1971 war: From its origins to Dec 1971
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This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
A timeline
November 21
Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, Dec 19, 2021: The Times of India
India began the war, not Pakistan. It started with a multi-pronged invasion of East Pakistan on November 21, assisted by the Mukti Bahini (Bangladeshi rebels trained and armed by India). India planned the invasion date to coincide with Id, to help catch the Pakistan army by surprise. The Indian government rejected Pakistani complaints that an invasion had begun and said there were merely ongoing border clashes. But foreign correspondents like the New York Times’ Sydney Schanberg sent on-the-spot reports of Indian troops entering across a wide swath. The Economist, London, said it would now be a race between UN Security Council intervention and a Pakistani counter-attack in the West. India had that summer signed a quasi-defence treaty with the USSR, which vetoed any intervention by the UN Security Council. To raise the stakes and increase chances of US intervention, Pakistan counter-attacked by bombing Indian targets in the West on December 3.
Ultimately it was a 26-day war and not a 13-day one. Pakistan did not start the war and had no motive to do so — it knew it was hopelessly outnumbered in the East and India would have complete military control of the skies. But India had every motive for a war that would give India a friend rather than foe in the East. Detaching Bangladesh from Pakistan meant India would never again have to fight a two-front war against Pakistan. It also meant China could no longer threaten to militarily link up with East Pakistan by capturing the “chicken’s neck” region that connects West Bengal with Assam. Of course, Indian justified its invasion in high moral terms, as the liberation of a territory devastated by Pakistan army genocide, and to facilitate the return of 10 million refugees who had fled to India.
In March 1971, Pakistan arrested Mujibur Rahman, head of the Awami League, for attempting secession. On hearing of this Mujib’s followers led by Tajuddin Ahmad, who had earlier been ambiguous on secession, declared independence and set up a Provisional Government of Bangladesh at the small town of Chuadanga. The only rationale for choosing Chuadanga was that it was far from Dhaka and close to the Indian border and so they could hope, with Indian assistance, to resist for a long time. Meanwhile the Mukti Bahini and rebel Bangladeshi forces attempted, mostly in vain, to combat the Pakistan army advance.
My assignment in The Times of India was to do a daily column titled ‘Gains and Losses’ summing up the military and political events across East Pakistan. I was instructed to play up all positive stories of heroic Bangladeshi resistance and play down reports of Pakistani advances. The newspaper made no pretence of independence or impartiality: it saw itself as a patriotic propaganda tool. However, the advance of the Pakistan army was so swift that the pretence could not be kept up for long. A sad day quickly came when the Bangladesh Provisional Government had to flee from Chuadanga to India. Naturally, I led my column with that news, but was told to relegate that low down. Instead, I was told to lead with a story of a Mukti Bahini attack on a power station in Ashuganj. I could not see how this helped the Bangladeshi cause, but then patriotism is never very logical.
Tajuddin Ahmad and his provisional government started functioning from Kolkata. But for propaganda purposes the Indian government decided to create a fictional town called Mujibnagar, inside the Bangladesh border, from where the Provisional Government led the resistance. This was supposed to somehow confer greater credibility on Tajuddin. But why? In World War II, governments-in-exile of Poland and France operated from London with no loss of credibility.
Dozens of Indian newspapers descended on Mujibnagar to take photos of and have interviews with Tajuddin Ahmad and his colleagues. No newspaper denounced or questioned the wisdom of the fiction. After all, the outcome was clearly going to be determined by Indian military action. Whether the Provisional Government was located in Kolkata or Mujibnagar could make no difference. But in the patriotic zeal of those days, as that army man said, it was given to some to die for the country and others to lie for it.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in jail: Mar 71-Jan 72
A grave for Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
Dec 21, 2021: The Times of India
Mohanlal Bhaskar was being held in Mianwali jail in Pakistan when Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was brought there in a chopper. A few days later, a jail official picked Bhaskar and seven other Indian inmates to dig a ditch in the block where Sheikh Mujib had a cell. The instructions were specific – the ditch should be eight feet in length and four feet in width and depth. An excerpt from Mohanlal Bhaskar’s book ‘I was India’s spy in Pakistan’
Winter was still tiptoeing in when a chopper alighted inside the prison’s compound. The next morning, we learnt that Sheikh Mujibur Rehman had been brought in from the Lyallpur prison. We also learnt that at the Lyallpur jail, some soldiers belonging to the East Bengal Regiment had attempted to smuggle him out through a secretly-dug tunnel. He was lodged in Mianwali prison’s women inmates’ block. The women inmates were shifted to another barrack. The women inmates’ block lay at the back of barrack number 10.
We, the Indian inmates of the jail, had been shifted to barrack number 10 just days ago. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was kept amid strict, round-the-clock surveillance by guards from a Pakistani army contingent. His cook prepared his meals, comprising mostly rice and fish.
The next day, when it was confirmed that Sheikh Mujib was in the jail, the Pathans among the prisoners scaled the barracks’ roofs and let out a torrent of filthy abuses aimed at his mother and sisters and threw torn shoes and stones at the women inmates’ block. A few guards got hit with the torn shoes and rocks. The guards subsequently scaled the barracks’ roofs and fired bullets in the air, six shots, to scare the troublemakers who thereafter climbed down. The Pathans, however, continued abusing Sheikh Mujib from their barracks.
Later, the jail’s chief, Chaudhary Naseer, undertook a round of the prison and passed on a message to the inmates – ‘You all must chill. Sheikh Mujib has been brought here to be hanged.’ The clarification sent a wave of jubilation through the jail with the Pakistani inmates breaking into chants of ‘Ya Ali’, ‘Ya Ali’.
We, the Indian inmates, craved a glimpse of Sheikh Mujib. But that was impossible. Yet, the heart yearned to see the ‘Bengal Lion’, who had managed to awaken his people against tyranny and exploitation. He had sacrificed his own family in doing so. As per reports, Sheikh Mujib’s son was shot dead when the latter was being taken into custody. Only his daughter, Sheikh Hasina [Bangladesh’s current prime minister], survived.
We once met his cook in the jail’s storeroom, where one went to collect the ration. The cook was there to pick up the ration meant for Sheikh Mujib. We could not speak to him in the presence of guards. The store’s clerk, however, could not resist a dig: “So, how is the traitor Mujib doing?’ The cook was a tough nut. He responded: “Sheikh Saheb is perfectly fine and healthy and in a good mental space. He keeps saying that he will continue to fight for the rights of the Bengalis till his last breath.”
One day, one of the prison’s senior officials, Fazaldad, arrived at our barrack with a warden in tow and ordered his junior to pick eight Indian prisoners. There was no word about what task we were being assigned. When we were led to the women’s block, where Sheikh Mujib had been lodged, we thought finally we would get a glimpse of the great man. But we found all the windows in the block had been shuttered with wooden screens.
Fazaldad ordered us to dig a ditch – eight feet in length and four feet in width and depth. We deduced instantly that Sheikh Mujib would be hanged and that we were digging his grave. We got on with the job. None of us had the guts to ask Fazaldad what the ditch was for.
No Pakistani inmate was involved in the digging. The jail officials probably thought that the news would be leaked if Pakistanis in the jail got a whiff. By late evening, we had finished the task. Then the wait began, our ears straining for any sound from the gallows.
But nothing happened that night. It seemed the hanging had been postponed. The next morning, when the wards were thrown open, some were saying that the Sheikh was still alive while others claimed he was killed with a poison injection then buried in the grave we had dug last night. But these were all speculations.
Later in the day, when we reached the storeroom to collect our share of jaggery and chana, Sheikh Mujib’s cook was there to collect for him tea leaves, milk and sugar. That was a clear indication that Sheikh Mujib was alive. We later learnt that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had met Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan to ask him to stop the execution. The logic he [Bhutto] had given was that if Sheikh Mujib was hanged, the Bengalis’ anger would burn and destroy the entire rank and file of the Pakistani armed forces stationed in East Pakistan.
The next evening, we were again brought out of our wards and asked to fill up the ditch. We were happy that we had been spared of becoming a part of such a dubious event. But a fortnight later, we were again taken out of our cells and asked to dig a new grave. On this occasion too, Sheikh Mujib was not hanged. And this routine was repeated twice again and each time we were asked the next morning to fill the ditch up.
This is how Sheikh Mujib spent his four months of incarceration at Mianwali prison’s women’s inmates’ block – awaiting to be executed any day, any hour.
When Bangladesh came into being eventually, Sheikh Mujib became its first President. But none would have imagined that the people for whom he had sacrificed everything, including his family, would assassinate him.
A few months before President Mujib was killed, R&AW had got intel of the plot. When the plan for the assassination was being prepared at a secret meeting attended by Bangladeshi army officers, one of the participants there was our mole. He subsequently scribbled a note on the deliberations on a slip of paper and dumped it in a waste bin. An agent of ours later picked up the note.
R&AW’s chief R N Kao posed as a betel-leaf seller to slip into Bangladesh. He met Sheikh Mujib and alerted him about the plot. Sheikh Mujib laughed saying: “How is that possible? They are my sons, they cannot murder me.”
Mujibur Rehman was assassinated at the behest of Bangladesh army’s chief Ziaur Rahman. I go down the memory lane even today, reminiscing about those days when Sheikh Mujib had been imprisoned at the Mianwali prison. Ropes for hanging him had been prepared, graves were dug up. His enemies could not kill him. However, it was his own who assassinated him.
Translated by Abhishek Saran. This memoir, published by Rajkamal Prakashan, won the prestigious Shrikant Verma Award in 1989
Note: Mohanlal Bhaskar was repatriated to India in 1974. He passed away in 2004
[Mohanlal Bhaskar’s account of the events inside Mianwali jail was confirmed by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman himself weeks after he returned to East Pakistan and was elected prime minister of Bangladesh. This is what he told a group of journalists from the US, this NYT story reports:
At 4am, two hours before the killing was to take place, Sheik Mujib related, the prison superintendent, who was friendly to him, opened his cell. “Are you taking me to hang me?” asked Sheik Mujib, who had watched prison employees dig a grave in the compound outside his cell (they said it was a trench for his protection in the event of Indian air raids.) The superintendent, who was greatly excited, assured the prisoner that he was not taking him for hanging.
Sheik Mujib was still dubious. “I told him, ‘If you're going to execute me, then please give me a few minutes to say my last prayers.’”
“No, no, there's no time!” said the superintendent, pulling at Sheik Mujib. “You must come with me quickly!”]
