and mortar fire. The commandoes were re
ported to have smashed forty Pak bunkers and kill: ed 30 Pak soldiers.
The APA correspondent in Dacca cabled: “The Mukti Bahini men are strongest in areas where they are helped by geography. In the maze of creeks, rivers and hidden islands along the Bay of Bengal, the Mukti Bahini fighters roam about freely. Accord ing to eyewitnesses, freedom fighters with sten guns and helmets occupy schools and barracks and walk unhindered along the main road skirting the paddy swamps of the central Faridpur district-home of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.”
Of Dacca, the AP correspondent wrote: “The Mukti Bahini fighters operate more intensely and openly in Dacca. The eastern part of the city has become a daily target of bombings and shootings. Green Road near the Dhanmondi residential districts, has become a no-man’s land where the libe. ration forces and Razakars exchange fire in the night. The guerillas in hijacked gunboats stolen from Khulna have shelled ships coming to the jute port of Chalna. This threat to shipping has major economic implications. … The liberation forces continue to command loyalty. Hostility to the Army is undisguised.”
The dispatch then significantly adds: “(Pak) Army officers are anxious to strike back at the enemy-which they contend is India, allegedly backing the guerillas with troops, artillery and arms. They are impatient at orders restraining them from crossing the border.”
Malcolm Browne of the New York Times after a visit to East Bengal wrote that the foreigner quickly realized that the Mukti Bahini volunteers were everywhere-in hotels, banks, shops, foreign consulates and business and even in Government offices …. “All the time the guerillas go on cutting roads, bridges and waterways, sabotaging electricity, gas and petroleum supplies, sinking government sup
ply ships, assassinating officials and collaborators and forcing the Pakistani authorities to wall themselves literally and psychologically.”
These and other on-the-spot eye-witness accounts S suggest that Col. Osmani could have been right
when he claimed that unaided by the Indian Army, his liberation forces might indeed have driven out the Pakistani rulers from his country in about ten months’ time. For those accounts prove that the Mukti Bahini activities were fast”ripening” the country for liberation by demonstrating to the Pak colonial rulers that they could not sit on a bayonet for long
Thus when the Indian Army sprang on the scene on the midnight of December 3, the Mukti Bahini had prepared the ground for them through a lot of spade-work, and were ready to welcome the Indian troops at various points on the border and guide them to the interior along the shortest routes, help them with transportation, supply them with valuable intelligence about enemy movements and positions, besides ambushing the enemy troops and cutting off their communication lines. All these are invaluable services for an outside army in a hurry to get to its military objective.
Before the outbreak of war, the task before the //Mukti Bahini was to deny communications to the
enemy, and attrition. After December 3, their role enlarged (a) to work on the flanks of the enemy. (b) to be in the van of the Indian troops and (c) to stoke local hostility against the enemy. Soon after the fighting began, the Mukti Bahini was brought under common command with the Indian troops and worked jointly as a cohesive force.
The Mukti Bahini itself was divided into two formations: (1) the regulars, who fought side by side
with the Indian troops; and (2) the guerillas or the // Gona Bahini. The regulars comprised three briga
des, whose role was to sit behind the enemy, cut
ting off their retreat, destroy their communications and prepare the Allied (India) troops’ approaches and also carry out a combination of envelopment and guerilla action and destroy the enemy.
In the first week of December, the Mukti Bahini regulars excelled themselves by capturing a series of three or four positions in the Saldanadi areaJoymonirhat, Dormar, Dimla and Joldhaka in the north. In the second week, they captured Chattak, a river-road-rail centre, in the Sylhet area. Soon after, they also captured Sylhet, Akhaura, Brahman baria, north of Akhaura and Feni in the south, thereby cutting off the fleeing enemy’s retreat to the port of Chittagong.
The Mukti Bahini had its own naval and airforce wings. The naval wing which included trained frogmen carried out some of the most daring exploits and destroyed 100,000 tons of shipping. The naval wing’s area of activity was Mangla, Chitta. gong, Chandpur, Narayanganj and the Padma and Brahmaputra rivers. Since August 1971, they sank or damaged 25 Pakistani ships. On one day, November 15, they sent to the bottom six ships, including three in the Chalna-Mangla area.
The air wing comprised two helicopters and one Otter fitted to carry rockets, and one Dakota, besides 20 pilots from PAF, who of course mostly had to take up ground roles.
Gen. Niazi, the martial law administrator and military commander in East Bengal and Governor 5 A. N. Malik could hardly keep any secrets which I did not get into the hands of the Mukti Bahini and
through them to Indian Army. Every decision, plan and move by Dacca promptly reached the Indian army authorities.
Thus when in the concluding stages of the war secret plans were hatched in the Cantonment in Dacca for the evacuation of the Pak troops by river and sea, every detail of the plan was in the hands
of the Indian HQ, and Gen. Manekshaw immediately issued a warning to Gen. Niazi against any such attempt and again asking him to surrender. It was following similar information received that the Indian Eastern Air Command ordered an airstrike on the Government House in Dacca at midday on De. cember 12 when Governor Malik was holding a meeting of his cabinet and precipitated their resignation en masse.
In reverse, the Pakistani forces scattered in penny packets along the border and at strategic road points were completely cut off by the Mukti Bahini and isolated from each other and from the headquarters in Dacca. This largely contributed to the demoralization of the Pak troops “marooned” in their respec. tive positions without either instructions from higher authorities or knowledge of what exactly was happening around them.
No wonder then that Gen. Niazi, after surrender, remarked 🙂 “They (Mukti Bahini) made me blind and deaf.”y
The total strength of the Mukti Bahini was said to be 100.000, of whom some 30,000 were regulars and the rest were freedom fighters or guerillas comprising young patriots flocking to the banner and getting hurriedly trained to fight the hated Pakistanis and avenge the horrors perpetrated by them on the Bengalis.
The hard core of the regulars section of the Mukti Bahini was the Bengali officer and jawan element of the old Bengal Regiment, the East Pakistan Rifles and Armed Bengal Police. Around this nucleus were speedily built up eight battalions of the Bangladesh regiment.
The Indian Border Security Force took a big hand incorrerting young, zealous students into trained guerillas. A number of other agencies, mostly non-official and some even semi-official, helped to open more than fifty guerilla training camps
for the Mukti Bahini all along the border. While the first batch of 700 trained guerillas was inducted in the Faridpur area by the end of May, 1971, it was not till the middle of August that a trained force, impressive in number and quality was put in the field.
In the beginning there was some difficulty in getting the requisite quantity and right kind of arms for these men. By September this bottleneck was resolved. Dr. Triguna Sen’s Bangladesh Friendship Society was the foremost among the organizations that helped the cause liberally with funds and in kind. Special hospitals and convalescent homes were established around the border for the Mukti Bahini wounded.
As the flow of arms to the Mukti Bahini improved, guerilla and commando activity intensified within Bangladesh. They now struck in Dacca. Up to September the ratio of casualties was I to 4 (Mukti Bahini to Pak Army); thereafter it rose to I to 15. Already by the end of September the Pak Army had suffered 25,000 casualties and they were replaced from sources like the paramilitary Frontier Force, Tochi Scouts and Khyber Scouts.
Some days before the crack-down on March 25, 1971, the tension between the Bengalis and the West Pakistanis was visibly growing and it had spread to the armed forces too. Many incidents including certain orders which suddenly transferred Bengali officers from their posts for no ostensi ble reason roused the suspicions of the Bengal offi cers and men in the armed forces and armed police. So when the traumatic night of March 25 came, quite a few of them were on guard.
Thus three of the eight battalions of the Bengal Regiment managed to escape from the holocaust of that night while two were in West Pakistan. Among those who survived were Major Ziaur Rahman with his 8th Battalion plus elements of the

East Pakistan Rifles in Chittagong, Major Shaukat Ali, with the rest of the 8th Battalion and EPR in the Chittagong Hill Tracts; Major Khalid Musharrof with the 4th Battalion in Comilla, and Major Shafiullah in Dacca with the 2nd Battalion, while Major Chittaranjan Dutta led a motley band of EPR. and armed Police in Sylhet.
The Bengal Regiment’s 3rd Battalion was massacred while asleep in the Rangpur-Dinajpur area, and the remnants fought their way out. The first battalion met disaster at Jessore, 122 of the men escaping under Capt. Hafizuddin. At Rajarbagh Police Lines in Dacca the armed Police held at bay for four hours a whole Pak battalion supported by tanks, while the outnumbered and outgunned de. fenders were decimated.
During the first week’s terror and confusion, no more than sporadic local resistance was offered by these patriotic officers of the Bangla Regiment who hastily organized the left-over Bengali elements of the units. There was hardly any coordination or even contact between these isolated resistance groups, while Tikka Khan’s juggernaut of repression rolled across the country seeking to crush everything under it.
Gradually these disjointed groups got into contact with each other and a semblance of coherent! resistance began to take shape. In April the battle of Ashuganj was fought in which the 2nd BR battalion fought against two Pak battalions for four hours and then extricated themselves after denying them river passage.
The same month, the provisional, government of | the Republie-of Bangladesh was established at Mujibnagar, and Col. Osmani was formally appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Mukti Bahini, and the defence forces began to get welded together. Separate training camps were established for the regulars of the Mukti Bahini, with the officers of
the old Bengal Regiment forming the nucleus. Promising young Bengalis were selected for training for the officer cadre and systematic recruitment started for the other ranks.
The new Bangladesh regular army comprised eight battalions distributed in ten sectors: (1) Chittagong and Chittagong Hill Tracts, and a portion of Feni; (2) Sylhet and most of Comilla and a large part of Dacca; (3) a portion of Comilla, part of Sylhet, the Kishoreganj subdivision of Mymensingh and part of Dacca; (4) the eastern portion of Sylhet; (5) north and north-west of Sylhet; (6) the district of Rangpur and Thakurgaon subdivision of Dinajpur; (7) the southern portion of Dinajpur, the districts of Rajshahi, Pabna and the bulk of Bogra; (8) the districts of Kushtia and Jessore and the bulk of Faridpur and a portion of Khulna; (9) the bulk of Khulna and the districts of Barisal and Putnakhali; and (10) Mymensingh minus the Kishoreganj subdivision, and the bulk of Tangail. /
Fuelled by patriotic fervour and consumed by an avenging spirit that demanded of them to get even with their oppressors, the Bengali youths’ guts and zeal to fight for their country evoked the admiration of those in charge of their training. These Bengalis, repeatedly taunted by the Pakistani rulers as puny, timid, non-martial, were now out to disprove that libel in the field of action-action against those very traducers.
It is no exaggeration to say that every family contributed their sons to the Mukti Bahini readily and proudly-the sons of course would have run away to the recruitment camps anyway, whether their parents approved or not!
One rich father told me of his son that until the boy ran away from home, he had considered him as a good for nothing, spoilt child, mollycoddled in an expensive public school, with extravagant mod tastes and lacking in a serious bent of mind. The boy
was now a commissioned officer in the Bangladesh Army and his dilemma is whether he should go back to college and resume his interrupted studies or retain his career in the Army. Thousands of other boys threw away their books and trekked to the border and begged to be accepted in the Mukti Ba hini so that they could, with their own hands, fight and kill the hated Pakistani and drive him out of their land.
“Brigadier” Qadir Siddiqui, the 23-year old, charismatic leader of a group of guerillas he himself raised and led in the Tangail district, is a typical example. This young man was a junior B.A. student, studying Civics, Economics and Islamic history, at the local college, when the Bangladesh struggle erupted. An otherwise shy boy but burning with patriotism, he gathered round him some 16,000 young men, including some professors who taught him at college, and played havoc with the enemy’s communications, ambushed their columns and convoys and blew up their ammunition dumps. Between Dacca and Tangail, a distance of some 60 miles, there is a river almost every six miles, and every one of the bridges over these rivers has been blown up. This was the handiwork of the Qadir Bahini, named after its leader Qadir Siddiqui.
The Qadir Bahini’s exploits included fifty ambushes of the Pakistani troops, 17 countryboats and two speedboats captured and 16 boats and one speedboat sunk during the months of May and June. Their biggest prize was the capture of a three-storied steamer, attacked and captured at Matikata, near Tangail. It carried 1,000 tons of ammunition for the Pak Army, which the Bahini took ten hours to unload and 99 boats to tranship. Their arsenal thereafter boasted of 4,000 to 5,000 arms, besides untold quantities of ammunition.
The-Qadir Bahini’s total score by the time of surrender was 3,000 Pakistanis, including two majors
killed, and 850 including two brigadiers, four colonels and two lieutenant-colonels and 18 majors taken prisoner. It is reported that every one of the aforementioned actions was led by “Brigadier” Qadir Siddiqui himself.
Indeed Siddiqui’s intrepid courage became legendary in the region, which covered the whole of Tangail district, four thanas of Mymensingh, five thanas of Dacca and three of Pabna. The total strength of the Qadir Bahini is claimed to be 16,000 to 17,000 trained and armed men, besides some 70,000 volunteers who do not carry any fire-arms.lt
Siddiqui sports a Castro beard and a mini-version of a trilby hat and wears a colourful green uniform and tall boots which look like riding footwear. He was the Bahini leader who hit the headlines by 1 organizing a public lynching of three al-Badr collaborators at a mass meeting in Dacca two days after Gen. Niazi’s surrender. Later he regretted his illtempered action, and through the good offices of the Indian Army, he made peace with the pre-Mujib Bangladesh Government and swore his allegiance to Col. Osmani as Commander-in-Chief of the Bang. ladesh Armed Forces, and also offered to lay down arms unconditionally.
“Brigadier” Siddiqui assured me that he himself was not interested in politics and was planning to go back to his studies. Earlier in the sixties Siddiqui was in the Pakistan Army but his elder brother, an Awami Leaguer and M.P.A. persuaded him to give up the army career and get back to school to complete his education. Siddiqui’s only connection with politics till then was that he was secretary of the local Students League, and he is said to be a powerful orator in Bengali.
Another group which refused to owe allegiance to Col. Osmani is the Mujib Bahini, largely composed of the radical Students League, whose leaders Sheikh Moni, Nur-ul-Alam Siddiqui Toffail and Siraj,
proved the most militant and recalcitrant in their attitude towards the Bangladesh Government until Mujib arrived on the scene. It is stated that the Mujib Bahini’s role was to get to strategic areas in Bangladesh and hold their fire until the Indian Army intervened and then fight the enemies of Bangladesh, which included not only Pakistanis but other anti-national extremist elements in the land –that is whoever tried to sabotage their hard-won freedom
This group, said to number a hard-core 6,000 and a total following of 20,000, is believed to be well trained and armed with sophisticated weapons. One of their leaders, at a public meeting towards the end of December, declared that they would refuse to lay down arms because their struggle had just begun and that only when that struggle was completed would they lay down arms. They swore by what they call “Mujibism” and declared that they would obey only Sheikh Mujib’s orders. Since then, under Mujib’s orders this group too is reported to have surrendered their arms.
Under the umbrella of the Gona Bahini are to be found represented such extreme ideological groups as the National Awami Party constituting 20 per cent and the CPI (Moni Singh) ten per cent apart from the Mujib Bahini (led by Sheikh Moni), 10 per cent, and the Qadir Bahini of Qadir Siddiqui, 16 per cent. All of them were sitting on large piles of arms obtained from various sources, but mainly looted from Pakistani arsenals, but some also acquired from across the border or smuggled from overseas. Indeed, the quantity of arms salted away in secret dumps all over the country, to be taken out at an appropriate time, is so large that for every weapon surrendered there would easily be five hidden away.
It is estimated that at the time of surrender of the Pak Army, there were 200,000 weapons un
licensed lying about in the country. Of these 100,000 were in the hands of guerillas; some 50,000 picked from the departing Pak Army and another 50,000 looted earlier from Pak arsenals and dumps. The other 100,000 must include the very large quantity of arms and ammunition handed by Pak authorities to the non-Bengalis and the Razakar and al-Badr elements among the Bengalis.
This is a land where every family counts a son or two in the Mukti Bahini and every family also bears deep scars of Yahya’s genocide in the shape of a father taken away never to be heard or a sister raped. And in the background are a myriad arms dumps. That is what makes the political situation in Bangladesh so combustible.
There are too many things which the people of Bangladesh will never forgive Islamabad, One gesture however made by President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto will be remembered. That is the release of their beloved leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at a moment when he was so badly needed in their midst. For Mujib alone could have defused the explosive situation simmering in Bangladesh following the liberation
One shudders to think what might have happened in Bangladesh if only Mujib had been kept away from his homeland for another month or two. Mr. Bhutto’s gesture may therefore yet serve in the remote future as a slender thread on which ties of friendship between the two separate States might be based

The Other Battles
TWO eminent Indian generals have expressed
the view that the Indian military intervention in Bangladesh should have been launched in April last, implying that so much circumspection was unwarranted. It is true that in April 1971, Islamabad was militarily much weaker in East Bengal, and therefore in a strictly military sense, the job could have been finished more comfortably and in equally quick time. But then there was more to it than military feasibility and favourable local conditions
India was here called upon to undertake an international action, and therefore its international implications had to be taken into consideration be fore launching on it. Recent evidence available further underlines the hazards involved in a premature military action in Bangladesh, bereft of the elaborate and painstaking preparations that preceded the action ultimately taken by India.
It is idle to pretend that international public opinion does not matter-it does very much, parti
ranged two superpowers like the USA and China. The latter, it has now been revealed, were prepar. ed to go to unscrupulous lengths to frustrate India’s objectives in Bangladesh-and if they ultimately failed in their fell purpose, it was not for want of trying
Nine months ago-when the international public opinion, particularly the Foreign Offices of the member-states were ill-informed on the fundamentals of the Bangladesh question-the opposition to any mi. litary intervention by India in another country’s territory would have been more ferocious and Islamabad’s charge that such action amounted to interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs would have carried greater conviction in the UN.
Nor can the fact be overlooked that the only internationally acceptable raison d’etre for India’s military intervention in Bangladesh was the influx into the country of ten million refugees fleeing from the Pakistani reign of terror in East Bengal. In April 1971 the number of refugees who had crossed over into India was hardly three million. There fore, any resort to force of arms by India in Bang. ladesh, however noble the cause, would have been al most unanimously dubbed a flagrant breach of the “domestic jurisdiction” clause of the UN Charter. India’s critics in the UN—and they comprised not only the two superpowers, the USA and China, but also the bloc of Islamic and Arab countries-would have been on stronger grounds to censure India on its action in Bangladesh.
Further, a factor that needs to be taken into account in this context is that at that juncture, the groundswell of Indian public opinion, beyond West Bengal, had yet to develop to provide the powerful popular backing so necessary for the Government to take such a grim decision of war and peace.
If nine months later, the international community, and particularly other governments, showed greater understanding and sympathy for the Bangla desh cause and India’s stand on the subject, the credit must be given to Mrs. Gandhi’s hot-gospelling campaign carried on abroad, spread over the entire intervening period, when she sent out her Foreign Minister and half a dozen other Ministers
to different parts of the globe to explain and educate the world’s chancelleries of India’s stand on the Bangladesh issue. This diplomatic offensive was climaxed by her own Odyssey to seven Western capitals including Washington in the third week of October
Yet another reason why the month of April was the wrong time for any military venture in Bangladesh was the fact that the northern Himalayan pas. ses were then free from snow and therefore if the Chinese chose to help militarily their loyal friend and client, that would just be the season when they would be most tempted to translate their desire into action. Militarily therefore not April but the winter season was more propitious for the Indian Army for any operation in Bangladesh, whose northern tip is just about a hundred miles from the Chumbi Valley, the nearest point of Chinese territory on the Indian border.
Nor was the Indo-Soviet Treaty, which was signed very much later, in existence in April. This proved a powerful deterrent for any Chinese desire to fish in the troubled waters of the Indian subcontinent. The argument that Peking, in its present mood and international stance, would never have physically intervened in a war on the side of Pakistan-which many China-watchers and political commentators, including this writer, fully endorsed
– does not absolve those who have to take the grim decision on behalf of the country from their duty to plug the least possible risk and to prefer for such a military venture a moment when the danger of a third front being opened in the north was reduced to the minimum.
Then, of course, the last but not the least, objection to an earlier military action in Bangladesh was the insistence of General Sam Manekshaw, Chief of the Army Staff, not to be hustled into a premature operation and repeat the mistakes of 1962 and
1965 and to insist on making foolproof plans and preparations before launching on it.
In the event it proved a wise decision, as the entire campaign went through without a hitch and as planned on the drawing board, with every nut and bolt in its appointed place. Indeed, as early as Mayor June the decision had been taken that the military action, if it had to be, should be launched only in November December, so that even the D-day of the operation came off as planned.
Before that, much ground had to be prepared and many battles to be fought in fields other than military-in the political, diplomatic and UN arenas, where there is no such thing as a knock-out win but only scoring on points. Some of the battles, particularly in the UN, had to be fought simultaneously with the military campaign in Bangladesh but even there prior preparation was necessary.
Without such an elaborate preparation of the ground, any military intervention in Bangladesh, involving a full-dress war with Pakistan, would have run the risk of being frustrated by Pakistan’s powerful friends at the UN.
First of all, world opinion had to be patiently educated on the Bangladesh case which tended to be erroneously compared with the Biafra episode as also on the gravity of the refugee problem faced by India. Strangely enough, in a United Nations era which claimed to have established civilized human values, few were inclined to accept India’s word when it pleaded it had no other interest in Bangla desh apart from liberating that country from a brutal colonial rule and sending back in safety and honour the ten million refugees to their homes. For the United Nations was also the arena in which the crassly cynical games of realpolitik were played by the superpowers, in the course of which the human values which that international body claimed
to champion, were thrown overboard.
The preparation of the ground by India therefore involved converting those neutral countries who had an open mind, softening the hostility of other countries already committed to Pakistan’s viewpoint, and generally explaining to the world, at least to those who were prepared to listen, the fundamentals of the Bangladesh problem and why India felt impelled to react to it in the manner it did.
Apart from the USA and China, who had decided to support Pakistan for reasons of geopolitics and realpolitik, there was the large bloc of Islamic and Arabic countries whose pro-Pakistan bias had to be tackled with patient explanations and argument, and such influential powers as Britain, France and West Germany to be wooed into seeing the justice of India’s case.
When at last the chips were down, the value of that diplomatic offensive was demonstrated, when world opinion as well as representatives of other Governments showed much understanding and sympathy for India’s view-point, though many of them, for understandable reasons, would not stand up and be counted when it came to formally casting their vote in favour of what might be construed as putting their seal of approval on secessionist trends within nations, when most of them had their own internal problems of a similar character.
As it is, the battles that India had to fight at the UN and the hurdles it had to negotiate were many. But the most vicious obstructionism that strove hard to frustrate India’s just aims in Bangladesh came from Washington and Peking. Had the Indian military campaign in Bangladesh been prolonged by another week, the combined efforts of the two Powers might, for aught we know, have succeeded in sabotaging the legitimate struggle of Bengalis for liberation almost at their winning post.
Of India’s Arab friends, Egypt was clearly “neu
tral on the other side,” while Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Algeria and the Sudan were aggressively proPakistan. Only the wretched Palestinians, who knew where the shoe pinched, were openly sympa. thetic to the Bangladesh cause, while the Lebanon and Iraq seemed neutral. Nor did the two Muslim nations of South-East Asia (to which group ultimately Bangladesh will belong) hide their pro-Pakistan sympathies.
Such then was the array of the powerful forces ranged against it in the international arena, when India braved the Bangladesh military intervention.
Apart from the incredible episode of “gunboat diplomacy” staged by President Nixon to browbeat India, as the American press has now revealed, there was nothing to which the American President was not prepared to stoop to prevent India from attain. ing its twin objectives in Bangladesh. He went back on his word given to Mr. Swaran Singh and continued to ship arms to Karachi. Ile sought to distort facts about the India-Pakistan conflict in trying to shift blame on to the shoulders of India. He was prepared to incite the CENTO members like Turkey, Jordan and Iran to supply American military hardware to Pakistan. Indeed, according to the Christian Science Monitor of Boston, Turkish aircraft did fly “ammunition and other supplies,” presumably with Washington’s blessings.
His representative at the UN charged India with starting a war against Pakistan when the facts in his possession showed that Pakistan started the war with its “pre-emptive” airstrike on Indian airfields on December 3. As the famous Anderson papers disclosed, President Nixon had no compunction in instructing the State Department to find the premises for his arbitrary conclusion that India was the guilty party.
Another American columnist revealed that the State Department delayed for a crucial twenty hours
cease fire in East Bengal. Gen. Niazi sent the
other way of communicating with India.
Indeed the New York Times and the Washington Post, those two courageous American newspapers, minced no words in exposing the partisanship displayed by President Nixon in favour of Pakistan and vindictiveness against India. The New York Times commentator on international affairs, Mr. C. L. Sulzberger, in his column charged the American President with colluding with China during the India-Pakistan conflict. “Both China and the United States, working with rare harmony, made bluff manoeuvres against India’s land and sea frontiers,” he wrote. “The US and China found them selves virtually co-belligerents when they backed Pakistan – this marked a dramatic departure from the traditional US policy which, although allied to Pakistan, had sought to build up India as an Asiatic counterpoise to China.”
There is considerable evidence to suggest closer collusion between Peking and Washington for the purpose of coercing and intimidating New Delhi. Another American columnist Tom Braden for example revealed that Dr. Kissinger, described by one British columnist as the “fun-loving Rasputin,” told the Indian Ambassador in Washington Mr. L. K. Jha that if India got involved in war with both Pakistan and China, the US could be of no assistance. “That warning is believed to have actually emanated from Peking via Washington,” he added.
This columnist also disclosed that on October 12 the US Ambassador in New Delhi, Mr. Kenneth Keating, called on Mrs. Gandhi to convey to her the US warning that if India did not “cease aid to dissidents in East Pakistan, Pakistan would attack from the West.” When Mrs. Gandhi enquired what US would do in such an eventuality, Mr. Keating replied
he had nothing more to tell her.
President Nixon’s anti-Indian bias was blatant to the point of being scandalous and created an unprecedented storm of protest among intellectual and liberal circles in America. But it also threw sinister light on the cynicism pervading American policymaking in the international sphere.
Thanks to President Nixon’s manoeuvres stemming from a stung vanity-that “tough lady” had dared defy the American President’s wishes and worse still, at the end of it all, made him look silly! -the Indian sub-continent and the world were, for a few tense moments, teetering on the brink of a global war.
When the first news came of Washington dispatching a task force of the US Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal, few were inclined to believe it. It sounded too incredible to happen in the Year of Grace 1971. It was thought that the age of “gunboat diplomacy” had passed. But then it turned out to be true.
It was given out in Washington and in Singapore that the US task force was speeding to the Bay of Bengal to “stand by” in case it was necessary, to ship out American nationals in Dacca – who did not number more than two dozen! The question was asked why so many ships, including a nuclearpowered aircraft carrier, were needed to fly out a handful of Americans. It was then suggested that the task force might have to transport the Pakistani troops and nationals from East Bengal to Karachi.
But the fateful chain-reaction got started. Following the news of the dispatch of the US Seventh Fleet task force to the Bay of Bengal, Mr. Vassily Kuznetsov, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, already in New Delhi, met Mr. P. N. Haksar and deliberated over the implications and likely consequences of an intervention by the US Fleet in the Indo-Pak conflict. Immediately thereafter came the report that
the Soviet Fleet, already in the Indian Ocean, was also steaming northwards into the Bay of Bengal.
At the same time, Indian intelligence reports spoke of Chinese military movements near India’s northern borders, and an Indian Government spokesman confirmed that the Chinese had been making both military and political moves to support Pakistan. Almost simultaneously American defence intelligence also reported: “indicators have been received which suggest that the PRC (People’s Republic of China) may be planning actions regarding the IndiaPakistan conflict.” This was revealed by Mr. Jack Anderson, the American columnist, in one of his series of sensational articles.
Mr. Anderson further disclosed that a top secret message had reported that President Yahya Khan had claimed that the Chinese ambassador in Islamabad had assured him that “within 72 hours (from December 12) the Chinese Army will move towards the border.”
Then, again quoting the secret minutes of the pro ceedings of the discussions that took place at the White House, Mr. Anderson disclosed that the Soviet Ambassador in New Delhi Mr. Nicolay Pegov called on Mrs. Gandhi on December 13 and promised her that the Soviets “would open a diversionary action” against the Chinese and would not allow the Seventh Fleet to intervene.
Meanwhile, at Kathmandu, the Soviet and Indian military attaches asked Col. Melvin Holst, the American attache, what he knew about Chinese troop movements and the United States Fleet movements. The Soviet attache is further reported to have called upon his Chinese counterpart advising Peking that if the latter “seriously intervened in the India Pakistan conflict, the USSR would react.”
Mr. Pegov also assured Mrs. Gandhi that if the Chinese started trouble in Ladakh, the USSR would open a diversionary action in Sinkiang, commonly
regarded by them as China’s Achilles’ heel.
In the event, General Aurora’s Eastern Army pulled out the fuse from the global crisis, fast ticking away to the zero count. The Indian forces got to Dacca and on December 16 Gen. Niazi signed the surrender documents, while Washington and Peking were left standing and still plotting ways of frustrating the Indian objectives in Bangladesh and of saving the East Bengal colony for West Pakistan.
Thus the world had a good look at the dark abyss below before turning back from the brink.
By the time the Seventh Fleet task force arrived at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal — 72 hours from the East Bengal coast – the war had ended. The world has reason to thank President Nixon for hitting upon the “gunboat diplomacy” stunt rather late in the day-or, maybe, the Indians were too smart for him or that “that lady proved too tough,” as Dr. Kissinger chose, with some sneaking respect, to describe the Indian Prime Minister.
According to the Anderson Papers, the dispatch of the Seventh Fleet task force was intended to force India to divert its ships and aircraft to shadow the task force, to weaken the Indian blockade against Pakistan; to divert if possible the Indian aircraft carrier Vikrant from its mission; and to force India to keep its aircraft on defensive alert and away from operations against Pakistan.
As for China, whatever might have been the assurance of active support “within 72 hours” given by its ambassador in Islamabad to Yahya Khan, Peking’s help to its friend and ally in distress largely consisted of issuing bellicose statements attacking India from time to time and threatening dire consequences if the latter did not heed its warnings.
Almost in repetition of its 1965 performance, Peking did address a protest note to New Delhi on the very eve of the cease-fire in Bangladesh
against an alleged Indian military intrusion into Chinese territory across the Sikkim border, which charge was promptly rejected by India as baseless.
In a speech at a banquet in Peking on December 17 (the day the war ended with victory for India), Mr. Chou En-lai denounced the “Indian reactionaries’ act of naked aggression” and asserted that it laid bare “the Indian expansionists’ wild ambition to annex Pakistan and bring about a greater Indian empire.” In a Cassandra-like fashion he warned: “Henceforth there will be no tranquillity for the Indian people.”
Indeed, China’s help to Pakistan turned out to be mostly in the shape of verbal pyrotechnics. In New Delhi it all sounded not like a “paper tiger” (China’s favourite term) but the cracker-filled Ravana of the Ramlila ground, who explodes with lots of bangs and flashes, and there is nothing more to it!
The arena in which India had the toughest time was the United Nations, where the USA and China ganged up to get India indicted for the IndiaPakistan conflict. But for the Soviet Union, they might have succeeded in their designs. The Soviet representative Mr. Jacob Malik had to use his veto thrice to frustrate them.
The Sino-US manoeuvre was to get through the Security Council a resolution that demanded withdrawal of forces on both sides and a cease-fire, that would bail out Yahya Khan, which repeatedly crashed against the Soviet veto. On the other hand, any draft that did not provide for withdrawal on both sides was doomed to be vetoed by the USA.
Thus firmly deadlocked in the Security Council, the United States managed, as a procedural matter under the “Uniting for Peace” formula, to get the subject transferred to the floor of the General Assembly. As expected, a US-sponsored resolution asking for withdrawal of troops on either side and
cease-fire was duly passed by the General Assembly by a vote of 104 to 11, with ten abstentions. But a General Assembly resolution is not mandatory and had to go back to the Security Council where it again got stymied.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had issued a stern warning for other countries to keep off the IndiaPakistan conflict, declaring that any interference in the allairs of the sub-continent would be regarded by Russia as impinging on its security. That was sufficient to keep the ring tight around the war going on in the Indian sub-continent.
The only compensation for the listeners in the visitors’ gallery sitting through the generally boring, but occasionally tension-charged, proceedings of that international body, was the diversion provided by Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s theatrical performance, in which he ranted, cursed, wept and denounced the Security Council and tore the agenda papers and stalked out of the meeting, dutifully followed by the rest of the Pakistani delegation.
With tears streaming down his cheeks, he shouted to a stunned audience : “I find it disgraceful to my person and my country to remain here …. Legalise aggression. Legalise occupation …. I will not be a party to it. We will fight. We will go back and fight.”
On Monday, December 13, the Soviet representative Mr. Jacob Malik exercised his veto for the third time against another version of the US proposition, after the buck had been passed back to the Security Council by the General Assembly. The search for a formula continued in the lobbies of the Security Council, while in Bangladesh the Indian Army marched on inexorably and were now knocking at the gates of Dacca.
On Wednesday, December 15, as the descending curtain was trembling over Dacca, the British were still working to gain a consensus for a joint Anglo
French draft. This resolution called for a cease. fire in both east and west, urged a comprehensive political settlement based on “realities” and repeated an earlier offer of U. Thant’s the then Secretary General) good offices. This seemed the nearest to the Indian position.
The next day however to the tremendous relief of the members, the matter was taken off their laps by the Indian Army. When the Security Council met on the morning of December 16, Mr. Swaran Singh reported the cease-fire in the east and his Prime Minister’s offer of a cease-fire in the West. The Council adjourned for lunch.
The moral is: as long as the UN divorces justice from peace keeping, that international body is doomed to frustration – nay, worse, it may do much harm in the world, by fostering injustice in the name of defending international peace.
For a change, it was difficult to find fault with the performance of the Indian Missions abroad during the Bangladesh crisis. In particular, the heads of our missions in London, Washington and Paris rose to the occasion and played a positive role in tenaciously putting across the Indian viewpoint and influencing official, political and public opinion. External Affairs Minister. Swaran Singh’s sober presentation and moderate but firm line, in contrast to the aggressive, accusatory style of the Pakistani representatives at the UN and in foreign capitals, went a long way to carry conviction with governmental circles abroad.
Almost for the first time, the External Affairs Ministry’s publicity machinery clicked. The daily joint briefings by the Defence and External Affairs Ministries earned deserved praise for their objectivity and frankness and the elan with which they
were conducted. The best certificate came from the foreign correspondents in the shape of absence of complaints, even a pat, in contrast to the open scepticism with which they treated the official briefings given in Islamabad.
A Disturbed Kaleidoscope
WHY did Yahya Khan precipitate a war with India
that spread hostilities to the West Pakistan territory? What did he expect to gain thereby?
By his act of war in the west through his “pre. emptive” airstrike on India, he in effect gave formal permission to the Indian Army to intrude into East Bengal and liberate that country from West Pakistani rule. Wasn’t that the very thing one would have expected him to avoid? For, the moment that happened, he should have known he would have to write off East Pakistan and thus render futile the bloody labours of nine months which were all supposed to be directed to keeping, by force if necessary, East Bengal as an integral part of Pakistan.
Prima facie, Yahya Khan’s action was a blunder. But then it was of a piece with his other blunders earlier, the greatest of them being his blatant refusal to abide by an overwhelming democratic, electoral verdict when he found that verdict distasteful to him. His next blunder was the mindless brutalities he permitted his armies to perpetrate in East Bengal, whereby he ensured that even the common masses, who normally, as everywhere, would have been apolitical and neutral, turned hostile to his regime, and thus united the entire nation of East Bengalis in passionate hatred against the West Pakistanis.
He went on to his next blunder of antagonizing the world’s press by the rough treatment he meted
out to correspondents in Dacca, in Islamabad and in Karachi, who thereafter went to town on the gory goings-on in East Bengal! Then, as though to complete the job, Yahya Khan by his intemperate and crude language used against Mrs. Gandhi in interviews to the foreign Press, further stoked his un popularity in the world.
And as if in a hurry to fulfil a self-assigned mission of disrupting Pakistan, he precipitated a war with India so as to remove any obstacle in the latter’s path in sending its army into East Bengal
If Yahya Khan had not precipitated a formal war, India would have been denied a valid pretext to overtly send its armies into East Bengal as well as West Pakistan. In that case, India’s intervention might have continued to be indirect and thus his regime in Dacca might have survived much longer, when having to tackle only the Mukti Bahini, whatever the quantum of help given to them by India.
However, since Yahya Khan had convinced him self by November 22 that India had actually directly intervened in East Bengal, he felt impelled to take some deterrent action against India, and such action, he argued, to be effective, had to be taken in the West. And thereby he walked into a trap laid by India.
The logic of his conviction that the Indian Army was already fighting in East Bengal, besides, also impelled him to conclude, very rightly, that in case of an open war with India in the east, he had to write off East Bengal, and therefore it was imperative that he should open a front in the west to snatch Kashmir by way of compensation for that loss.
Yahya Khan’s action in opening a second front in the west was all the more difficult to understand when one notes that his speeches underlined his conviction that if the Indian troops intervened in East Bengal it would be only to carve out a portion of East Bengal territory in order to give a local habitat
to the emigre government of Bangladesh and provide land to settle the ten million refugees sent back.
Pakistani army officers, from Gen. Niazi down to lieutenant-colonels and majors, repeatedly confirm ed, when questioned on the point that they had been told not to expect the Indian Army to drive all the way to Dacca and conquer the country. Their assigned task was therefore to prevent the Indian troops from taking a slice of East Bengal territory adjacent to West Bengal and that was why the Pak army was mostly concentrated along the western border of East Bengal. This was yet another blunder, as the main thrust to Dacca came from the least expected direction, from the east, while the Pak troops were facing the other way.
Of course, from his point of view, Yahya Khan had perfectly good reasons to back his action. His intention in starting a front in the west was to divert the Indian Army’s energies to the west by striking at India’s most vulnerable sector in the south-west of Jammu & Kashmir, and generally along the Punjab border, where the Pakistan army was strategically better positioned in terms of replenishment, numbers and resources.
But then his calculations in the western theatre seem to have gone wrong all along the line. His “pre-emptive” airstrike proved a damp squib; his determined assaults on the Chhamb sector were re. pulsed with heavy losses; along the Punjab border he could not effect a break through the fortified and well defended Indian positions; along the Rajasthan border his thrust was quickly liquidated and then further south, he had to yield large chunks of territory to the Indians.
In the Chhamb sector, Yahya Khan had expanded his attacking forces from two brigades and one regiment of tanks, to start with, to six brigades and three regiments of tanks, but to no avail. He dared
not fling more troops into the sector, what with the developing Indian threat in his southern flank at Shakargarh.
The next question is: Having plunged into war, why did Yahya Khan not go all out to win it in the western theatre, or at least grab at the long-coveted Kashmir for Pakistan by way of compensation for the loss of East Bengal? For it was true that the bulk of his forces in the west, including the 1st armoured division, had remained in reserve when he accepted the cease-fire offered by Mrs. Gandhi.
The answer to this question is that he dared not commit all his reserves in the Chhamb sectorthrough which he could get to Kashmir – at a moment when two or three serious threats at widely separated points along the lengthy front were developing from successful Indian thrusts. The most serious of these threats was at Shakargarh, which was right on the southern flank of the Pak forces fighting in the Chhamb sector. Further south, an Indian column was heading towards Hyderabad Sind, which if successful, would cut off Karachi, Pakistan’s sole port, from its hinterland in the north.
It is true that Yahya Khan plunged from one folly to another like a desperate gambler, recklessly raising his bid to recoup, at one stroke, his earlier losses. But those critics who censured him for accepting a cease-fire on December 17 while still having the bulk of his forces uncommitted are wrong – unless they wanted him to plunge into yet another folly, the greatest of them all. Continuing the war even after the eastern fighting had ended and India was in a position to switch all her might exclusively to the west — at a moment when one-third of his forces were prisoners in the east and the others thoroughly demoralised – would have proved suicidal for Pakistan.
Yet another answer to the questions raised at the outset of this chapter is that the Pakistani army
was the victim of its own wild propaganda line”One Pakistani soldier is equal to five Indians,” “We who ruled India for a thousand years and so on–and entirely underestimated the Indian Army’s capabilities, while exaggerating their own. They seemed to fuel their engines of war with in sensate hatred (against India) and arrogance (based on their imaginary superiority over the Indian soldiers), which they later realized, in actual action, did not make the engines go!
Indeed, there was a streak of infantility about their loud boasts. Murray Sayle reported in the London Sunday Times of a Pakistani groupcaptain who bragged: “We believe in one God. Indians worship little stone idols. You can see them in the Hindu temples they left behind here when they ran away. That’s why God is on our side.” “We will give those buggers a good hammering, had been a favourite boast of Pakistani officers,” commented Dan Coggin in Time. “But once the serious fighting began, only a few of the outnumbered and outgunned Pak units fought it out in pitched battles.” A week before the war broke out, Gen. Niazi boasted to foreign correspondents: “We have never lost. Look in the history books. I challenge you to find in history anything but victories. We have never lost and the Indians have never won. I can easily take them on three to one.”
The fact is, as the Indian army officer, who has fought side by side with his Pakistani comrades for some generations, would tell you, the Pak soldier is unbeatable when he is on top, but he is quickly demoralized in adversity. This is the stereotype of the Punjabi Muslim soldier. But there seems to be a lot in it.
In contrast, the Indian, particularly the Hindu, “can take it possibly because in the country’s long history of military ups and downs, and more downs than ups, his temperament has been steeled to re
verses. This is so partly also because the Indian, comparatively speaking, is more mature and composed to get emotionally upset so easily.
This streak of juvenility is discernible in Pakistan’s official propaganda and even in the speeches of its leaders. During the war Pakistan radio hurled crude abuse on Indian personalities including its Prime Minister, Defence Minister and Army Chief. President Yahya Khan shocked international opinion by calling Mrs. Gandhi, in a press interview, “that woman” and stating meaninglessly, “She is neither statesman nor woman.”
Then again, one day the President boasted about Pakistan’s military might and threatened India with total war and declared that the Pakistanis were not the people to offer the other cheek when smitten on one cheek. The next day he would swing to the other extreme of humility and plead that a small country like Pakistan could not challenge India and he would seek peace and friendship with the latter!
The contrast between the speeches of President Yahya Khan of Pakistan and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India on the day the war broke out be tween the two countries was indeed striking. One wildly talked of jehad, holy war, and sought to whip up religious frenzy and hatred against India among his people. The other spoke more in sorrow than in anger of the travails that war would bring upon the peoples of the two countries.
Yahya Khan declaimed: “God is with us in our mission. The time has come for the heroic mujahids to give a crushing reply to the enemy. We have tolerated enough. Attack the enemy. Tell the enemy that every Pakistani is ready to die for his country.”
Mrs. Gandhi said: “Our feeling is one of regret that Pakistan did not desist from the ultimate folly, and sorrow that at a time when the greatest need of this sub-continent is development, the peoples of
India and Pakistan have been pushed into war. We could have lived as neighbours, but the people of West Pakistan have never had a say in their destiny.”
Pakistan radio and television blared out jingoistic songs such as “All of Pakistan is wide awake” and “The Martyrs’ blood will not go wasted.” One foreign correspondent reported that an army colonel insisted that there were no Pakistani losses whatsoever on the battlefield on the reasoning that “in the pursuit of jehad, nobody dies. He lives for ever!”
The Pakistani official propaganda was so wide of the mark that it proved selfdefeating, as nobody believed the officially put-out news. “Throughout the conflict there had been a bizarre air of unreality in the West, Pakistani army officials consistently claimed they were winning when quite the reverse was true,” commented the correspondent.
As the war progressed and the Pakistani position worsened, one discerned in the country’s mass media a war hysteria officially whipped up.
It is interesting to recapitulate the gloom prevailing in Rawalpindi in the second week of the war, as reported by Colin Smith of the London Observer. Smith cabled on December 11 from Rawalpindi: “If what they call here the Hindu Army demands a humiliating laying down of arms, then the local belief is that the soldiers of Pakistan will be the first Asian troops since the Japanese of World War II to fight to the last bullet. If all else fails, they say, at least the warriors of Islam will show the world how to die.”
Smith added: “Even senior Army officers in this old cantonment city seem to share the desperate mood of the streets.” Pressed on how long he thought ammunition could last for the beleaguered Army in the east, one of them startled a press conference by saying: “If we have to fight with
our bare hands we shall do so.”
The correspondent explained that the clear objective in West Pakistan was to finish the war with a bargaining counter in Pakistani hands. The aim was no longer the recovery of East Pakistan. The forces of the Muslim homeland in the West are now required to challenge what are seen as the objectives of India – complete victory in East Pakistan and the capture of one sizeable town in West Pakistan.
“Most people in West Pakistan have still grasped little of what has happened,” cabled Murray Sayle of Sunday Times from Pindi on December 17 “Until last Tuesday December 13, they were being told that they were winning the war. Only late on Thursday night was it admitted that the situation in the east was desperate. People here still believe that the Pakistan forces fought brilliantly and successfully under skilful leadership.”
He wrote that the civilians had been told that the war aim of the Indians was to destroy the Muslim religion, and thus the minarets of all mos… ques had been carefully camouflaged with foliage and matting. “The civilians believed that the last struggle for the defence of the motherland, freedom and the Muslim faith had begun, and that Pakistan was still waging total war.”
Sayle also reported in the same despatch that recriminations had begun. “The Pak Navy complained that it was not allowed to send enough submarines to have a shot at the Indian aircraft carrier,” he wrote. “Eight thousand navy men were sent east to hunt the Mukti Bahini and all are now believed to be prisoners. The Air force was saying that it was pointless to send to East Bengal only one squadron operating off one jet runway at Dacca. But is was over the conduct of Pakistan’s war in the West, that there was the most informed criticism.”
The burden of this war on Pakistan could be
crushing, both psychologically and economically. In Punjab there was hardly a family which did not have a relative in the war in East Bengal. Two weeks after the conflict ended, young officers’ wives in Pindi demonstrated in front of the Swiss Embassy with placards urging the Red Cross to speed the return of their husbands.
Pakistanis killed in the war in the east were between 5,000 and 6,000 and missing between 6,000 and 7,000 since November 27, according to Pakistan High Command. There were 93,000 prisoners-ofwar with India. Pakistani casualties in the west must have been even higher in view of the offensive tactics adopted by them on that front, though no figures are yet available. The total number of prisoners of war, including paras and civilians is estimated at 1,10,000. There were 100 Pak prison. ers in Indian hands to every Indian prisoner in Pakistani hands.
Hereafter, divorced by its “better half,” West Pakistan can no more afford a standing army of fourteen divisions and an airforce of 200 aircraft, nor would they be warranted by the new, diminished size of the state. Islamabad cannot afford the luxury of spending Rs. 3,200 million of its national budget on the armed forces. Even if the USA and China are prepared to defray the expenditure on replenishment and re-equipment of Pakistan’s armed forces, the cost of their maintenance would have largely to be borne by Islamabad.
East Pakistan contributed 40 per cent of the central government’s annual budget, 40 per cent of the Customs revenue, 23 per cent of the central excise rates, 30 per cent of the sales tax and 21 per cent of income and corporate taxes. East Bengal’s raw jute and jute goods represented 50 per cent of the country’s export trade earnings. All this has been lost for ever. In addition, West Pakistan has also lost its highly lucrative ‘captive market’ of
75 million Bengalis, which represented 40 to 50 per cent of West Pakistan’s exports. Consumer goods meant for Bangladesh have remained stockpiled for the last eight or nine months. Pakistan’s national product has now been automatically reduced by 40 per cent and foreign exchange earnings have dropped by 45 per cent and domestic savings by 33 per cent.
Besides, Islamabad has an external debt of about £1,600 million to repay, which liability Bangladesh will refuse to share on the just plea that it had not benefited from that external aid. This debt hitherto accounted for 19.5% of the country’s annual foreign exchange earnings. Unless it repays its debts, the prospects of further international assistance are bleak.
The economic consequences flowing from the loss of East Bengal could be formidable. But the psy. chological shock of it all on the Pakistanis could be unpredictable in its impact when the full truth comes to be known to them. When the 1,10,000 prisoners of war get back home they will have many things to tell to their people and painful revelations to make.
A race that in season and out boasted that they had been the rulers of India for a thousand years and proposed to do it again, have now to swallow the bitter truth that it is the Hindu power that over shadows the sub-continent, in which they occupy a corner. At least that is how the hurt ego of the Pakistanis would look at the picture emerging from the December war.
And the man who threatened a thousand year war with India and who insisted that the roots of confrontation between the two countries go deep into the sub-continent’s history, has now been called upon to preside over the destinies of a people who are passionately yearning for peace and relaxation of the twenty-four-year long tension.
Coming to the helm of Pakistan’s affairs at a moment of grave crisis and national humiliation, Mr. Bhutto has displayed much political wisdom in his early speeches and actions since he took over. Will he however forget his own past utterances and turn over a new leaf for the sake of his country and give up the will-o’-the-wisp dream of wresting the Kashmir valley from India and accept the realities? That alone would bring normalcy and prosperity to Pakistan and peace and tranquillity to the subcontinent, which the people in both the countries so much deserve after the many years of tension and hostility. For Kashmir is now a lost cause.
With one shake of the kaleidoscope, the geopolitics of the South Asian region has been radically altered. The power balance so assiduously built up in the region by the superpowers has been upset and a new pattern has emerged. There are now three states where there were only two, with India as the dominating power not only in South Asia but in the entire region from the Gulf of Aden to the Straits of Malacca. That status underlines certain responsibilities for India in the Indian Ocean which is fast becoming the focus of power politics, what with the navies of the superpowers converging on it, and the demand for a “peace area” in the Indian Ocean being increasingly raised by the nations of the region.

APPENDIX I
Text of Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s historic letter to Mr. Richard Nixon, President of the U.S.A. Dear Mr. President,
I am writing at a moment of deep anguish at the unhappy turn which the relations between our two countries have taken.
I am setting aside all pride, prejudice and passion and trying, as calmly as I can, to analyse once again the origins of the tragedy which is being enacted.
There are moments in history when brooding tragedy and its dark shadows can be lightened by recalling great moments of the past. One such great moment which has inspired millions of people to die for liberty was the declaration of independence by the United States of America. That declaration stated that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of man’s inalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, it was the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
All unprejudiced persons objectively surveying the grim events in Bangla Desh since March 25 have recognised the revolt of 75 million people, a people who were forced to the conclusion that neither their life, nor their liberty, to say nothing of the possibility of the pursuit of happiness, was available to them.
The world Press, radio and television have faithfully recorded the story. The most perceptive of American scholars who are knowledgeable about the affairs of this sub-continent revealed the anatomy of East Bengal’s frustrations.
The tragic war, which is continuing, could have been averted if during the nine months prior to Pakistani attack on us on December 3. the great leaders of the world had paid some attention to the fact of revolt, tried to see the reality of the situation and searched for a genuine basis for reconciliation.
I wrote letters along these lines. I undertook a tour in quest of peace at a time when it was extremely difficult to leave the country in the hope of presenting to some of the leaders of the world the situation as I saw it. It was heart-breaking to find that while there was sympathy for the poor refugees, the disease itself was ignored.
War could also have been avoided if the power, influence and authority of all the States and above all of the United States, had got Sheikh Mujibur Rahman released. Instead, we were told that a civilian administration was being installed. Everyone knows that this civilian
administration was a farce: today the farce has turned into a tragedy.
Lip-service was paid to the need for a political solution, but not a single worthwhile step was taken to bring this about. Instead, the rulers of West Pakistan went ahead holding farcical elections to seats which had been arbitrarily declared vacant.
There was not even a whisper that anyone from the outside world had tried to have contact with Mujibur Rahman. Our earnest plea that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman should be released, or that, even if he were to be kept under detention, contact with him might be established, was not considered practical on the ground that the U.S. could not urge policies which might lead to the over-throw of President Yahya Khan.
While the United States recognised that Mujib was a core factor in the situation and that unquestionably in the long run Pakistan must acquiesce in the direction of greater autonomy for East Pakistan, arguments were advanced to demonstrate the fragility of the situation and of Yahya Khan’s difficulty.
Mr. President, may I ask you in all sincerity: was the release or even secret negotiations with a single human being, namely, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, more disastrous than the waging of a war?
The fact of the matter is that the rulers of West Pakistan got away with the impression that they could do what they liked because no one, not even the United States, would choose to take a public position that while Pakistan’s integrity was certainly sacrosanct, human rights. liberty were no less so and that there was a necessary inter-connection between the inviolability of States and the contentment of their people.
Mr. President, despite the continued defiance by the rulers of Pakistan of the most elementary facts of life, we would still have tried our hardest to restrain the mounting pressure as we had for nine long months, and war could have been prevented had the rulers of Pakistan not launched a massive attack on us by bombing our airfields in Amritsar, Pathankot, Srinagar, Avantipur, Uttarlai, Jodhpur Ambala and Agra in broad daylight on December 3, 1971, at a time when I was away in Calcutta, my colleague, the Defence Minister, was in Patna and was due to leave further for Bangalore in the South and another senior colleague of mine, the Finance Minister, was in Bombay.
The fact that this initiative was taken at this particular time of our absence from the Capital showed perfidious intentions. In the face of this, could we simply sit back trusting that the rulers of Pakistan or those who were advising them, had peaceful, constructive and reason able intent?
We are asked what we want. We seek nothing for ourselves. We do not want any territory of what was East Pakistan and now constitutes Bangla Desh. We do not want any territory of West Pakistan. We do want lasting peace with Pakistan. But will Pakistan give up its ceaseless and yet pointless agitation of the last 24 years over Kashmir? Are they willing to give up their hate campaign and posture of perpetual hostility towards India? How many times in the last 24 years have
my father and I offered a pact of non-aggression to Pakistan? It is a matter of recorded history that each time such offer was made, Pakistan rejected it out of hand.
We are deeply hurt by the innuendos and insinuations that it was we who have precipitated the crisis and have in a way thwarted the emergence of solutions. I do not really know who is responsible for this calumny. During my visit to the United States, United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Austria and Belgium, the point I emphasised, publicly as well as privately, was the immediate need for a political settlement.
We waited nine months for it. When Dr. Kissinger came in August 1971, I had emphasised to him the importance of seeking an early political settlement. But we have not received, even to this day, the barest framework of a settlement which would take into account the facts as they are and not as we imagine them to be.
Be that as it may, it is my earnest and sincere hope that with all the knowledge and deop understanding of human affairs you, as President of the United States and reflecting the will, the aspirations and idealism of the great American people, will at least let me know where precisely we have gone wrong before your representatives or spokesmen deal with us with such harshness of language.
With regards and best wishes,
Yours sincerely, INDIRA GANDHI
APPENDIX II
Arms Aid to Pakistan UNITED STATES
Under the Military Assistance Programme, the United States undertook to equip a force of 51 to 6 divisions of the Pakistani Army with modern equipment and also to train them. It supplied, mainly:
Modern infantry weapons, including semi-automatic rifles, carbines, light and medium machine guns, infantry mortars, recoilless rifles of 57 and 106 mm calibre and 105 mm and 155 mm howitzers. 300 Armoured Personnel Carriers 200 Sherman, 250 Chaffee, about 100 M-41 Bulldog and 460 M-47/ M-48 Patton tanks. Full complement of engineering, transport and signal equipment. Ammunition, including sophisticated Variable Time Electronic Fuses, to fight a two-month war.
AIR FORCE 10 Lockheed T-33 A Trainers 7 Lockheed RT-33A Reconnaissance-Trainers
120 F-86 Sabre Jet Fighter-Bombers 26 Martin Canberra B-57 B Bombers 6 Martin Canberra RB-57 Bombers 15 Sikorsky S-55 Hunters 4 Grumman HU-16A Albatross Maritime Reconnaissance 12 Lockheed F-104 A Starfighters 2 Lockheed F-104B Starfighters 6 Lockheed C-130E Hercules Transport 4 Kaman HH-43B Huskie Hunters 25 Cessna T-37B Jet Trainers
NAVY 7 Coastal Minesweepers 1 Tug 2 Oilers 4 “Battle” Class Destroyers 2 “CV” Class Destroyers 2 “Ch” Class Destroyers of these, the first three items were directly supplied by the United States. The rest were refitted under the Military Assistance Programme. The two “Ch” Class Destroyers were initially purchased by the United States for Pakistan. One Water Carrier, two Tugs and one Oiler were purchased from Italy under the Programme and transferred to Pakistan. One Submarine-“Trench” Class PNS GHAZI (now sunk)-was loaned to Pakistan. Recently an unspecified number of riverboats and coasters were supplied to Pakistan by USA. In addition, all the air bases in Pakistan-Mauripur, Samungli, Drigh Road, Peshawar, Kohat, Risalpur, Lahore, Sargodha, Multan, Chaklala, Nawabshah, Gilgit, Chitral, Malir and Miranshah-were built up by NATO standards under the US Military Assistance Programme. Early-warning surveillance radars facing India were installed under this Programme at Badin, Multan, Sargodha and Peshawar. A microwave communication network was also developed under the CENTO base programme. The US military assistance to Pakistan amounted to $730 million in supply of hardware and another $565 million in defence support assistance for the maintenance of the armed forces. Besides, the United States also undertook to train the personnel of the Pakistani armed forces.
CHINA
ARMY Infantry and Artillery equipment for two divisions (AK 47 rifles, light and medium machine guns, 60 mm, 81 mm, 120 mm mortars, 100 mm field guns) and 225 T-59 medium tanks.
AIR FORCE
1 Squadron of 11-28 Bombers 4 Squadrons of MIG-19 Interceptors
NAVY
The Chinese are believed to have supplied Pakistan an unspecified number of riverboats and coasters since March 1971. In addition the Chinese have assisted Pakistan in setting up the two major ordnance factories in Pakistan: one at Joydebpur, the other in Taxila. Pakistan has recently revealed that all these supplies were free of cost.
UNITED KINGDOM
4 Patrol Boats
WEST GERMANY
90 F-86 Sabre Jets through Iran Cobra Anti-Tank Missiles
FRANCE
5 Alouette-III Helicopters 24 Mirage-III Fighters 3 “Daphne” Class Submarines
IRAN
4 Lockheed C-130E Hercules Transport Planes
ITALY
8 Midget Submarines and 8 Chariot Two-Man Submarines
USSR
MI 8 Helicopters (number not known) 200 130 mm guns 150 T-55 Tanks Mobile Radar Sets Spares for MIG-19 While the above transactions by and large confirmed, the following transactions are not confirmed but are plausible: 100 Patton Tanks from West European sources Another quantity of Patton Tanks from Iran-Turkey.
More F-86 Sabre Jets from Saudi Arabia and Iran not exceeding 50. Ammunition, aircraft Spares, communication and other equipment from the United States, Western Europe and China (quantities not ascertainable).
(Courtesy: K. Subramanyam, Director, Institute for Defence Studies
and Analyses, New Delhi).