ISLAMABAD: History is written by the victors and since Pakistan was the losing side in the 1971 war that resulted in the tragic disintegration of the country on December 16, India and the jingoistic leadership of newly emerging Bangladesh managed to spread a series of lies and misconceptions about the conflict.
The intensity of that sustained propaganda was such that that many well-meaning Pakistanis also tended to believe in it as a gospel of truth. These fake stories and narratives also managed to gain grounds internationally, especially influencing academia and the media.
However, the truth is finally coming to light with a number of recent books, reports and memoirs of the former Indian army officials highlighting the true nature of the conflict. Bol News on the sad 50th anniversary of the Fall of Dhaka makes a review of the claims in the light of new revelations.
East Pakistan’s alleged exploitation
Economic disparity between East and West Pakistan was unfortunately a historical and colonial legacy. As Rome was not built in a day, the historical economic deprivation of East Pakistan could not be eliminated in a short-span of 25 years.
Efforts for industrialization and development of infrastructure from ports and oil fields to refinery and hydroelectric projects show that significant attention was paid to East Pakistan’s progress.
At the time of the partition, East Bengal had a plantation economy and was one of the most backward regions, while West Bengal, which was more developed, became part of India. But the newly created Pakistan took a series of steps for the development of its eastern wing.
The Chittagong Tea Auction was established in 1949 as the region was home to the world’s largest tea plantations. In 1947, East Bengal which became East Pakistan, did not have even a single jute mill. East Pakistan was forced to export its raw jute to India for value addition.
But by the 1950s, East Bengal surpassed West Bengal in the jute industries, becoming the biggest player in the world. Development of the jute industry in East Pakistan was solely due to West Pakistani investment.
Adamjee Jute Mills was the largest jute processing plant located in Narayanganj. Bengalis were employed in large, capital-intensive jute mills set-up by the West Pakistani industrialists. Crescent, Isphani, and Adamjee jute mills collectively employed 26,000 workers.
Investments were encouraged in East Pakistan by the government through the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), the Pakistan Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation (Picic) and the Industrial Development Bank of Pakistan (IDBP).
East Pakistan Stock Exchange Association was established in 1954. The Ispahani family, Africawala brothers and Adamjee family were pioneers of industrialization in the region. Many of the modern Bangladesh’s leading companies were born in the East Pakistan period.
The Orient Airways, an airline founded in British Bengal, launched the vital air link between East and West Pakistan with DC-3 aircraft on the Dhaka-Calcutta-Delhi-Karachi route.
The Orient Airways later evolved into the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), whose first chairman was East Pakistan-based industrialist Mirza Ahmad Ispahani.
Natural gas was discovered in the northeastern part of East Pakistan in 1955 by the Burmah Oil Company and the industrial use of natural gas began in 1959.
The Shell Oil Company and Pakistan Petroleum tapped seven gas fields in the 1960s. Industrial seaport city of Chittagong hosted the headquarters of the Burmah Eastern and the Pakistan National Oil. Iran assisted in establishing the Eastern Refinery in Chittagong.
The Comilla model of the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development – present-day Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development – was conceived by Akhtar Hameed Khan, a non-Bengali, and was replicated in many developing countries.
During President Ayub Khan’s industrialisation era, half of the cabinet members, including many secretaries, were from East Pakistan, ensuring equal representation for the decision of allocation of development funds.
Development of the Chittagong Port, the Chandraghona Paper Mills, railways, roads, airline, and river networks all took place with the help of the central government.
In 1965, Kaptai Dam hydroelectric project was implemented with American assistance. Moreover, beside other cities, the centrally located metropolis Dhaka witnessed significant urban growth and development.
Was Urdu imposed on Bengalis?
Urdu being the lingua franca, was a unifying factor for the Muslims of the sub-continent and played a vital role in invigorating the Pakistan Movement. Urdu was the only language understood across Pakistan.
Therefore, it was logical that Urdu became the national language of Pakistan, though it was not the language of any of the four regions comprising West Pakistan as well.
Bengali was a regional language like Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Brahvi and Balochi etc. Moreover, establishing Urdu as national language did not, at all, mean that regional languages would cease to exist or flourish.
India didn’t intervene on humanitarian grounds
The intervention of India in East Pakistan was a vicious, planned attack on Pakistan’s territorial integrity and had not taken place due to a humanitarian crisis. These plans were made with the consent of the leadership of the Awami League – a leading Bengali nationalist party – in an infamous meeting known as the Agartala Conspiracy.
India wanted to create Bangladesh as a vassal state to establish its hegemony over the region. The Awami League and the Mukti Bahinis – a terrorist organization – acted as mere pawns in Indian hands.
Even before a direct military intervention, India was providing the Mukti Bahini with military, logistic and economic support. Once a reporter asked the Indian Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw – the chief of the Indian Army from 1969 to 1973 – what would have happened if he had migrated to Pakistan after partition?
Manekshaw replied, “Pakistan would’ve won in 1971,” indicating the dominating role played by the Indian Army during the 1971 war. After the war, despite several requests from the newly-formed Bangladesh government, the Indian military delayed its troops’ withdrawal from the newly-created country.
This caused serious bitterness between India and Bangladesh that later led to the killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman – the Father of Bangladesh – by the Bangladeshi Army personnel, who considered him as an Indian puppet.
Pakistani forces were continuously ambushed by the Indian forces and the Mukti Bahinis internally, while a Tibetan guerrilla force raised by the Indian spy agency – the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) – also attacked border outposts.
Indian artillery was used extensively in support of the rebel operations in East Pakistan. Moreover, Indian military forces, including tanks and air power, were also used on many occasions to back-up the Mukti Bahini.
To increase the lethal capabilities of the Mukti Bahini, India equipped them with latest weapons including Italian howitzers – now preserved at the Bangladesh Military Museum in Dhaka.
According to Archer Blood, a US diplomat – who served as the last consul general of the United States to Dhaka – Indians were openly supporting the insurgency in East Pakistan.
“Indian soil was made available for training camps, hospitals and supply depots for the Mukti Bahini and they had a safe haven to which they could retire for rest, food, medical supplies and weapons.”
The Mukti Bahini guerillas-along with RAW operatives and regulars from the Indian Army operated training camps in the Indian states of West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura.
In Nagaland, the Indian Armed Forces established a jungle airstrip for the Mukti Bahini from where the Indian Air Force trained pilots conducted sorties by Otter DHC-3 aircraft.
India’s Eastern Command trained more than 400 naval commandos and frogmen to drown vessels in Chittagong, Chandpur and Narayanganj. In Dehradun, Major-General Oban “selected the best personnel from the Mukti Bahini” and gave them political and military training.
One Mukti Bahini Sector Commander Quazi Nooruzzaman writes: “Having received training, political commandos found it embarrassing to identify themselves as products of Indian authorities. So they gave themselves the name of the Bangladesh Liberation Force.”
India violated international conventions in a bid to disintegrate Pakistan in 1971. Ever since, India’s and Awami League’s jingoism has impeded development of cordial relations between Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Agartala Conspiracy was a reality
Indian intellectuals, military officers, and intelligence officers have made revelations about the Indian roots of the infamous case. The plot was delayed due to the China-Indo war of 1962 and later due to the Pakistan-India war of 1965.
By 1967, Pakistani government became cognizant of this conspiracy, which resulted in the filing of Agartala Conspiracy Case against 35 people, including Mujib. The Agartala Conspiracy was hatched by the Awami Leaguers and Indian intelligence agencies.
Sashanka Banerjee, an Indian diplomat, wrote that Mujib had handed him an envelope addressed to Nehru on Dec 25, 1962, requesting him for Indian support in Bangladesh’s liberation struggle.
Sheikh Hasina Wajid, Mujeeb’s daughter, herself admitted that Agartala was a true event; saying: “He (Mujeeb) went to Agartala in 1962. This is a fact. He went to make preparations.”
Why Operation Searchlight?
After Yahya Khan’s announcement to postpone the National Assembly session, the Awami Leaguers took to the streets. They were armed, and started vandalism, arson, loot, and killings.
From the National Assembly session postponement till the start of the Operation Searchlight on March 25, 1971, thousands of innocent people lost their lives, the national flag was desecrated every day, and jailbreaks occurred regularly.
The perpetrators of violence were Bengali mobs, which targeted non-Bengalis as well as the pro-Pakistan Bengalis. They exhibited gross savagery – resorting to murders, torture, rape in which they did not spare even children.
Before the Operation Searchlight, Bangladeshi flag was raised, firing practices ensued within the Dhaka University, barricades were erected throughout Dhaka city, and checkpoints of the Awami Leaguers were erected near the airport to search people.
Due to this lawlessness, Pakistan military authorities were forced to launch the operation against Awami League leadership and its militant supporters.
With the start of the operation, the Bengal Regiments and the East Pakistan Regiments revolted. As a bloody display of their extreme abhorrence, defecting Bengali soldiers before leaving their barracks killed their counterpart West Pakistani soldiers and their families.
Sheikh Mujib’s role
Mujib was consistently using the election hustle in his favour and creating agitation all over East Pakistan, fanning hate and emotions. West Pakistan was reluctant to transfer power to Mujib because of his illicit relationship with India and his involvement in the Agartala Conspiracy.
In 1972, Mujib signed a treaty of peace and friendship with India for 25 years. Indian interests were protected with Bangladesh’s creation as a puppet in New Delhi’s hands. Mujib assumed power in Bangladesh as president, then PM, and then again president until his assassination on 15th Aug 1975.
Mujib’s era saw price hike, smuggling, hoarding, corruption, and political killings. The prices rose 300 times – higher than they were at any time in East Pakistan’s history. Smuggling was rampant due to the Awami League’s corrupt politicians, who granted licenses to their friends and relatives.
Mujib acted as an intolerant, anti-people dictator and amended the constitution of Bangladesh for his own benefit, introducing a presidential form of government and a single-party rule.
He built paramilitary forces to suppress opposition and, in most cases, killed opposition leaders. His oppressive and tyrannical rule led to his own assassination in the end.
Myth that army killed 3m Bengalis
The figure of genocide of three million Bengalis was dished out by Indians without any empirical data to prove it. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman announced this figure on his arrival at Bangladesh after nine months of confinement in West Pakistan.
However, several investigative accounts have rejected these fictitious claims. The Guardian exposed the gaps between the claimed figures and the actual figures in a June 1972 report – “The Missing Millions”. Renowned author Sharmila Bose in her book, Dead Reckoning – a long-overdue dispassionate study of 1971 war – after carrying out case-by-case study concludes that between 50,000 to 100,000 people died in 1971 conflict – vastly away from the figure of three million that is sacrosanct in Bangladesh.
Describing the three million figure as a “gigantic rumour,” she says it is “not based on any accounting or survey on the ground.” Bose also elaborates that “in the ethnic violence unleashed in the name of Bengali nationalism, non-Bengali men, women and children were slaughtered.” She argues that the indiscriminate massacre of Biharis certainly constitutes genocide.
Sarmila also logically nullifies the bogus claims of rape and sexual abuse by the Pakistan Army. “How can it be possible that 34,000 Pakistan Army soldiers, facing Indian Army and Mukti Bahini, could rape two lac Bengali women,” she asked.
Even the Awami League government soon after the creation of Bangladesh failed to prove its myth of three million deaths. Mujib formed an inquiry committee in January 1972 to match the figure but failed as the committee quoted around 56,753 deaths. This report never got published.
Only 72,000 families, including many making bogus claims, came forward when Mujib announced a compensation scheme for victims of war. Even the editor of the Morning Sun, Dhaka, Noor-ul-Islam wrote “to kill three million people in three months, 11,000 were to be killed daily!”
Dr Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury, a Bengali journalist in his book “Behind the Myth of Three Million”, rejected these allegations by giving valid attestations and evidence – the credibility of which cannot be questioned. The argument used to back the bogus claims of genocide is that hundreds of mass graves were found in Bangladesh. But that too remains a gross exaggeration. And even the presence of bodies in a mass grave doesn’t mean that these victims were targeted by the Pakistan Army.
Sarmila Bose argues that “claims of the dead in various incidents wildly exceeding anything that can be reasonably supported by evidence on the ground – ‘killing fields’ and ‘mass graves’ were claimed to be everywhere, but none was forensically exhumed and examined in a transparent manner.”
Mukti Bahinis were the main perpetrators of violence. Even before Operation Searchlight, thousands of horrifying cases of loot, arson, rapes, and massacres were reported.
There are petrifying accounts of whole colonies burnt to ashes with inmates locked inside and burnt alive. The entire violence was targeted at non-Bengalis particularly Biharis.
Brig Dapinder Singh, staff officer to General Manekshaw in his book “Soldiering with Dignity” wrote “we prepared Mukti Bahini. Some of them were clad in Pakistan Army uniform and tasked to loot and rape in East Pakistan.”
As per the 1951 census, there were 671,000 Biharis in East Pakistan and up to 20% of them were massacred by the Mukti Bahini. According to Yasmin Saikia’s “Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh”, thousands of Bihari women were raped and tortured by the Mukti Bahini.
More than 20,000 Biharis were massacred in Khulna jute mills, including women and children. Some were burnt alive; others were guillotined. Biharis were subjected to killing and rape and were driven out of their homes. Mukti Bahini killed 100,000 Biharis– according to “Chronology for Biharis in Bangladesh” – to 150,000 Biharis, according to “Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict”.
Qutubuddin Aziz, in ‘Blood and Tears,’ documented 170 eye-witness accounts of “atrocities committed on Biharis and other non-Bengalis,” covering “110 places where slaughter of innocents took place”.
According to Lawrence Lifschultz, South Asia correspondent for Far Eastern Economic Review, Mukti Bahini leader, Abdul Kader Siddiqui, “personally bayoneted” non-Bengalis to death and the entire incident was filmed by foreign film crews whom Siddiqui had invited to witness the spectacle.
Myth that 93,000 soldiers surrendered
This number is exaggerated and false. The actual number of fighting troops was 34,000, 11,000 police personnel, rangers, scouts and militia – meaning roughly 45,000 combatants.
Accordingly, the number of 93,000 as conjured by Indians is ill-founded as the majority of the people who surrendered after the fall of Dhaka included children, women, civilian administration officials and staff; non-combatant army personnel – nurses, doctors, barbers, cooks and shoemakers
The political machinations of India and allies have been exposed by Indian Lt Gen JFR Jacob in his book “Surrender at Dacca: Birth of a Nation”.
Jacob writes: “On 4 December 1971, the United States moved a draft resolution calling for a cease-fire and withdrawal of Indian forces, which was vetoed by the Soviet Union. Thereafter, another six resolutions including one by China, were introduced calling for cease-fire and withdrawal of forces, some of which were accepted by Pakistan.
“However, due to behind the scene political machinations by India and her allies, their passage and implementation was stalled till Dhaka fell on 16 December 1971 and the cease-fire had been perfidiously converted to surrender. I took a careful look at the documents and was aghast to see the heading – which read ‘Instrument of Surrender’…”.
Nevertheless, the Pakistan Army fought valiantly amid tough conditions and logistical problems. East and West Pakistan were separated by over 1,200 miles of territory of hostile India. However, Pakistani troops gave a heroic fight despite the enemy’s superiority in both numbers and firepower.
There are numerous accounts of some astounding chivalry which testify the courage of Pakistani troops.
The defence of Hilli and valour displayed by Major Muhammad Akram, actions of Fateh-e-Saboona Maj Shabbir Sharif Shaheed, Lance Naik Muhammad Mahfuz and Sawar Muhammad Hussain Shaheed are just few examples.
Captain Arjumand Yar Khand was a young officer from an infantry unit. He was assigned the task of setting up a strong delaying position ahead of this defense position.
The officer, along with a handful of men, held his ground against repeated Indian armor and infantry assaults, hours of air bombing and strafing for nearly three days during which some his men were martyred and some seriously wounded.
On the last day, Arjumand was the only one left in the delaying position.
On December 5, 1971, the Indian Army and Mukti Bahini forces broke the line of defense between Laksham and Comilla and were heading for the Divisional Headquarters and Chandpur Base.
At this moment, Major Bilal Ahmed along with half a company of commandos, fought the enemy columns for almost three days. He successfully resisted the continued attacks of the enemies and kept them away from the Chandpur base.
Even Indian Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw had to say that “the Pakistan Army in East Pakistan fought very gallantly but they had no chance…
“They were a thousand miles away from their base; I had eight or nine months to make my preparations. I had a superiority of almost 50 to 1. They just had no chance but they fought very gallantly.”
Importantly, the Pakistan Army’s formations baffled the Indian Army along Eastern Border and capture of the strategic town of Chumb is one of the most serious setbacks suffered by the Indian Army in 1971.
Negation of Two Nation Theory?
The creation of Bangladesh did not happen on religious lines. It happened because of political differences and minor cultural differences which were exploited by the foreign hand.
Moreover, negation of the “Two Nation Theory” would mean merger of Bangladesh with India after seceding from Pakistan which did not happen.
The Two Nation Theory meant that Hindus and Muslims are two different nations. Even after succeeding from Pakistan, Muslims in Bangladesh don’t consider themselves similar to Hindus.
The biggest evidence in support of the Two Nation Theory is the chain of events triggered in India after Narendra Modi came into power in 2014.
Muslims are being persecuted and further pushed against the wall. Several actions – abrogation of Article 370, construction of Ram Mandir, Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register for Citizens (NRC) – have been instrumental in making Muslims living in India second-class citizens.
Even a handful of pro-India Kashmiri leaders are questioning the decision of their fore-fathers of stay within the Indian Union. Modi, inspired by RSS and the toxic Hindutva ideology, has successfully proven the Two Nation Theory right.
Prophetic words of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah that “Muslims who are opposing Pakistan will spend rest of their lives proving loyalty to India,” stand vindicated.
Did Pakistan abandon Biharis?
Biharis, as a distinct ethnic group, are the ones who faced the most brutal brunt of the East Pakistan tragedy as they stood for the territorial integrity of Pakistan. Quite a few of them succeeded in reaching Pakistan from 1972 to 1980 and the majority settled at Karachi.
They are loyal and patriotic citizens, who voluntarily enrolled in the armed forces and fight for defense of the motherland. A hero of 1965 war, Air Commodore M.M Alam (SJ) and the hero of Operation Swift Retort, Squadron Leader Hasan Siddiqui are Biharis. They firmly believe in the two nation theory. From 1947 to 1971, these Bihari’s were bonafide Pakistani citizens whose status never changed; therefore their legal status is exactly the same as other Pakistani citizens.
Do Pakistanis and Bengalis hate one another?
There is not a vestige of hostility against Bengalis amongst Pakistanis. From random literature to textbooks, there is no denouncing material against Bengalis. The separation of East and West Pakistan is largely remembered as a painful national tragedy, warranting soul searching and self-accountability.
Ever since the separation, no malicious campaign has ever run in Pakistan to belittle or disregard Bangladesh at any forum; rather it is considered as a brother Muslim state.
Overwhelming support for Pakistani cricketers in the recent matches in Bangladesh reflects the existing affinity between the two people, which the hostile forces have failed to defeat.
Factually speaking, there is adequate space for affecting conciliation and cordiality between Pakistan and Bangladesh based on mutual respect, trust and interest. It is better for the two countries to candidly revisit and forget the unpleasant past and look towards a shared prosperous future in the dawning era of geo-economics and regional integration.
