Opinion A fateful year that still is

India,Pakistan and Bangladesh still have to move on from the fears unleashed in 1971.

March 31, 2011 03:40 AM IST First published on: Mar 31, 2011 at 03:40 AM IST

Bangladesh declared independence on March 26,1971 and set in motion a train of events that make 1971 arguably the most important year in the strategic history of the subcontinent. Forty years later,we are still grappling with the shadow of that year. The unfolding genocide in East Pakistan,which the world watched with indifference,led to an unparalleled refugee crisis,culminating in a full-scale Indian intervention and war. The war itself was an unprecedented global event. India does not formally subscribe to the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect. But this war was perhaps the most effective application of the doctrine before its time. The shameful conduct of Kissinger and Nixon,much against the advice of the US State Department professionals,it has to be said,cast a shadow on Indo-US relations for decades.

But the psychic consequences of 1971 still reverberate from east to west. Three contemporaneous events around us,Gilanis visit,Bangladeshs independence celebrations,and even the elections in Assam are tied together by the shadow of 1971. One can debate the roots of Pakistans crisis. For India,the war may have been a humanitarian intervention laced with a touch of self-interest. If P.N. Dhars narrative is correct,India deliberately did not leverage the outcome for a decisive settlement on Kashmir. But Pakistan internalised a more traumatic narrative. The creation of Bangladesh exacerbated Pakistans identity crisis. Pakistan was created a self-professed homeland for the subcontinents Muslims. Within this conception the place of Islam as a political ideology was always ambiguous. But the trauma of 1971 exacerbated this confusion. Defeat opened the way for more radical Islamic ideologies,and undermined the possibilities for a liberal Pakistan. But more importantly,it turned a political and military rivalry between India and Pakistan into a game of deep existential resentment. India was cast as the power responsible for Pakistans dismemberment,a permanent existential threat. In a sense Pakistans strategy ever since has tapped into that existential fear that 1971 made more livid. It legitimised its strategy for avenging humiliation by the policy of inflicting a thousand cuts. It led to a greater nuclearisation of Pakistan. It has been hyper-paranoid about any Indian activity in Afghanistan.

Scholars like Farzana Shaikh have argued that Pakistan requires a negative identity predicated on opposition to India. 1971 exacerbated that syndrome very vividly. These were compounded by the vested interests of the army. There has also been very candid discussion of 1971 inside Pakistan. But most of it is devoted to why Pakistan failed,not how it can move beyond that history. Pakistans options are fundamentally limited so long as its elites are gripped by the trauma of 1971. If they can overcome the fear that India poses any kind of existential threat,so much more political space can open up both domestically and internationally. Whether 2011 can overcome that trauma,particularly in the military,is an open question. But the big lesson of 1971 is this: the resentments of a wounded party cast a longer shadow than the logic of open combat. And we have few tools to deal with the former.

The new nation that 1971 brought into being,Bangladesh,has also had to deal with the ghosts of 1971. The independence of any nation,especially one that emerges under violent circumstances,will be subject to contesting narratives. This has several layers. If India underestimated the consequences of defeat in the west,it overestimated the goodwill of victory in the east. The full scale of atrocities in 1971 is still a matter of debate. But the newly independent nation quickly lost control of its own narrative,as Bangladeshi politics became,in part,a replay of 1971 by other means. The anti-liberation forces continued to shape Bangladeshi politics as it,for a long time,lurched from one political crisis to another. Whether the war crimes trials will provide a full reckoning of 1971 and give the right kind of closure is still an open question. But at the moment,Bangladesh seems to have a window of opportunity unprecedented in its recent history. Its state is showing a resolve to pacify violence in an exemplary way,and provides a signal lesson that states can sometimes curb terrorism if they have political clarity.

The outcomes are not a foregone conclusion,but the signs are good. The principles of 1971,particularly secularism,have been assertively reclaimed. Macro-economic indicators in Bangladesh are encouraging. There is an extraordinary sense of innovation in a range of sectors form delivery of social services to industry. Bangladesh has given something of a reply to Kissingers characteristically hubristic judgment that the place is and will always remain a basket case. Much of innovation in Bangladesh is homegrown. India has the impossible task in the west to convince Pakistan that it does not pose an existential threat. In the east it has the task to become a partner in Bangladeshs development,without the condescension that comes naturally to us. There have been remarkable breakthroughs on a range of issues recently,from terrorism to connectivity. But India needs to be both as generous as possible and deliver as quickly as possible; or else we risk becoming a basket case on implementing promises to neighbours. While there remain unresolved issues around 1971,Bangladesh is now showing a determination not to be tethered to its past. This is never easy in the subcontinent. But the only way to deal with history is often to move beyond it.

We often need a reminder of how irrevocably our histories are linked. Migration from Bangladesh remains a live issue in Assam politics. But this issue also operates in the shadow of 1971. The IMDT Act allows those who came to Assam before March 25,1971 to become citizens. The cut-off date is the day before Bangladeshs declaration of independence,almost symbolically signalling that we still have not,in a legal sense,come to terms with the refugees that came as a result of the crisis. In Assam,political discourse in various quarters has often confused native Assamese-speaking Muslim settlers and recent migrants,and after 1971 it is increasingly hard to disentangle the two. But even for India,particularly in the Northeast,the 1971 war and its aftermath reopened the fundamental question of the subcontinent: the question of who belongs where. If there is a signal lesson from 1971,it is this: this question is itself a death trap of sorts. 1971 produced a slew of existential fears that still mark us. It is time to move beyond them.

The writer is president,Centre for Policy Research,Delhi express@expressindia.com