1971 war: "India did not want to break up Pakistan"

Former diplomat Chandrashekhar Dasgupta talks to Indrani Bagchi about his book ‘India and the Bangladesh Liberation War: The Untold Story’: In your book, haven’t you been a bit of a disruptive author, challenging accepted wisdom? When I started researching this book, around 2004, I didn’t really have answers. I’m interested in the interface between foreign and defence policy. I started working on the 1971 War, partly because of a sense that in this role, not only is there a close interplay between foreign affairs and diplomacy, but because for the first and only time in the history of independent India, we had something like a grand strategy in which the country brings together all the resources, all the elements of power at its disposal.What were the things that surprised you when writing this book? The first was about the reasons for India’s intervention. The second was the grand strategy. I found P.N. Haksar to really be the mastermind of 1971. He said it would be a disaster if you were simply to march into Dhaka and install a government there, there would be international criticism, total loss of sympathy and support for the Bangladesh cause. The independence of Bangladesh can be won only by Bangladesh’s sons and daughters. The idea was to strengthen the Mukti Bahini, to support the government without recognising it; build international sympathy and support for Bangladesh; explain to the international community that it had a duty to enable the refugees to return to their homes, voluntarily, in safety and in honour. It was no longer Pakistan’s internal affair. Pakistan was exporting its internal affairs into India and creating what became an internal problem in India. Haksar pointed out that the principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, territorial integrity of states were deeply embedded in international law and practice. You needed to prepare the diplomatic grounds for a successful intervention. These are the seeds of grand strategy – ensuring there was no interference, ensuring there’d be no critical shortages of petroleum or other critical products, no foreign exchange crisis. Then, after the first few weeks, when the overwhelming majority of refugees who were Hindus were being driven across the border by the Pakistan army, ensuring communal peace and harmony in border areas. You see, all these had been planned. So it was really something quite unique, you know, in the history of independent India. medium nocaption88212109What was it like to serve in Dhaka after the war?It was very exciting. Once Bangladesh was liberated, I got orders transferring to Dhaka. I arrived in Dhaka after arranging for my family to stay behind in Delhi because we were told very clearly we would have no time for our families. That is how we worked virtually round the clock from early morning to late night, seven days a week. It was only after six months that we were allowed to take Sunday afternoons off. I moved into a house that had no furniture, there was only a mattress on which I could sleep. It had no curtains, on tables or chairs. But we had no time for these things. There was a massive task at hand. Ten million refugees were returning to their homes, they had to be resettled into some sort of decent housing. We had to ensure adequate supplies of food and medicines. Chittagong harbour had been mined, and therefore non-functional. That had to be cleared. The bridges that had been destroyed during the war had to be rebuilt. We were very busy, but it was a very, very exciting time. It was a huge challenge. Our government’s response was absolutely fantastic. I’ll give you one small example. We received indications that a cholera epidemic was about to break out. It had already begun, in fact, and the High Commissioner decided, therefore, that we needed to bring in the vaccine from India because it wasn’t available in Bangladesh. Millions of vaccine doses were required and within 48 hours. I rang up MEA in Delhi to pass on the high commissioner’s request. Within 36 hours, two IAF planes landed in Dhaka having picked up the supplies from Poona. In normal times, there would be financial approvals, questions about whether you actually need so many doses, how much had to be paid for transportation and so on. This sort of thing works only when there is an overarching national purpose and overarching national aim. And that is what we had in 1971.You say the RAW chief, R.N. Kao had predicted this outcome to Mrs Gandhi in 1969. Did she not take it seriously enough? In April 1969, Kao had alerted the government after the Agartala conspiracy case. He had said the six-point demand would increase exponentially and the Pakistan authorities would crush it with military force. But India did not actually want to break up Pakistan. There’s a misperception not only in Pakistan but in many other places as well, that India was just waiting for an opportunity to break up Pakistan. That is not so. This question was debated quite intensely in Delhi, after the 1970 elections in Pakistan. Some in the government felt Pakistan’s breakup was inevitable. But that was not the feeling in the MEA or PMO. India was hoping that because the Awami League had a majority in the Pakistan National Assembly, it would be allowed to form a government. The sense in the government was that so long as the army and the West Pakistan political establishment, Bhutto et al, continued to be in total charge of affairs in Pakistan, there was no hope of a breakthrough with India. But if a democratically elected government came to power in Islamabad – the majority of Pakistanis at that time were Bengalis – then there could be some sort of normalisation in relations. That was what we were hoping for – a transition to democracy in Pakistan. We did not want the breakup of Pakistan. It was only after March 25 1971, when the Pakistan military authorities launched that brutal crackdown, massacring hundreds of thousands of people, driving out 10 million people across the border into India, when we saw that the ruins of a united Pakistan lay buried under a mountain of corpses. There was no going back at that stage. We decided to intervene to bring the liberation struggle to an early conclusion. We thought if there’s prolonged civil war in East Pakistan, prolonged guerrilla war, continuing for years, control of that guerrilla war would pass into the hands of leftist extremists, pro-Naxalite, pro-Chinese elements. We feared for the impact not only of the refugee sort of outflow into India but the destabilising impact of this war. We mustn’t forget that the Naxalite problem was a very serious one in eastern India, particularly West Bengal in 1971. What was the geopolitical situation that India found itself in?The Bangladesh liberation struggle coincided with a dramatic change in the geopolitical situation. That was the new rapprochement in US-China relations, which was unanticipated, not only by India but by every other country. What took us by surprise, was that some sort of new entente seemed to be formed, a Washington-Islamabad-Beijing axis. That became clear after Kissinger had returned from Beijing and his briefing to L.K. Jha. We had always assumed that if the Chinese were to threaten our borders again, then we’d have American diplomatic support. Kissinger disabused us of this notion, he told us quite clearly that we should not count on US support. It became clear to us that there had been a fundamental shift in the US stand on this question. We responded quickly by concluding the Indo-Soviet treaty. You mentioned Kissinger met the Chinese ambassador and suggested that if they sent their troops to the boundary, there would be no pushback from the Americans. Why did you think the Chinese did not take the Americans up on that offer? Kissinger told the Chinese that if China were to consider it in her interest, to move troops to the border, obviously, to bring pressure on India. And if another country were to oppose China, then the US would oppose the other country. What he was saying is that if the Soviet Union were to bring pressure to bear on you, then we would help you. Now, this was based on a total misunderstanding of China’s intentions and Chinese policies. China wanted the normalisation of relations with the US because it did not want to simultaneously confront two superpowers, the USSR and US. Therefore, it wanted to quieten down things with the US. It hoped for some movement on the Taiwan issue. China was not looking for a US umbrella or US protection against anybody. This was made clear to Alexander Haig, Kissinger’s deputy when he visited Beijing shortly after the December war. He was surprised. China had no intention of placing itself in that position being beholden to the US. It is said Mrs Gandhi won the war and squandered the gains of that war. Do you agree? This is one of the questions I had in mind. On the one hand, you have this view that you just mentioned that India won the war but lost the peace. On the other, we have the account of P.N. Haksar that she never intended to convert the new Line of Control (LoC) into an international boundary. Had she done so at Simla she would have been accused by the opposition of having surrendered POK. The detailed records fully bear out PN Haksar’s position. Our main objective in 1971 had nothing to do with Kashmir. This is the only Indo-Pak war where we were not concerned with Kashmir, it was to do with the liberation of Bangladesh. And that objective was achieved on 16th December 1971. When General Niazi surrendered unconditionally to the Indo-Bangladesh joint command, the objective had already been achieved. In the course of the war, we developed a subsidiary aim, and that had to do with Kashmir. This was to replace the 1949 CFL (ceasefire line) with a mutually agreed LoC, reflecting the realities on the ground as they existed after the ’71 conflict. The intention was to carry out minor mutually agreed territorial changes, and, more importantly, to shift from accords reached in multilateral fora, into bilaterally agreed agreements. We did not attempt to find a final solution for the Kashmir issue. In the final Indian draft, which was submitted just a few hours before the Simla Agreement, this was made clear in the final paragraph which reserves settlement to a future date. We wanted to move in that direction. Because domestic opinion had to be prepared. Even today, it’s problematic.