Opinion Fourteen days to freedom

Despite many imperfections,even flaws,India’s overall performance in those troubled times was magnificent. In 14 days flat,a country the size of Bangladesh was liberated from under the Pakistani jackboot. The complete air superiority established almost at once helped. No fewer than 93,000 Pakistani soldiers,under the command of General A.A. Niazi,surrendered. Never before or after has a surrender of this magnitude taken place since World War II. Ten million refugees who had fled Bangladesh during the savage crackdown by the Pakistani army returned home smoothly and swiftly.

This said,some of the serious failings and gaps must also be noted. In the first place,when the balloon went up in Dhaka on March 25,1971,India did not have a contingency plan to cope with the situation,which New Delhi had never envisaged. Countries like Britain,on the other hand,had been expecting it. Moreover,as P. N. Dhar,then secretary to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,has recorded,even on March 25,as news flashes on the Pakistan army’s savage crackdown in Dhaka came in,policy makers in Delhi continued to be under the illusion that this was Pakistani president General Yahya Khan’s last-ditch tactic to pressure Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to come to some settlement or the other.

Secondly,it was logical to decide not to take military action immediately but to wait until after the monsoon,when the armed forces would also be fully prepared. In retrospect,however,and with the benefit of hindsight,the question arises whether it was prudent to wait for eight long months. For,it is now known that General Niazi had sought permission to attack India in the east in April,occupy enough Indian space,and then negotiate with India from a position of strength because the monsoon would render the Indian army immobile. Luckily,Yahya Khan rejected the idea. In any case,the luxury of a long wait would not be available again.

Thirdly — and this is very serious — in the war plans formulated and fine-tuned over eight months,occupation of Dhaka was did not figure at all. Lieutenant-General J. R. Jacob,chief of staff of the Eastern Command,and Lieutenant-General Inder Gill,director-general of military operations,filled this lethal lacuna later.

None of this casts a shadow,however,on the heartwarming cooperation throughout among the three service chiefs,all of them outstanding — General Sam Manekshaw,Admiral S. M. Nanda and Air Chief Marshal P. C. Lal — that travelled down the line. The admiral and the air chief were sometimes irked by the general’s “egotism”. But they knew that they had to suppress all personal feelings and sink all professional differences. There was equal cohesion and synergy also among the prime minister’s civilian advisers — principal secretary P. N. Haksar,secretary P. N. Dhar,chairman of the policy planning committee D. P. Dhar,foreign secretary T. N. Kaul,and spymaster R. N. Kao — collectively nicknamed “Kashmiri mafia”.

However,when all is said and done,the undoubted heroine of that lightning war was Indira Gandhi,and not merely because she provided everyone involved in the effort inspiring leadership while taking care to keep opposition leaders in the loop. The way she mobilised international opinion in favour of Bangladesh was masterly. Every country she went listened to her with respect. The United States was the only exception,because Nixon and Kissinger had resolved to be on the side that was morally in the wrong and militarily doomed to defeat.

Most importantly,the Bangladesh war was fought at a time of tectonic changes in the global configuration of power. Courageous and clear-headed,she never lost equanimity. Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing that converted US and China from bitter enemies to close allies almost overnight took place in July 1971. He then told the Indian ambassador to Washington,L. K. Jha,that in the event of China intervening in the Indo-Pakistan conflict over Bangladesh,India must not expect any help from the US.

Within two days,Indira Gandhi sent D. P. Dhar,who had been ambassador to the Soviet Union until some months earlier,to Moscow to conclude the Indo-Soviet treaty that had lain unattended for close to two years. It was signed in New Delhi on August 9. All concerned got the message.

Yet,towards the end of the 1971 war,the arrogant incumbent of the White House dispatched a nuclear task force of the US Seventh Fleet,with one Marine battalion on board,to the Bay of Bengal. Again,Indira Gandhi was unperturbed. All she did was send for Raja Rammana,then director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre,and told him to start working on an underground nuclear detonation.

This test took place on May 18,1974 when the JP movement — so named because the Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan was its leader — was in full blast,and there was much discontent against the prime minister. Her opponents screamed that she had “staged” the test to divert attention from her failings. The ignoramuses didn’t know that a nuclear test has a gestation period of at least three years.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator