Why India decided to get involved in the Bangladesh Liberation War

Joy Bangla

The radical of East Pakistan fought back. On 26 March 1971, Mujib declared independence. One time later, the declaration was broadcast from the concealed Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra (Free Bengal Radio Centre) by an obscure Maj. Ziaur-Rahman who omitted immoderate notation to Mujib. Mujib’s triumph meant that the six-point programme had electoral support. Bhutto and Yahya’s nonaccomplishment to judge this mandate meant the request for autonomy translated into a crackdown. The consequent Bengali pushback ended with Bangladesh’s liberation connected 16 December 1971, the time Pakistani forces signed the instrumentality of surrender with attacking Indian forces.

A past of the warfare is beyond this book’s scope. Instead, this conception focuses connected the contradictions that shaped India’s attack towards warfighting and the Mujibnagar government. Aware of the fractious quality of East Pakistani authorities coupled with Mujib’s cult, moving with divers sections of Bengalis agreed successful their tendency for liberation—but ideologically divided—was challenging. Who would recognition for liberation became a fractious issue. The request to negociate fissures successful Bangladesh’s assemblage politic was arsenic important arsenic ensuring India’s subject preparedness with Soviet enactment and diplomatic mobilisation against Pakistan’s genocide.

The occupation fell connected the shoulders of Durga Prasad Dhar—popularly known arsenic ‘DP’. India’s envoy to the Soviet Union, Dhar played a captious relation successful the signing of the 1971 Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty.Haksar appointed the quick-witted and charming DP arsenic president of the MEA’s argumentation readying committee to coordinate and pb the warfare effort arsenic helium himself was ‘physically, and mentally, stretched beyond the breaking point’. On 19 August 1971, DP was formally appointed to pb the ‘one-man committee’ to coordinate wartime governmental communications and quality liaison. Gandhi was ‘anxious’ that liaison with leaders of the Bangladesh question should beryllium centralised and maintained ‘by the clandestine bureau and the concealed channels of R&AW’. 

If Kao commanded R&AW’s peculiar kinetic operations, DP was to bid its peculiar governmental operations. This meant moving with each factions successful the Bangladesh government, and channelling their capabilities towards liberation. For this, if needed, DP was to coax extremist elements to toed the Bangladeshi government’s line,

and combat nether the Mukti Fauj. To marque consciousness of his assignment and approach, it’s indispensable to unpack the ideas DP had connected however to negociate these issues portion helium was inactive successful Moscow.

On 7 April, a fewer days aft the motorboat of Operation Searchlight, helium received a missive from Haksar. Gandhi’s main caput wanted to cognize if ‘India and Soviet Union and possibly others bash thing to bring the struggle to an aboriginal end, oregon to prolong the genuinely nationalist forces successful East Pakistan truthful that, politically speaking, they proceed to bid the respect and loyalty of the immense bulk of

the people’. Gandhi was acrophobic that she couldn’t withstand home pressures, particularly from the Jana Sangh, to recognise Bangladesh arsenic a abstracted state aft a point, and that determination were thousands of radical from West Bengal who were volunteering to combat successful East Pakistan.

The 1967 Naxalite uprising, known connections betwixt Indian and Bangladeshi Naxals, China’s ideological and worldly enactment to these groups, and the caller outbreak of a communist uprising successful Ceylon disquieted New Delhi that the absorption successful East Pakistan could ‘slip retired of the hands of these [nationalistic] elements into the hands of pro-Chinese factions’. This ‘was bound to impact the full of India and endanger its stability’, she believed. Haksar warned DP that R&AW was receiving reports of ‘beginning of rumblings’ that ‘the enactment of Mujibur Rahman and his colleagues has failed the people’ and the East Pakistani counterpart of ‘our Naxalites unsocial tin present the goods’. In India’s reading, China was playing a classical ‘double-faced game’ by publically supporting West Pakistan, but ‘working clandestinely to summation its power successful East Pakistan’.

India received a sympathetic but noncommittal effect from Moscow done a ‘disappointed’ DP. On 18 April, a fewer days aft noting his disappointment with the Soviets, DP authored an optimistic and considered enactment to Haksar. He argued that Moscow was much forthcoming and sympathetic successful world than its written notes reflect, and recommended that India consolidate its presumption some successful the ‘East Pakistani people’s caput and successful the appraisal made of our motives and our cognition successful the antithetic countries of the world’. He noted that Moscow was consenting to depart from its argumentation of discouraging secessionism successful airy of Pakistan’s crackdown against Bengali nationalism, which ‘is secessionist successful essence’.

Moscow informed DP that it guided the Communist Party of India (CPI) to utilise its channels to assistance the ‘politically close groups successful East Pakistan’, namely the NAP-M and the Communist Party of Bangladesh. Moscow besides advised the CPI to suspend its rivalry with CPI(M) for the conflict’s duration. The concern successful West Bengal successful 1970–71 was precarious. After gathering CPI’s Rajeshwar Rao and CPI’s Bhupesh Gupta successful Moscow, DP was convinced that Soviet power was moving connected Indian communists.

But astir of each for DP, the period preceding the onset of Pakistan’s crackdown demonstrated ‘to the delighted astonishment of each america that the East Bengalis person it successful them’.There had been apprehensions among Indian officials astir the stamina and committedness of the Bengali radical to defy Pakistan. DP did not privation New Delhi to question an contiguous decision of the Pakistani army, but to ‘create the full of East Bengal into a bottomless ditch which volition suck the spot and the resources of West Pakistan’. India had to deliberation successful presumption of 1 oregon 2 years, not a week oregon two, and wage a semipermanent covert run wrong East Pakistan alternatively of utilizing overt subject force, helium suggested. His advocacy had enactment successful New Delhi. K Subrahmanyam, manager of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, argued that India should intervene to ‘save the bulk colonisation successful a state from genocide by a subject oligarchy’, and that specified an enactment ‘will beryllium successful the tone of the enactment India has been demanding’ from the UN and the West against oppressive ‘white number regime[s]’ successful South Africa and Rhodesia. 

In July, connected his instrumentality to India, DP met with Bhashani and Tajuddin, and presented a seventeen-page appraisal to Gandhi that explained however to negociate the fractious authorities of East Pakistan successful keeping with India’s interests. His basal constituent was to caution Gandhi against full warfare contempt the hazard of an insurgency becoming a ‘festering wound’, and to ‘use the Bengali quality worldly and the Bengali terrain to motorboat a broad warfare of liberation’. Somewhat derogatorily, DP continued that India’s efforts to bid and limb Bengali guerrillas were woefully tiny and the R&AW should ‘convert each imaginable beggar—because anyone who lives connected doles for a agelong clip loses inaugural and becomes a beggar—into a committed liberation fighter.’ Once these ‘steeled fighters’ could run with greater velocity and summation territory, it was apt that the concern whitethorn escalate to warfare betwixt India and Pakistan. 

He went on: ‘of specified a anticipation we request not beryllium unduly afraid. If warfare comes successful this manner, well, fto it travel and we should not debar it. As a substance of fact, I discern a ringing of inevitability astir an Indo Pak war’. But however could interior differences beryllium managed successful the liberation movement? DP drew from past experiences, including the satellite wars, to physique a lawsuit for a disciplined vanguard wrong the movement. He was wide that ‘it volition beryllium thing abbreviated of a occurrence that nary bickering should originate amongst the constituents of Bangladesh … the database of differences and complaints against the Government of India and their functionaries is besides apt to go fatter and fatter’.

To negociate the AL-dominated Mujibnagar government’s interior issues and make a agreed front, DP recommended forging battlefield unity among fighters (instead of creating ‘manifesto-borne-unity’), similar successful the Spanish civilian war.His biggest interest was the AL enactment turning ‘wishy washy … starring to endless statement and quarrels’, and creating grounds for the movement’s enactment passing into the

hands of ‘sober oregon the utmost communist’. India had to ‘identify the truly liberal, antiauthoritarian and brave elements amongst the transverse conception of the enactment of the East Bengalis. This would go the hard halfway astir whom we could physique an edifice which could astatine erstwhile beryllium dependable and stable’. Though sensible to support the liberation question united, DP’s attack had its antinomies. The nationalist vanguard helium had successful caput was suited to India’s interests, but militated against participatory politics. The different contradiction laic successful however India viewed and dealt with communists.