Are we forgetting what India did for Bangladesh?

Kolkata: On 26th March, the Independence Day of Bangladesh, the events of 1971 deserve a thoughtful rerun. Although, it did take till December for the Indian Army in tandem with the Muktijoddha network to defeat General Niazi’s Pakistan forces and deliver genuine freedom.

As per the General Elections held by General Yahya Khan in 1970, Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League won not just in East Pakistan but in the Provincial Assembly as well, making him the logical PM candidate for Pakistan. However, the military dictator in cahoots with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto would have none of it, due to ethnic distrust and a matter like the Agartala Conspiracy Case. In the chaotic melee that followed, the momentum for an independent East Pakistan was furthered, as rapprochement seemed out of the question. After all, the bloody language movement of 1952 had already fermented implacable distrust and the socio-demographic gap between Bengalis and Punjabis was indeed wide.

In the bloody months that followed the Pakistan Government positioned General Tikka Khan, the Butcher of Balochistan, to be the boss of the region. It is estimated that around one million people were murdered by the Pakistan Army under the auspices of Operation Searchlight and its gory successors. Intellectuals were especially targeted and barbaric acts of torture were conducted in cahoots with the razakars, locals loyal to Islamabad. Pakistan’s enemy was every Bengali living in East Pakistan and thus, both Muslims and Hindus were targeted with equal velocity. For much of this period, India had been tacitly supporting the underground but somewhere towards the latter half of 1971 a full-fledged conflict broke out on both fronts. The United States was rather livid but the strong support of the Soviet Union and the defiance of Indira Gandhi ensured that this would be a direct Indo-Pak encounter with no global entities.

To cut a very long story short, the Indians led by General Jacob and General Aurora demolished Pakistan and ensured the surrender of 90.000 odd enemy soldiers. Bangladesh was duly made genuinely free and Sheikh Mujib became the leader of the new nation but what is increasingly less recognised is the conduct of Indian policy and indeed, the Indian Army. Quite contrary to imperialistic strategy, India exited the newly freed nation at the earliest opportunity and released the Pakistani prisoners, not attempting a point of leverage. A quick glance at instances of liberation by external forces would clearly have no such comparable example - whether it is the Iron Curtain or the Russo- American aggressions in Asia. As if an expressway operator on a Build Operate Transfer model, Indians simply passed on the reins in spite of suffering major casualties and managing the refugee crisis, which is a live matter to date.

In 1998, when I visited Bangladesh for work, the fairly considerable Pro-Pakistan leanings were both inexplicable and alarming - a simple surrogate being the support demonstrated during cricket matches. When less than 30 years back, a full-fledged genocide was conducted on these very people - as mentioned earlier, religion is no bar. Those were the early days of an Islamist resurgence overriding the core Bengali identity and seeming to defy any defensible logic. Not that they needed to be eternally grateful to India but the general levels of gratitude, and I repeat this word deliberately, seemed to be dipping and that was appalling. Of course, the upper ends of society, especially the Muktijoddha fraternity, now wise and greying, were still in awe of the erstwhile liberators.

The roots of this negativity towards India can well be traced to the brutal murder of Sheikh Mujib and his family in 1975, for reasons including a pro-India bias to which sections of the army were hostile to. Much later, with Sheikh Hasina in power, the culprits were served a death sentence but this climate of love-hate with India continues with much alacrity to this day. Pakistan tries to make inroads while China is diligent with its infrastructure terrorism strategy ( Belt and Road) and rogue Islamist elements seem to be operating merrily. In all this, the economy is growing at a robust pace with a $460 billion GDP propelled by a thriving garment industry and in every possible parameter a way more successful nation than Pakistan, aided of course by fairly stable borders on all sides. But the anti-India momentum continues unabated, fuelled partially by border and water disputes and catalysed further by fundamentalist tendencies. In another significant data point, the Hindu population of East Pakistan was 30% in 1947 and in the identical geographical territory, Bangladesh, it is now 8%.

In retrospect, it must be said that India never tomtom their Bangladesh credentials at the opportune time in the early 1970s, as a model operation for liberating on humanitarian grounds and not territorial ambitions. President Nixon used to hate the guts of Indira Gandhi and those were the halcyon days of the Cold War, with India’s affiliation with the Soviets rather clear. In spite of a unique feat in modern history, Mrs Gandhi never made it to the Nobel Peace Prize shortlist or even the Time Magazine Person of the Year tally - both influenced heavily by NATO sensibilities. This explains why Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany and Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet Human Rights activist, won the Peace Price in 1971 and 1975 respectively - in 1972 no award was given. Over time, the world became a bigger place with India's more prominent and more pressing domestic and international matters taking precedence over Bangladesh.

To every right-minded citizen of Bangladesh, here is my request of the day. Please celebrate your nation’s independence with much-deserved gusto but do spare a quick salaam for the Indian tricolour, without which you would have remained an impoverished vassal of Pakistan, quite like POK. And in the process ensure that your history books cover the roles of our brave soldiers with due regard and volume while highlighting the atrocities of the masters from Islamabad. So that the spirit of your nation, founded on the purity of a culture, can never fall prey to vicious agents of destruction.

As proud and patriotic Indians, it is also our duty to ensure that this noble act and its significance never eludes our youth sensibilities. Equally to keep nudging the USA and every legacy imperialist that conquests can also be about liberation and not just annexations.