Capt.Popeye
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I can add one little snippet to @Capt.Popeye's masterly deconstruction of the situation at the time. If West Pakistan had been a target, seriously, Sam would not have been quite so insistent on keeping his mountain divs. on the qui vive against China. There was a little row that reportedly broke out between the COAS, General Sam Manekshaw, the DMO, Lt. Gen. I. S. 'Norman' Gill and the Chief of Staff, Eastern Command, Maj. Gen. J. F. R. 'Jake' Jacob. Jacob claims in his book that he asked Gill to transfer two mountain divisions to the effort against East Pakistan, and that Gill did him that favour in a clandestine manner, without Manekshaw getting to know.
Why would Manekshaw not have used his deployed mountain divisions on the western front if he had any serious intentions there? As we have already seen from the East Pakistan campaign, the Indian thinking at the time, and Eastern Command must have presented the plan to the Army Chief before launching it, was to concentrate forces on the point d'appui, not to keep them scattered about. If he permitted his northern boundary to be weakened for a few precious weeks to fight in East Pakistan, he would surely have done the same for any putative attacking campaign against West Pakistan.
There was no such campaign. There was no such intention. The only shift of forces from east to west is one that @Capt.Popeye has mentioned; P. C. Lal's shift of air force units to the west, once it was clear that the fall of Dhaka was certain, and East Pakistan was in the bag.
A post-script: Much though I personally admire Jacob, and notwithstanding the warm and cordial sentiments he has always expressed towards my late father and late uncle, both collaborators of his at certain times, he tends to exaggerate his own position, and some incidents reported in his book are frankly fantasy. The Norman Gill story was one. My uncle saw Gill's copy of Jacob's book, and the incident reported above was annotated in the margin: Bull Shit!
Gill was too good a soldier to try these clandestine manoeuvres behind the back of his chief.
@Joe Shearer; Thanks for adding to the facts of the matter.
May I add a little more to the discussion. Some things have been overlooked in any discussion of 1971; even on the Indian Side. Part of that is the role of Lt.Gen.Sagat Singh. His push into East Pakistan from the NE was what led decisively to the fall of Dhaka. If the sobriquet "Lightning Campaign" were to applied to this War; then it would fit most appropriately to what his Command did. Mountain troops under Maj.Gen.K.V.Krishna Rao were in the van of one of his thrusts. The Military Chronicles of that time have been less than fair to Lt.Gen.Sagat Singh. Maybe that can be understood in the context of Sam Bahadur the "Master of the Dramatic Flourish" and Jake Jacob (the Good Staff Officer that he was) as a "Great Schemer". In such circumstances; the work of "Blood and Guts" types like Sagat Singh will get over-looked. Apart from that, Gen.Sagat Singh remained a self-effacing personality all his life. While Jake Jacob, came into his own element after the passing of Sam Maneckshaw.
But most of all; it would be easy to overlook the role of the Mukti Bahini in the Conflict. Largely a bunch of rag-tag young farmers (chashas) and idealistic students with a sprinkling of professional soldiers from the EPR; dressed mainly in Lungies and Canvas-Shoes (the fauji kind), armed with Lee-Enfields and Sterling SMCs a LMG was the "ultimate heavy weapon" for them!
But this is what they fought with and harried and hounded the Regular Army that faced and out-gunned them. It was their action, that helped pave the way for the IA push into what became BD. I was fortunate to have met many of them; after the War when they had become "17-19 year old Veterans! And Disabled Veterans at that in the wards of the ALC minus limbs, waiting to be fitted with prostheses and for repatriation to a newly-born Country and an uncertain personal future."
Can anyone of us imagine what it would be to be in circumstances like that?
Joe; I have not read V/Adm.MKR's book yet, only excerpts (but I will). He describes how East Bengali river fishermen and boatmen (or Majhis) re-trained to become frogmen and commandos with "river-reed aqualungs!" as breathing devices and effectively disabled supply lines that plied on the riverine highways of East Bengal. I have spoken with some of the people who trained them and who attest to their sterling role in setting the stage for the final denouement.
All of this formed part of the Campaign that I followed on my own map ( hand drawn and expanded 5 times from a School Atlas Map of the SGI) complete with Flags, pins and ribbons (actually wool-yarn)!!!
But coming back to @Oscar's post that set off my response; the possibility that India could and would replicate the events of the East in the West was a distinct impossibility!
To start with India had no resources to do so; no plan to so.
There was no equivalent of the MB that would allow India to hold large chunks of Pakistani Territory.
There would have no blessings forthcoming for any such stratagem from the USSR (at the peak of its Imperial Powers) in the form of Vetos; to fend off the UN.
There was no such idea in Indira Gandhi's mind; even though she occupied the de-facto role of "Empress of India".