You are right about direct annexation. However, India wanted and always want a BD snake without poison and that moves at the whims of India. BAL/Hasina Bibi in power illegally is the right method to satisfy Indian wishes. BD is a snake without poison when BAL is in power.
Jamuka decides to revoke gallantry award ‘Bir Uttom’ of Ziaur Rahman
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Bratva
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You need to red your own Politican statements. Agartala was real. Who proved it false?
'Agartala conspiracy case was not false'
An accused in the Agartala Conspiracy Case, deputy speaker Shawkat Ali, has told parliament that the charges brought against the accused were not false.
bdnews24.com
PakistaniAtBahrain
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i dont get what you mean?
Bratva
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Lets turn the table for a bit. Will Awami league tolerate a 1971 level of Rebellion in today's bangladesh ? and would not go to any lengths to suppress it. RAB and Bangladeshi Fringe security elements are already accused of doing similar things what you or india accuse Pakistan of doing it back in 1971 at height of insurgency isnt it? Image in a full blown rebellion in 2021 bangladesh what kind of Atrocities will be committed. Go no further, look at Syrian civil war. Is it any different that 1971 Rebellion?
Michael Corleone
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Mujib and others swore oath to Pakistan constitution, then they went ahead and led people in freedom struggle (all well and good, justified cause) but how did they have the nerve to then have oath to Bangladesh constitution and rule the country. Basically where I’m going with this is... like George Washington is hero of US but traitor of Great Britain, Mujib is hero for bd but traitor of Pakistan.
PakistaniAtBahrain
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yeah, i agree. Mujib was a traitor. all the traitors got what they deserved. Bhutto hanged, and Mujid got shot.
VikingRaider
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I don't need to read it. I am older than the statement.You need to red your own Politican statements. Agartala was real. Who proved it false?
'Agartala conspiracy case was not false'
An accused in the Agartala Conspiracy Case, deputy speaker Shawkat Ali, has told parliament that the charges brought against the accused were not false.bdnews24.com
I read other statement too in old days .
And I am mature enough to understand the difference between political rhetoric and reality.
You are talking like Hasina Bibi. She wants Mujib to be seen at the top of the anti-Pakistan movement. But, this is not historically true. Mujib did his politics of pushing himself up through the grievances of the dissatisfied population of the east. He was not for breaking Pakistan.
It has not been proved there was a real Agartala Conspiracy. It was hatched by President Ayub Khan, but it worked opposite. It made a brainless and false-talking Mujib more popular.
And now, it is propositioned by Hasina Bibi and you are saying the same.
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the thing is, the Bangladeshis cant use the actions of RAB and others to justify a bloody rebellion as easily as they did in 1971, because in 71 they could frame it as Bengalis vs West Pakistanis. so they made it a race thing. whereas in 2021 it would be Bengalis vs Bengalis, so they cant use the race card to stir up the entire population.
where is the evidence? who said this?
What kind of bullshit talk you are making? How someone can provide evidence for something that did not happen? Ask the late President Ayub Khan to provide evidence. He hatched it to reduce the popularity of Mujib, and it made Mujib more popular. So, ask another of your dumbs, late Paresident Yahya Khan baout this.
It was these two Presidents, ZA Bhutto, west Pakistan -based civil and military brasses who conspired against east Pakistan. Now, both you and Hasina Bibi are saying the same. Hasina wants Mujib to the hero to break Pakistan and you want to blame him for the breaking. Both the groups are dealing with lies.
PakistaniAtBahrain
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you brought it up. so who said that Ayub Khan made it up? you pulled it out of your as*?
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Destranator
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This is exactly how Pakistan's military led establishment have deceived and and continue to deceive the Pakistani public. They set up a fake "conspiracy" case to prevent an East Pakistani party from taking charge.
India centric paranoia is what the Pakistani establishment survives on. The last thing Pakistan Army wants is peace as then people would start questioning their budget and the personal wealth of the Generals.
It was Ayub Khan who was the President of Pakistan at the time when Mujib was accused of that Agartala Conspiracy. Do you guys think it was true? And, even if true how do you think it would have changed the course of history with a small meeting not so clandestine?
By the way, do not you think that no stupid would go to Agartala to talk with the Indians? Instead, he would meet them in a foreign country. I do not think airlines were not flying planes in those days. Or, do you think so?
Ayub Khan hatched the conspiracy. I thought he was not a fool, but he was. Moreover, he was very ungrateful to the nanga, kala and bhukha people of the east. Ayub Khan rose through the ranks with the support of Bengali Muslim League leaders. This handsome Pathan/Hazara was liked by them when he was the GoC of east Pakistan.
He paid it back by backstabbing President Iskander Mirza and PM Suhrawardy (both Bengali) to take over the power that finally broke Pakistan into two. Read history to know all these what I wrote here.
That Kizibush Yahya Khan even did not allow Mirza's dead body from London to be buried in the soil of Pakistan. He was buried in Tehran by the Shah of Iran. Do you understand the hatred of west Pakistan towards Bengali?
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A Meeting on Christmas Night Dacca, 25 Dec 1962
Prominent TV Anchor & commentator tells us about a little-heard “Meeting on a December night” in Dacca, fifty-five years ago that changed the history of South Asia.
Moeed Pirzada
-
December 9, 2017
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“Mujibur Rahman was now in his elements. He said that the purpose of calling the meeting was to hand over to me a top secret letter to be forwarded to the Prime Minister of India in a diplomatic bag…I told him that apart from me, more importantly, it would be seen by two other officers in the Indian Diplomatic Mission in Dhaka before it was forwarded to the Prime Minister. Mujib asked who the two officers would be in the High Commission in Dhaka. With some hesitation but only to earn their trust I gave Mujib and Manik Mia the names: Mr Sourja Kumar Choudhury, the Deputy High Commissioner of India who was the Head of Mission in Dhaka and Colonel SC Ghosh, the Station Chief of Indian Intelligence in East Pakistan…” Banerjee, Mr. Sashanka S. India, Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh Liberation & Pakistan (A Political Treatise) Kindle Edition.
Few in Pakistan or for that matter in India, have ever heard the name of Sashanka S. Bannerjee. And they can certainly be forgiven; he was not a Bollywood celebrity, nor a famous politician, nor the kind of intellectual that matters.
His writing is full of self-glorifying pontification, nauseating bigotry and hatred for Pakistanis, more specifically Punjabi Muslims of Pakistan; he hides his religious and racial prejudices under several confused notions of democracy, secularism and ambiguous mantras of “shared values” – but he definitely earns a bit of place, a few centimeters may be, in the intertwined, twisted and painful histories of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Read more: Bangladesh vs Pakistan: What is Hasina’s Real Problem?Bannerjee deserves these few centimeters, not because his book represents scholarship or great ideas, but because of one strange meeting he happened to be a part of. It was a cold Christmas night in Dacca, on Dec 25, 1962 – exactly nine years before the fateful surrender of Pakistani garrison in the former East Pakistan to Indian forces.
Meeting with Sheikh Mujib ur Rehman, on that fateful Christmas night, was arranged by Tofazzal Hossain, remembered in Bangladesh’s history as Manik Miah; he was a Bengali journalist and politician, editor of fiery “Ittefaq” in early 1960’s.
His editorial “Rajnoitik Moncho” or “The political stage” was immensely popular and influential at that time – Manik Mian Avenue of Dacca city was named after him, by a grateful Sheikh Mujib after the creation of Bangladesh.
Sashanka Bannerjee, was then political counsellor in Indian consulate of Dacca – and someone known to Manik Miah. Mujib-ur-Rehman was then, in December 1962, not the Bangabandhu, of later years; he was not even the president of Awami League.
And this is two years before his supporting Fatima Jinnah in 1964 elections, three years before the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war and almost four years before he came up with his famous “Six Points” – but he was an important charismatic Bengali leader, marked for his fiery oratory; someone destined to play a role in South Asian history.
Bannerjee describes this Mujib, pleading for PM Nehru’s material support to declare the independence of Bangladesh from London at the earliest by 1 February 1963 or latest by 1 March 1963, setting up a Provisional Government of a Sovereign Democratic Republic of Bangladesh in exile in London.
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This meeting was followed by series of meetings between Sheikh Mujib, Sourja Kumar Choudhury, the Deputy High Commissioner of India (Head of Mission in Dhaka), Colonel SC Ghosh, the Station Chief of Indian Intelligence in East Pakistan and Bannerjee – all in utmost secrecy.
Mujib’s top secret letter, addressed by name to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, was forwarded, after some weeks, to Delhi in a triple coded cypher message, delivered to Nehru in his office in South Bloc on the Raisina Hill.
Nehru, was then, according to Bannerjee, “in a state of personal shock” after Indian humiliation at the hands of Chinese in Himalayas; hands of Chinese in Himalayas; yet he saw to it that there was no delay in calling a meeting of his top security advisers including his foreign secretary, his intelligence chiefs and military advisers.
Read more: ‘Let Us Bury the Past, Not the Future’: Pakistan and Bangladesh
In the weeks that followed, Mujib became impatient and in his desperation to reach out to Nehru crossed border to have series of meetings with Tripura’s Chief Minister, Sachin Singh, in Agartala – what became famous as “Agartala Conspiracy Case”, since Intelligence Bureau (IB) of then East Pakistan intercepted him on his return journey.
Did Mujib’s Agartala meetings with Sachin Singh crystallized action in Delhi is not clear; but a comprehensive response from Pundit Nehru was waiting for him in Dhaka.
Our narrator, Bannerjee, was initially disappointed by Nehru’s response to Sheikh Mujib. Shrewd Pundit, Gandhi’s able pupil, and Mountbatten’s trained statesman, conveyed to an eager Sheikh, that the “international situation was neither propitious nor opportune” for Mujib to declare independence just at that time.
If Mujib wanted India’s support to be “effective and resolute”, India’s thinking was that he would have to wait for the right moment – Indian PM asserted. But, Nehru clarified: New Delhi stood ready to extend “multi-tiered moral, political, and material support” as needed.
However, for the safety and security of the leadership, the strategic partnership must be run within a framework of utmost secrecy with a right of denial as and when required. Indian PM’s team advised that Bangladesh’s road map to freedom should not be rushed.
It must be properly calibrated to avoid pitfalls; they argued that Mujib’s heading to London to declare an “Independent Bangladesh” at this stage would not serve any purpose. It was assessed, by South block, that international opinion would side with Pakistan – a receptive atmosphere was to be created.
Mujib was thus advised that he would have to spend a few years building his mass base on a countrywide basis, he had to organize Awami league, on the patterns of Gandhi’s door to door fund raising movement against British; Delhi was prepared to help him train how to conduct “campaigns for enhanced mass membership”- especially in the “rural heartland of East Pakistan”; he had to “create congenial conditions for political action”- an atmosphere in which world would take him seriously and India could act decisively.
The outcome of his efforts was: “India, Mujibur Rehman, Bangladesh Liberation & Pakistan”, published by Amazon, online, as a kindle edition in end 2011 – to coincide with Bangladesh’s 40th anniversary.
Fast forward to March 1971; Pundit Nehru’s daughter and then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, on 27 March 1971, two days after the ill fated Operation Search Light, by Pakistani forces, in Dacca, thundered in her parliament: expressing full support of her government for the independence struggle of the people of East Pakistan and argued that instead of taking in millions of refugees, it was economical to go to war against Pakistan.
On 28 April 1971, the Gandhi cabinet ordered the Chief of the Army Staff General Sam Manekshaw to “Go into East Pakistan”.Bannerjee, our narrator, who enjoys few centimeters in South Asian history, thus becomes important, not because of his research but, because he was a direct witness to those interactions and correspondences that took place between an aspiring Sheikh Mujib and Nehru’s core team from the December of 1962 till the end of 1963.
His place in history was definitely assured when in early 2011 – while living in London – on 40th anniversary of the creation of Bangladesh, he received a phone call for writing a book; his memoirs. On the other end of the line was Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
“She gave me access to her personal archives as she wanted me to write about the liberation of a nation about which little had been written so far,” Bannerjee told, Smitha Verma of Telegraph.
Read more: Bangladeshi lawyer challenges the country’s constitutional provision on president appointing SC…
University students, across the world – from LUMS in Lahore to London School of Economics or Oxford in the UK – are taught that it was only then that Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) started using the Indian refugee camps for recruitment and training of Mukti Bahini guerrillas that were to be trained against Pakistani army.
But most of the official records of the 1971 war, held at Kolkota, had been destroyed immediately after the war by the Indian Army’s Eastern Command.
The destroyed files, according to army sources, included those on the creation of the Mukti Bahini — the Bangladesh freedom fighters — and all appreciation and assessments made by the Indian army during the war period, the orders issued to fighting formations, and other sensitive operational details.
Times of India discovered that only in 2010, when preparations were being made by Indian army itself to welcome the old Mukti Bahni veterans. Army sources discovered that the destruction may have happened when Lt General Jagjit Singh Aurora, the Indian army’s commanding officer on the eastern front, headed the Eastern Command.
A narrow cast debate, each year on 16th December, focused on the events, of few months leading up to the fall of Dacca, and centered around the personalities of Bhutto, Mujib and Gen. Yahya Khan has prevented to this day a realization that Bengali Muslims – inheritors to a proud history, distinct culture, fiery political consciousness and a unique geographical situation surrounded by India from three sides- could not have been governed from “West Pakistan”.
Those records, if not systematically shredded, would have revealed when exactly the initial training of Mukti Bahni fighters had started; who trained them, who ordered them, who guided them in the theatre of conflict and how much killing had they done.
Politics in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India has prevented a finer understanding of the nature and direction of political change in former East Pakistan – and Delhi’s role in it – that ultimately led to its emergence as an independent state, supported by India.
In Pakistan’s peculiar civil-military divide politicians and liberals used widely exaggerated narratives of “genocide” and “rapes” and “surrender” -often referring to Army as if it’s not an institution but a race – to shift blame to their favorite punching bags: generals.
This disrespect to the disciplines of political science and geography, and inability to learn lessons of history, also fails politicians, civil servants, academics, civil society and media pundits to grasp that Pakistan today needs effective devolution in the form of smaller provinces, (3 million massacre & 3 million rapes) independent city governments like London and meaningful local governments to take its diverse population of 210 million into 21st century. William Drummond, Prof of Journalism at University of California, had also served as Associate Press Secretary to President Jimmy Carter.
A life long awarded journalist, he was Los Angeles Times, Bureau Chief in New Delhi, in 1971-72. In his piece, “The Missing Millions” that appeared in June 1972, (also in The Guardian) he described the frustration of Sheikh Mujib’s government when it repeatedly failed to find any evidence to substantiate “genocide” which Sheikh, Indian politicians and media had been claiming for the past several months.
Office of the Inspector General in Bangladesh’s Home Ministry had started its field enquiries in third week of March 1972; till June only around 2000 people came forward with any credible claims of killings of relatives or near ones at the hands of Pakistani Army. A commission set up by Sheikh Mujib, ended up similarly and realizing that it was only creating embarrassment, it was wound up before the end of 1972.
Read more: Islamic parties of Bangladesh threaten countrywide movement if sculpture of Lady…
No wonder that Pakistan army’s discipline broke down at several places and ugly incidents of soldiers killing young men treating them as “Mukti Bahni” happened – to institution’s lasting shame to this day. But the narratives of “genocide” Indian political establishment was as true as the story of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” Bush and Blair weaved to justify their attack on Saddam’s Iraq.
Pakistan and Bangladesh started to overcome the agonies of civil war and separation even in Sheikh Mujib’s time, before his painful end. And in the period 1980-1990’s both states together created and pushed the forum of “SAARC” to balance India’s hegemonic position in the region.
When Dr. Sharmilla Bose’s authoritative research, “Dead Reckoning” appeared in 2011, many in Bangladesh and India described that as “revisionist history” and “Blood Telegram” came as a sort of rejoinder in 2013– from some one (Gary Bass) who had no direct relation or ability to judge the events of 1971.
On the contrary, Sarmilla Bose, University of Oxford Fellow, grand niece of Bengal’s famous son, Subhas Chnadra Bose, (nick named Neta Ji), President of Congress in 1930’s, had deep roots in the region – and Bengal. Few have realized that “Shahbag movement” was in reality the “quintessential revisionist effort” that purposefully reenacted a narrative that had died, for want of evidence, even in the life of Sheikh Mujib.
But, prime minister, Hasina, backed by an establishment in Delhi, forcefully reconfigured Bangladesh’s politics; by targeting Jammat-e-Islami through witch hunt, sham trials and hangings forty years after the civil war of 1971. The political field was ruthlessly shifted turning Bangladesh effectively into a one-party state.
At the beginning of the 21st century, both Muslim nations– progenies of the vision of the Lahore Declaration of 1940 – await the visions of a new generation of politicians, academics and media to heal the wounds and exorcise demons created by the politics, and strategic goals, of a difficult region.
Sashanka Bannerjee tells us that Pundit Nehru’s team had told Mujib in 1963, that India would be ready to come forward to offer a “wholesome strategic support when a critical mass was achieved”.
He, who was initially disappointed by Pundit’s strategic plan, in 1963, argues, while reflecting back after 40 years, that it “was amazing that the road map laid on the table by India and agreed to by Mujib happened to tick like clockwork. From conceptualization to completion of the mission, both sides worked smartly and with dedication, which helped the liberation struggle take a little over seven short years, beginning in 1963 and ending in 1971, to complete its mission”
Moeed Pirzada is a prominent TV Anchor & commentator; he studied international relations at Columbia Univ, New York and law at the London School of Economics. Twitter: MoeedNj. This well-researched piece has appeared in the December 2017 issue of Magazine “Global Village Space”
Prominent TV Anchor & commentator tells us about a little-heard “Meeting on a December night” in Dacca, fifty-five years ago that changed the history of South Asia.
Moeed Pirzada
-
December 9, 2017
https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php...meeting-on-christmas-night-dacca-25-dec-1962/
https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?te...ristmas-night-dacca-25-dec-1962/&via=GVS_News
https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=...meeting-on-christmas-night-dacca-25-dec-1962/
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/a-meeting-on-christmas-night-dacca-25-dec-1962/#
“Mujibur Rahman was now in his elements. He said that the purpose of calling the meeting was to hand over to me a top secret letter to be forwarded to the Prime Minister of India in a diplomatic bag…I told him that apart from me, more importantly, it would be seen by two other officers in the Indian Diplomatic Mission in Dhaka before it was forwarded to the Prime Minister. Mujib asked who the two officers would be in the High Commission in Dhaka. With some hesitation but only to earn their trust I gave Mujib and Manik Mia the names: Mr Sourja Kumar Choudhury, the Deputy High Commissioner of India who was the Head of Mission in Dhaka and Colonel SC Ghosh, the Station Chief of Indian Intelligence in East Pakistan…” Banerjee, Mr. Sashanka S. India, Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh Liberation & Pakistan (A Political Treatise) Kindle Edition.
Few in Pakistan or for that matter in India, have ever heard the name of Sashanka S. Bannerjee. And they can certainly be forgiven; he was not a Bollywood celebrity, nor a famous politician, nor the kind of intellectual that matters.
His writing is full of self-glorifying pontification, nauseating bigotry and hatred for Pakistanis, more specifically Punjabi Muslims of Pakistan; he hides his religious and racial prejudices under several confused notions of democracy, secularism and ambiguous mantras of “shared values” – but he definitely earns a bit of place, a few centimeters may be, in the intertwined, twisted and painful histories of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Read more: Bangladesh vs Pakistan: What is Hasina’s Real Problem?Bannerjee deserves these few centimeters, not because his book represents scholarship or great ideas, but because of one strange meeting he happened to be a part of. It was a cold Christmas night in Dacca, on Dec 25, 1962 – exactly nine years before the fateful surrender of Pakistani garrison in the former East Pakistan to Indian forces.
Meeting with Sheikh Mujib ur Rehman, on that fateful Christmas night, was arranged by Tofazzal Hossain, remembered in Bangladesh’s history as Manik Miah; he was a Bengali journalist and politician, editor of fiery “Ittefaq” in early 1960’s.
His editorial “Rajnoitik Moncho” or “The political stage” was immensely popular and influential at that time – Manik Mian Avenue of Dacca city was named after him, by a grateful Sheikh Mujib after the creation of Bangladesh.
Sashanka Bannerjee, was then political counsellor in Indian consulate of Dacca – and someone known to Manik Miah. Mujib-ur-Rehman was then, in December 1962, not the Bangabandhu, of later years; he was not even the president of Awami League.
And this is two years before his supporting Fatima Jinnah in 1964 elections, three years before the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war and almost four years before he came up with his famous “Six Points” – but he was an important charismatic Bengali leader, marked for his fiery oratory; someone destined to play a role in South Asian history.
Bannerjee describes this Mujib, pleading for PM Nehru’s material support to declare the independence of Bangladesh from London at the earliest by 1 February 1963 or latest by 1 March 1963, setting up a Provisional Government of a Sovereign Democratic Republic of Bangladesh in exile in London.
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/?bsa_pro_id=102&bsa_pro_url=1
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/?bsa_pro_id=95&bsa_pro_url=1
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/?bsa_pro_id=103&bsa_pro_url=1
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/?bsa_pro_id=97&bsa_pro_url=1
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/?bsa_pro_id=104&bsa_pro_url=1
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/?bsa_pro_id=77&bsa_pro_url=1
This meeting was followed by series of meetings between Sheikh Mujib, Sourja Kumar Choudhury, the Deputy High Commissioner of India (Head of Mission in Dhaka), Colonel SC Ghosh, the Station Chief of Indian Intelligence in East Pakistan and Bannerjee – all in utmost secrecy.
Mujib’s top secret letter, addressed by name to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, was forwarded, after some weeks, to Delhi in a triple coded cypher message, delivered to Nehru in his office in South Bloc on the Raisina Hill.
Nehru, was then, according to Bannerjee, “in a state of personal shock” after Indian humiliation at the hands of Chinese in Himalayas; hands of Chinese in Himalayas; yet he saw to it that there was no delay in calling a meeting of his top security advisers including his foreign secretary, his intelligence chiefs and military advisers.
Read more: ‘Let Us Bury the Past, Not the Future’: Pakistan and Bangladesh
In the weeks that followed, Mujib became impatient and in his desperation to reach out to Nehru crossed border to have series of meetings with Tripura’s Chief Minister, Sachin Singh, in Agartala – what became famous as “Agartala Conspiracy Case”, since Intelligence Bureau (IB) of then East Pakistan intercepted him on his return journey.
Did Mujib’s Agartala meetings with Sachin Singh crystallized action in Delhi is not clear; but a comprehensive response from Pundit Nehru was waiting for him in Dhaka.
Our narrator, Bannerjee, was initially disappointed by Nehru’s response to Sheikh Mujib. Shrewd Pundit, Gandhi’s able pupil, and Mountbatten’s trained statesman, conveyed to an eager Sheikh, that the “international situation was neither propitious nor opportune” for Mujib to declare independence just at that time.
If Mujib wanted India’s support to be “effective and resolute”, India’s thinking was that he would have to wait for the right moment – Indian PM asserted. But, Nehru clarified: New Delhi stood ready to extend “multi-tiered moral, political, and material support” as needed.
However, for the safety and security of the leadership, the strategic partnership must be run within a framework of utmost secrecy with a right of denial as and when required. Indian PM’s team advised that Bangladesh’s road map to freedom should not be rushed.
It must be properly calibrated to avoid pitfalls; they argued that Mujib’s heading to London to declare an “Independent Bangladesh” at this stage would not serve any purpose. It was assessed, by South block, that international opinion would side with Pakistan – a receptive atmosphere was to be created.
Mujib was thus advised that he would have to spend a few years building his mass base on a countrywide basis, he had to organize Awami league, on the patterns of Gandhi’s door to door fund raising movement against British; Delhi was prepared to help him train how to conduct “campaigns for enhanced mass membership”- especially in the “rural heartland of East Pakistan”; he had to “create congenial conditions for political action”- an atmosphere in which world would take him seriously and India could act decisively.
The outcome of his efforts was: “India, Mujibur Rehman, Bangladesh Liberation & Pakistan”, published by Amazon, online, as a kindle edition in end 2011 – to coincide with Bangladesh’s 40th anniversary.
Fast forward to March 1971; Pundit Nehru’s daughter and then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, on 27 March 1971, two days after the ill fated Operation Search Light, by Pakistani forces, in Dacca, thundered in her parliament: expressing full support of her government for the independence struggle of the people of East Pakistan and argued that instead of taking in millions of refugees, it was economical to go to war against Pakistan.
On 28 April 1971, the Gandhi cabinet ordered the Chief of the Army Staff General Sam Manekshaw to “Go into East Pakistan”.Bannerjee, our narrator, who enjoys few centimeters in South Asian history, thus becomes important, not because of his research but, because he was a direct witness to those interactions and correspondences that took place between an aspiring Sheikh Mujib and Nehru’s core team from the December of 1962 till the end of 1963.
His place in history was definitely assured when in early 2011 – while living in London – on 40th anniversary of the creation of Bangladesh, he received a phone call for writing a book; his memoirs. On the other end of the line was Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
“She gave me access to her personal archives as she wanted me to write about the liberation of a nation about which little had been written so far,” Bannerjee told, Smitha Verma of Telegraph.
Read more: Bangladeshi lawyer challenges the country’s constitutional provision on president appointing SC…
University students, across the world – from LUMS in Lahore to London School of Economics or Oxford in the UK – are taught that it was only then that Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) started using the Indian refugee camps for recruitment and training of Mukti Bahini guerrillas that were to be trained against Pakistani army.
But most of the official records of the 1971 war, held at Kolkota, had been destroyed immediately after the war by the Indian Army’s Eastern Command.
The destroyed files, according to army sources, included those on the creation of the Mukti Bahini — the Bangladesh freedom fighters — and all appreciation and assessments made by the Indian army during the war period, the orders issued to fighting formations, and other sensitive operational details.
Times of India discovered that only in 2010, when preparations were being made by Indian army itself to welcome the old Mukti Bahni veterans. Army sources discovered that the destruction may have happened when Lt General Jagjit Singh Aurora, the Indian army’s commanding officer on the eastern front, headed the Eastern Command.
A narrow cast debate, each year on 16th December, focused on the events, of few months leading up to the fall of Dacca, and centered around the personalities of Bhutto, Mujib and Gen. Yahya Khan has prevented to this day a realization that Bengali Muslims – inheritors to a proud history, distinct culture, fiery political consciousness and a unique geographical situation surrounded by India from three sides- could not have been governed from “West Pakistan”.
Those records, if not systematically shredded, would have revealed when exactly the initial training of Mukti Bahni fighters had started; who trained them, who ordered them, who guided them in the theatre of conflict and how much killing had they done.
Politics in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India has prevented a finer understanding of the nature and direction of political change in former East Pakistan – and Delhi’s role in it – that ultimately led to its emergence as an independent state, supported by India.
In Pakistan’s peculiar civil-military divide politicians and liberals used widely exaggerated narratives of “genocide” and “rapes” and “surrender” -often referring to Army as if it’s not an institution but a race – to shift blame to their favorite punching bags: generals.
This disrespect to the disciplines of political science and geography, and inability to learn lessons of history, also fails politicians, civil servants, academics, civil society and media pundits to grasp that Pakistan today needs effective devolution in the form of smaller provinces, (3 million massacre & 3 million rapes) independent city governments like London and meaningful local governments to take its diverse population of 210 million into 21st century. William Drummond, Prof of Journalism at University of California, had also served as Associate Press Secretary to President Jimmy Carter.
A life long awarded journalist, he was Los Angeles Times, Bureau Chief in New Delhi, in 1971-72. In his piece, “The Missing Millions” that appeared in June 1972, (also in The Guardian) he described the frustration of Sheikh Mujib’s government when it repeatedly failed to find any evidence to substantiate “genocide” which Sheikh, Indian politicians and media had been claiming for the past several months.
Office of the Inspector General in Bangladesh’s Home Ministry had started its field enquiries in third week of March 1972; till June only around 2000 people came forward with any credible claims of killings of relatives or near ones at the hands of Pakistani Army. A commission set up by Sheikh Mujib, ended up similarly and realizing that it was only creating embarrassment, it was wound up before the end of 1972.
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No wonder that Pakistan army’s discipline broke down at several places and ugly incidents of soldiers killing young men treating them as “Mukti Bahni” happened – to institution’s lasting shame to this day. But the narratives of “genocide” Indian political establishment was as true as the story of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” Bush and Blair weaved to justify their attack on Saddam’s Iraq.
Pakistan and Bangladesh started to overcome the agonies of civil war and separation even in Sheikh Mujib’s time, before his painful end. And in the period 1980-1990’s both states together created and pushed the forum of “SAARC” to balance India’s hegemonic position in the region.
When Dr. Sharmilla Bose’s authoritative research, “Dead Reckoning” appeared in 2011, many in Bangladesh and India described that as “revisionist history” and “Blood Telegram” came as a sort of rejoinder in 2013– from some one (Gary Bass) who had no direct relation or ability to judge the events of 1971.
On the contrary, Sarmilla Bose, University of Oxford Fellow, grand niece of Bengal’s famous son, Subhas Chnadra Bose, (nick named Neta Ji), President of Congress in 1930’s, had deep roots in the region – and Bengal. Few have realized that “Shahbag movement” was in reality the “quintessential revisionist effort” that purposefully reenacted a narrative that had died, for want of evidence, even in the life of Sheikh Mujib.
But, prime minister, Hasina, backed by an establishment in Delhi, forcefully reconfigured Bangladesh’s politics; by targeting Jammat-e-Islami through witch hunt, sham trials and hangings forty years after the civil war of 1971. The political field was ruthlessly shifted turning Bangladesh effectively into a one-party state.
At the beginning of the 21st century, both Muslim nations– progenies of the vision of the Lahore Declaration of 1940 – await the visions of a new generation of politicians, academics and media to heal the wounds and exorcise demons created by the politics, and strategic goals, of a difficult region.
Sashanka Bannerjee tells us that Pundit Nehru’s team had told Mujib in 1963, that India would be ready to come forward to offer a “wholesome strategic support when a critical mass was achieved”.
He, who was initially disappointed by Pundit’s strategic plan, in 1963, argues, while reflecting back after 40 years, that it “was amazing that the road map laid on the table by India and agreed to by Mujib happened to tick like clockwork. From conceptualization to completion of the mission, both sides worked smartly and with dedication, which helped the liberation struggle take a little over seven short years, beginning in 1963 and ending in 1971, to complete its mission”
Moeed Pirzada is a prominent TV Anchor & commentator; he studied international relations at Columbia Univ, New York and law at the London School of Economics. Twitter: MoeedNj. This well-researched piece has appeared in the December 2017 issue of Magazine “Global Village Space”
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