The seed of separation was sowed by non other than the Quaid-a-Azam, Mr Jinnah. Blinded by his ‘2 nation’ joke of a theory, he forgot to take stock of Bengalis and their fierce cultural nationalism. Mr Jinnah’s speech at Dhaka University, where he expressed his desire to impose Urdu as the only national language, directly resulted in the Bhasha Andolon (language movement) in 1952. That was the first time, the Bengalis of East Pakistan realized, that Pakistan was all about the western ‘moth-eaten country’ (Mr Jinnah’s words, not mine), and for the first time experienced how brutal the ‘martial race’ could be to suppress a legitimate peaceful civil movement. No, India had no hand in it.
That was 1st strike.
The movement eventually fizzled out, although the sentiments were very much alive. Then in 1965, a tin pot dictator, Ayub Khan decided that he had balls the size of Jupiter and imposed an unnecessary war on India. The entire Pak juggernaut was concentrated in the West, and East was left, practically, unguarded. Had it not been for India’s concern over a possible Chinese intervention, which forced her to concentrate a large chunk of her troops in the North and North-East, or had she decided to risk the Chinese intervention and attack East Pakistan, IA would have practically walked right into Dhaka. Bengalis of East Pakistan, who had always considered themselves to be no less patriotic than their western counterparts, were finally convinced that Pakistan in reality belonged to the West, and East was just a ‘also-there’, to be milked when needed and thrown away when not. This led to the second wave of Bengali nationalism, which in turn led to the rise of Sk Mujibar Rahaman. And again, India had no hand in it.
That was 2nd strike.
All this culminated into Mujib's electoral win in 1970, by a large majority. But another tin pot dictator, Yahya Khan and his trusted sidekick, apparently in opposition and a clown of a politician, Bhutto, who would rather eat ‘grass’, simply dismissed Mujib’s victory, almost by a wave of hand. That was the 3rd & final strike and once again, India had no hand in it. This dismissal led to massive civil disobedience movement, to which the ‘martial race’ reacted in the only way known to it – brutal suppression, through Operation Searchlight. That and only that, led to massive migration to India.
It didn’t need India to ‘instigate’ or ‘exacerbate’ any situation by supporting the freedom fighters. By repeatedly refusing to recognize the Bengali sentiments and using force, literal and political, as means to address their legitimate concerns, Pakistanis were shooting their feet quite diligently, and successfully driving the freedom fighters to seek for help from India.
Yes, Indian intelligence agencies, may have been active in East Pakistan, much before the ‘refugee’ problems, but the refugee problem was certainly not of India’s making. It was beyond the capacity of a fledgling intelligence agency, RAW, the prime accused, founded only around 1968, to pull something as grandeur and complex as splitting a country into two, within 3 years of its existence – a feat which not many intelligence agencies could achieve, if at all any agency has indeed achieved so.
It would have required RAW, or any intelligence agency, to be able to influence Pakistani state policy, to the extent of convincing the powers that be in Pakistan to carry out nonsensical and stripped off logic, suicidal policies, in order to achieve what RAW and other Indian intelligence agencies are ‘accused’ to have achieved. Even if one assumes that Bengalis in the east were all boneheads, who didn’t know right from wrong and needed Indian intelligence agencies to stoke their cultural nationalism, it still was in Pakistan’s hand to decide on how to diffuse the whole situation. 7th March, 1971 was the date, when Mujibur officially called for independence and on 25th March, a mere 18 days after that declaration, Pakistan launched the most brutal crack down, that is only second to Hitler’s antiques and perhaps pales even Pol Pot’s. ‘Genocide’ was the term used by Mr Archer Blood, the American diplomat in East Pakistan, to describe that military action. That, Pakistani leadership chose the most violent option available, was not something for which Indian intelligence agencies could be held responsible. The refugee problem was the direct result of Pakistani policies. India, or any of her intelligence agency, had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Diluting and then quietly sweeping Pakistan’s own failures and mistakes, under hysterical jingoism, and then setting up the strawman of RAW, and by extension India, can only mean that Pakistan and Pakistanis don’t want to learn from their mistakes. There is plethora of Bangladeshi writers who have written extensively on the liberation war of 1971. That, along with declassified US documents, just fly into the face of the contention that India was somehow responsible for the rise of Bengali nationalism and hence, for the brutal crack down by Pakistanis, the resultant refugee problem and finally, the direct military intervention by India. The sooner Pakistanis realize that it was Pakistan which served Bangladesh to Bangladeshis, on a platter, the sooner s/he will be at peace with him/herself.