Indian involvement in the 1971 war

I collect here some material on the contentious issue of India's involvement in the 1971 war. One purpose of this is to shed some light on the numerous strongly worded statements of Pakistani military and civilian figures regarding India and its support for the secession of what was then East Pakistan. Were those statements completely disconnected from reality and merely based on historical suspicions existing ever since the partition? The other purpose is to provide some counterweight to the narrative in which India played no role in the events of 1971 until their "humanitarian intervention" at the end of the year.

There are three distinct elements to consider here:

• the start of open all-out war
• cross-border operations by Indian forces in support of  the Mukti Bahini
• material support and training provided to the Mukti Bahini by India

The Pakistani perception of a probable Indian involvement in the political developments of early 1971 is yet another interesting element which I plan to come back to in a future post.

First, on the start of open war, from Sarmila Bose's "Dead Reckoning":

The date of the start of full-fledged war between India and Pakistan in 1971 is a contested issue. The date popularly given out is 3 December, the one announced by India, but this is merely the date the war spread to include the Western sector. In a sense India's involvement in the war may be taken to be from March, and its involvement in the politics of the province perhaps from even earlier. Numerous Bangladeshi pro-liberation ac­counts blithely recount close contact and coordination with Indian authori­ties prior to the military action taken by the Pakistani regime, as well as In­dian involvement and casualties in 'actions' in East Pakistan throughout the year. Many of the Pakistani officers I spoke to described Indian penetration of the territory as pervasive. 'The big operations are always done by the Indians', reported The Guardian on 18 September 1971, after an ethnic Bengali, who blended in with the local population and needed no translation, visited the training camps of the Mukti Bahini in India and crossed into East Pakistan with a guide on his own. Of the couple of hundred Bengali 'volunteers' who were said to be in the border area he visited, only six had been given any train­ing at all and only three had taken part in any operation. 

The start-date of the open all-out war in East Pakistan turns out not to have been 3 December after all. General Niazi, the Eastern Commander of the Paki­stan army, was irritated enough by claims of a 'lightning campaign' by India to devote a separate section in his book to the subject, entitled 'The Date of the War': 'On the night of 20/21 November 1971, the Indian Army attacked East Pakistan from all directions'. General Niazi is of course an interested party in this debate, but his assertion is supported by the work of the American scholars Sisson and Rose. They conclude that India decided in favour of even­tual direct military intervention as early as April 1971, and then devised a phased strategy. "The American government was correct in its assessment that India had already decided to launch a military operation in East Pakistan when Mrs. Gandhi came to Washington in early November pretending that she was still seeking a peaceful solution'. 

Roughly speaking then, all-out war can be said to have started at the end of November, while large scale cross-border Indian operations took place as early as September. What about training and material support? We saw above that Sisson & Rose conclude that the Indian administration decided on military intervention as early as April 1971. Here is what they have to say about India's support for the Mukti Bahini:

By late July the decision-making group around Mrs. Gandhi had achieved a broad consensus on the issue of Bangladesh, laying the foundations for the domestic and foreign policy of the government thereafter. One of the more immediate consequences was the perceived need to establish more direct supervision of the Bangladesh government in exile and the Mukti Bahini and other Bangladeshi "liberation forces." The Indian army had assumed primary responsibility for the arming and training of the Mukti Bahini forces from the Border Security Force on 30 April. Even occasional participation by Indian military personnel in raids across the border was now permitted. An effort was also made to bring the different autonomous resistance groups under Mukti Bahini (that is, Indian) supervision and direction, but with only limited success.

(...) 

The first effort to create an organized armed force from among these groups was made on 14 April by the Bangladesh government in exile when it appointed Col. M. A. G. Osmani, a military adviser to Mujib and a retired Pakistani army officer, as commander in chief of the Bangladeshi armed forces. Osmani had entered the army prior to independence and had been instrumental in raising and forging the East Bengal Rifles. He was a well-trained senior officer who had had high-level staff, but limited command, experience, and was reported to have felt that his career had been thwarted in the Pakistani army. He had not achieved the rank held by the Indian officers with whom he had to deal. Osmani was instrumental in creating a series of training camps along the Indo-Pakistani border in late April and May, first as centers to receive and temporarily house recruits and armed personnel coming from East Pakistan, but subsequently to impart training in small-unit tactics and in the use of firearms and explosives. Initial training was given by East Pakistani personnel in collaboration with personnel from India's Border Security Force (BSF) established after the 1965 war for policing functions, like the East Pakistan Rifles on the Pakistani side. The BSF was under police command, but included many retired Indian army personnel in its ranks. As the ranks of the Mukti Bahini recruits swelled, however, the Indian army assumed training and organizing functions. By the time serious hostilities commenced in November, Pakistani intelligence reported fifty-nine training camps in operation around the perimeter of East Pakistan. By the end of May a command structure had been created that incorporated a substantial proportion of the Bengali freedom fighters into company units, ultimately organized into three brigades responsible for guerrilla operations, with East Pakistan divided into various sectors, each under the charge of Bengali officers.

According to Pakistani intelligence, the Indian army started a more concerted effort to train Mukti Bahini personnel in June. Three hundred recruits were reportedly sent to Cochin for training as underwater saboteurs, and another three hundred, almost all university students, were trained at Plassy on the Bhagirathi River in West Bengal as frogmen. Student trainees were sorted in terms of their education. Science graduates were given two months' technical training; undergraduates were trained in small arms, mortars, recoilless rifles, rocket launchers, map reading, and commando tactics; non-matrics were trained as saboteurs in the use of explosives, mines, and grenades. Others were trained at artillery-and signal-training centers in Lucknow and Dehra Dun or selected for short courses in officer training in Dehra Dun. By the end of June some thirty thousand Mukti Bahini recruits had been trained, although in a rather slipshod manner; by November seventy thousand were under arms, with another thirty thousand reportedly undergoing training. According to both Pakistani and Indian sources, the weapons made available to the Mukti Bahini by India were limited and largely obsolete. Modern weapons became available when the Mukti Bahini could purchase them on the international and West Bengali arms markets. Indian political and military leaders considered it prudent to provide some training and weapons to guerrilla activities in East Pakistan; otherwise, the Mukti Bahini would have had to become directly involved in West Bengal in their search for arms, something that New Delhi preferred to discourage. They had to be kept involved in East Pakistan regardless of their military effectiveness.

(...) 

Having concluded that India would eventually have to resort to the direct use of force against Pakistan, New Delhi set about devising a strategy that would achieve its objectives on the most cost-effective terms. A decision had been made as early as April to give some assistance to the Bangladeshi resistance forces as a form of pressure upon the Pakistani government to make basic concessions, but by midsummer it was clear that this would not be sufficient. The newly organized Mukti Bahini had not been able to prevent the Pakistani army from regaining control over all the major urban centers on the East Pakistani-Indian border and even establishing a tenuous authority in most of the rural areas. The next phase in Indian tactics, from July to mid October, involved both much more intensive training of the Mukti Bahini and direct involvement in Mukti Bahini activities by Indian military personnel. This enabled the Mukti Bahini to launch major organizational and sabotage campaigns in East Pakistan at the height of the monsoon season, at a time when the Pakistani army's maneuverability was reduced because of its dependence on vehicles and armored personnel carriers. The Mukti Bahini campaign, with some disguised Indian involvement, was directed, and with some success, at such strategic facilities as bridges, power stations, communication systems, and ships in Chittagong harbor. The destruction of bridges handicapped the Pakistani forces in this period, but it proved to be a major obstacle to the Indian invasion forces in December. Indian artillery stationed on the border was used on occasion to support Mukti Bahini activities in the immediate transborder areas, usually in response to Pakistani army shellings and incursions if the Indian reports are taken seriously.

(...) 

The next phase in the preliminaries to open and direct intervention by Indian forces was the period from mid October to 20 November, in which both quantitative and qualitative changes occurred in Indian military support of the Mukti Bahini, particularly in several key strategic border areas. Indian artillery was used much more extensively in support of rebel operations in East Pakistan, and Indian military forces, including tanks and air power on a few occasions, were also used to back up the Mukti Bahini. Indian units were withdrawn to Indian territory once their objectives had been brought under the control of the Mukti Bahini, though at times this was only for short periods, as, to the irritation of the Indians, the Mukti Bahini forces rarely held their ground when the Pakistani army launched a counterattack. Nevertheless, quite substantial, if scattered, areas of East Pakistan had been brought under tenuous Mukti Bahini control by mid November, since the Pakistanis had to concentrate their limited forces on those sections of the border that were considered strategically critical.

Shahbag and women

Word is out on twitter that Shahbag is preparing a special programme for the International Women's Day, 8th of March. In other words, they will be demanding equality of the sexes and immediate hanging of all women war criminals and rajakars.

This is what happens when you're critical of the ICT trials

Can someone please explain what a Sharia-Bolshevik is? Are there also Sharia-Mensheviks? David Bergman's article can be found here.

The Daily Star and police brutality

Look how the Daily Star justifies the murder of a teenager:

Jamaat-Shibir men brought out a brisk procession at Rajarhat in Jaldhaka upazila in the afternoon and vandalised several shops.
Police and BGB personnel opened fire to disperse the unruly activists, leaving Atiqul Islam, 15, son of Anisur Rahman of Khutamara village, dead on the spot.

They don't mention what sort of bullets were used - presumably live rounds, as this seems to have become quite common over the past few days. Is that the appropriate response to "vandalising several shops"? The murder by the police of a 15-year old is deeply disturbing, no matter how one may feel about Jamaat's own contributions to the ongoing violence. But then: the Daily Star would justify everything and anything when it comes to supporting the ICT, war crimes trials and Shahbag.

Chakma Chief Tridev Roy and Bengali nationalism

I recently came across this article reviewing the life and career of Raja Tridev (or Tridiv) Roy, the Chakma leader who sided with the Pakistan regime during the 1971 war, written shortly after Roy's death in 2012. The writer, Syed Badrul Ahsan (a staunch supporter of Shahbag and what it stands for) reproaches Tridev Roy for not supporting the liberation struggle and failing to recognise the "genocide" that the Pakistani army carried out. In the words of Ahsan,

Throughout the terror-driven months of 1971, Tridiv Roy saw little reason to condemn the Pakistan army over the genocide it had launched against the Bengalis. He honestly believed that the Chakmas stood a better chance, where acquiring political rights were concerned, with Pakistan staying intact than with a soon-to-be Bangladesh. In late 1971, as General Yahya Khan went ahead (and he did not see the writing on the wall) with drafting a constitution for a Pakistan that was rapidly coming to an end in its eastern province, he reassured Tridiv Roy about a grant of autonomy to the Chittagong Hill Tracts region. The Chakma chief believed him and probably supposed that that indeed was what would happen. Surprisingly, he did not foresee Pakistan's impending doom. 

...once the Pakistan army took recourse to genocide, it became the moral responsibility of every inhabitant of Bangladesh to resist Pakistan. Tridiv Roy did not resist.

This reflects a general trend of Bangladeshi nationalist narratives of 1971; anyone who was sympathetic to the idea of attempting to maintain a unified Pakistan is seen as a quisling and morally defective, even if there may have been legitimate political motives and justifications for such a position. In the case of Tridev Roy, the motive seems to have been the expectation of greater autonomy for the tribal people of East Pakistan, as well as a mistrust of Awami League's Bengali nationalist agenda. In addition, Roy accuses the Bengali nationalists of committing atrocities against his people; the accusations are dismissed by Ahsan as 'mere hearsay' - rather ironic, given that hearsay is acceptable as evidence against alleged war criminals in the International Crimes Tribunal:

In the case of Tridiv Roy, as his memoirs make it clear, there did not appear to be a genocide at all. He says little or nothing about the conspiracy by the generals and the West Pakistani political establishment to undermine the majority party elected in December 1970. But he does go into a narration of what he calls the rampant killing of Chakmas by the Mukti Bahini in the first few days of the armed conflict. It is all based on hearsay. At a time when Bengalis all over the land were scrambling for shelter in the face of an advancing marauding army, they would have had no time to kill. Tridiv Roy disappoints on this score.

In this manner, the legitimacy of Tridiv Roy's political position is undermined - the Bengali nationalists could not have possibly massacred his people, and there is therefore no way of viewing the nationalists as morally equivalent (if not on the same scale) to the murderous West Pakistani military. Hence, it was an obligation on Tridiv Roy to support the liberation struggle, and his failure to do so is a despicable act of betrayal. One wonders whether Ahsan would make the same argument about Biharis, who had every political argument for supporting a unified Pakistan and who were massacred in large numbers by Bengali nationalists even before the Pakistani army started committing atrocities. Was it morally incumbent upon them too to support the Mukti Bahini?

As for Tridiv Roy, this is how he viewed the events of 1971 one year later:

The principle of autonomy was accepted in both wings of Pakistan after the electoral victory of the Awami League. The difference, however, arose over the quantum of autonomy demanded and its implications for the unity and territorial integrity of Pakistan. This was a political and constitutional problem which could have been resolved through political accomodation and agreement. The generals failed to grasp this essential fact and instead attempted to impose a military solution. But, even a basic military analysis of the situtation should have shown the untenability of the action that was taken in East Pakistan. The province was geographically surrounded by a historically hostile and more powerful neighbour, and the crisis was too good an opporunity for it to overlook. 

(speech at meeting organised at the Pakistan Council of Asia Society, New York, 1972)

Thus Tridiv Roy blames the military regime of Yahya Khan for the failure of 1971. The generals understood no language other than force - and Tridev Roy would presumably concede that large scale atrocities were committed by the Pakistani army during the war (although he does not in this particular speech) - but the question is whether that is reason enough to have stopped supporting the idea of a unified Pakistan under civilian rule. From a Bengali nationalist point of view, the answer - especially in hindsight - is a resounding yes. From the point of view of a Chakma, the issue is a lot more complex - here are a people who would most gladly have been autonomous or independent from both Pakistan and subsequently Bangladesh, but since they could not realistically achieve that aim, they had to resort to playing political games with regimes of both countries and siding with whoever they expected would best support their own interests. In the case of the Biharis (who had absolutely no reason to support Bengali nationalism) and Jamaat-e-Islaami (whose ideological principles were averse to the idea of a dismembered Pakistan), the support of a unified Pakistan was a natural political decision.

In many ways, the mistrust of Tridev Roy towards Bengali nationalism was justified. The history of the Chakma people under consecutive post-independence governments is that of repression and exploitation - a topic that deserves a separate future post. The irony of this is inescapable, given the long history of denial of rights to Bengalis of East Pakistan which ultimately led to their secession and establishment of Bangladesh. On the other hand, history is replete with many examples of multiple layers of colonialism existing in parallel. It is enough to think of the United Colonies of North America under British rule where Americans were struggling for "independence" while oppressing native Americans; or modern day Israel in which the Ashkenazi Jews stand at the top of the colonial power structure that discriminates against the Mizrahim, both of which in turn violate the rights of the "native" Palestinan below them.

Dumb statement of the day

This should become a regular feature of my blog; however, one would have to sift daily through large numbers of potential candidates which I have no time for at present, alas.

Yesterday, Khaleda Zia at the press conference said, "I am stunned. I am outraged. I am deeply hurt. I have no words to condemn and protest. Heinous genocide is taking place again in our country. People are being killed like birds. 

"The government has gone on a barbaric killing spree. Old people, children, adolescents and even chaste women are not being spared. It looks like foreign occupation forces are committing atrocities against the people of Bangladesh.

“It's beyond our imagination that a government can carry out genocide against its own people. We 
liberated our motherland in 1971 standing against such genocide. We cannot accept that any government for any reason would choose the path of genocide in that independent country." 

The words "genocide", "war criminal" and "razakar/rajakar" are used most liberally by Bangladeshi politicians (and public, unfortunately), to the extent that they have become completely meaningless. 

Come chill with the police - and leading party men

Look at the language of this Daily Star article:

"Alert to possible violence, a couple of thousand AL men also joined the prayers at Kataban Mosque, said Chhatra League General Secretary Siddiqui Nazmul Alam.
The atmosphere in and outside the mosque was completely different from other Fridays. There was calm all around with the heavy presence of law enforcers and AL men outside the mosque."

In fact, why don't we just dispense with the police altogether and make sure the lovely men from the AL provide peace and security for all of us? This reminded me of a HRW article on the violence from a few weeks ago:

Although the demonstrations were initially peaceful, violence has erupted in the last few days. Human Rights Watch was told by the spokesperson at Jamaat-e-Islaami that some members of its youth wing, Shibir, threw homemade bombs at the police, and that the police retaliated against these attacks. Photographs have emerged, taken by unknown people, which appear to show both police and protesters resorting to violence. In one photo at least, police in riot gear are pictured standing next to men in civilian clothes, who appear to be firing on protesters.

Also compare the Daily Star account above with the latest from HRW here:

The police in Dhaka and other places used live ammunition against protesters. Media reports suggest that most deaths were at the hands of police, but supporters of the ruling Awami League party have also engaged in vandalism and violence. The initial information received by Human Rights Watch suggests that the police were responding to attacks by Jamaat members and supporters that resulted in police and civilian deaths after the party called for protests against the verdict. The Jamaat party has denied that their members are responsible for any lethal violence, but media reports indicate that members of Jamaat’s Shibir group were responsible for several attacks, including against Hindu temples and houses.

Violence by Jamaat thugs is repulsive, but hardly any more so than the violence regularly meted out by the Bangladeshi police and Awami League thugs. Also worth noting from the latest HRW statement is this, on the ICT trials:
  
...the trials conducted thus far have been replete with irregularities. The defense has alleged intimidation and harassment of their witnesses, including the November 2012 abduction of a witness from the gates of the courthouse. In December 2012 The Economist published a series of intercepted communications between the senior judge and an external adviser, suggesting close and prohibited collaboration between the judge, prosecutors, and the government. The defense called for retrials in all the cases, but the ICT has refused to consider the matter.