Shankar Roychowdhury | Looking back at 1971: How India cut Pak down to size

India and Pakistan are not the best of friends. I think that is a well-known fact. We have fought four wars with Pakistan, in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999, the last of which is better known as the Kargil War. In 1971, the relations between India and Pakistan were extremely bad and they were further worsened by the hijacking of an Indian civil airliner to Lahore. I think this gave an ideal opening to the Indian political leadership at the time to put a plan into action to cut Pakistan down to size along the cultural and religious fractured lines that already existed.

In 1971, Bangladesh’s war for independence, which is better known as the “Mukti Juddho”, started because of the torture and maltreatment by Pakistani soldiers and others of the Bengali population of the country’s eastern wing (East Pakistan), based on an internal conflict between the Urdu and Bengali language and what should be its national language. Quite rightly, the Bengali population of East Pakistan, who were then numerically larger, demanded that Bengali should be one of the national languages of Pakistan. Primarily, the Punjabi political leaders of Pakistan dominated all services, particularly the Army as well as the civil service. Pakistan was then dominated in all areas by Punjabi elements who were unwilling to accept any sort of parity with their Bengali compatriots.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proclaimed that unless the Bengali-speaking population under his leadership was given its due place in Pakistan, they would have to decide on another way to obtain recognition for themselves. There was a military crackdown in Dhaka against this movement, which was then being spearheaded by the students of Dhaka University. The Pakistani Army, which was ordered into the streets of Dhaka to attack educational institutions, inflicted heavy casualties on the Bengali civil population. The Bengalis of Pakistan adopted the call given by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman: “Ebarkar Songram, Muktir Songram” (Our Struggle Now Is the Struggle for Freedom). The unarmed students decided to challenge the might of the Pakistan Army, which was predominantly from West Pakistan, on the streets and homes of Dhaka. Mukti Juddho had been born.

In an immediate repercussion, the Hindus were driven out of Pakistan. India had a new crisis on its hands: a vast, and growing, number of refugees started coming into this country. They were accommodated in refugee camps all along our borders. At that time, the sympathy of the world was with the oppressed people who were driven out of their country and, very astutely, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi seized the opportunity to tell the world that unless Pakistan stopped the flow of refugees, India would have no option but to retaliate in whatever way it cold. That was a strategic aim to begin with.

The Bengali student population had already crossed over as refugees from East Pakistan to states like West Bengal, Tripura and Assam in the eastern parts of India. India also saw an opportunity to retaliate against Pakistan for its calculated intransigence in Jammu and Kashmir. A well formulated plan was created to take the young manpower coming from East Pakistan. At that time, feelings were running very high in India and also in Bangladesh. There were mutual sympathy and support. After all, the people of West Bengal in India and East Pakistan spoke the same language. Their culture was the same. There was also a strong cultural affinity and a meeting of hearts. Given this background, India decided to accept the disaffected population of East Pakistan flooding into India as refugees, and the creation of the Mukti Bahini was a direct fallout.

Once that decision was taken by the top leadership in New Delhi, the infrastructure was made ready. The trouble in East Pakistan had after all been brewing for a long time. The Indian Army was deployed within the country in aid of civil authority because there were a lot of disturbances happening. This was further reinforced into operational deployment. But the most important part of the story was the Mukti Bahini’s creation. The young students, who came to India from East Pakistan, were organised in the refugee camps into highly motivated groups so that they could be given weapons, arms and military training and then used to liberate their own country. From India’s point of view, it was to pay Pakistan back for torturing its own population and consequently creating an added burden for India. Therefore, the decision was taken to train these people coming over from East Pakistan as guerrilla troops to fight the West Pakistanis who were then running the affairs of East Pakistan.

It started off as a very carefully planned move. The communication links between East Pakistan and West Pakistan were snapped. No military reinforcements could be brought into East Pakistan by land, air or sea. The Indian Army was deployed inside India, creating an active support force of the Bengali student volunteers as armed auxiliaries. They took the war into East Pakistan to liberate their own country with the moral support of the world and covert physical support from India in the form of the Mukti Bahini. Today, while I won’t say that these events have been forgotten, they appear to be slowly losing their significance due to other events which have followed later. But as a young Indian Army officer at the time, I am proud to have been a part of the campaign, in association with the Mukti Bahini, which ultimately gave birth to Bangladesh, with substantial moral and military support from India.

Things started very well after the war ended. There was a complete meeting of minds between the top political leaderships of both countries. The Indian Army had already declared that our troops would come home soon after the end of the war. After the Indian soldiers left Bangladesh, internal politics got under way in the newly-born nation. The situation fluctuated. We always want to maintain good relations with Bangladesh. It is important for both of us, and this should be our national policy. It is up to us to nurture that politically. Both countries need to help each other to create and maintain a healthy relationship.