The Night of 14 August 1947, and any other night seem almost indiscernible. Even in this momentous point of time, The stars and moon shine the same against the old black canvas of night, as if a testament to the indomitable control of time over the frail mortals. In contrast to the stark chilling silence, the voice of India’s first ever prime minister can be heard. “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes…” And in a singular fateful blink of an eye, India is no longer under the atrocious rule of the British raj. But with that, the country has also been ruptured in parts – India and Pakistan (the West and the East).
The West and East Pakistan were grouped together on the mere common ground of religion and the shared feeling of alienation in a state of Hindu majority. But after the surgery, what was forgotten is that, as Mascarenhas believes and I quote – ” Religion makes poor binding without the resin of common hatred.” And now that the common hatred towards the Hindu majority was no longer there to affiliate them, the sentiments began to turn bitter. Their relationship became a colonial one, with the West emerging as the hegemon, feasting on economic resources from the East like jute and tea to develop Islamabad and Karachi , while Dhaka stayed impoverished.
The seeds of rebellion sprouted as early as a month after partition , in September 1947. There were pamphlets circulating that Bengali be used alongside Urdu, as equals in administration and education. This later evolved into the language rebellion of 1952. As described by Anam Zakaria in the harrowing pages of her book – 1971: a people’s history, even in the constituent assembly of 1948, when Dhirendranath Datta, hailed as the ‘harbinger’ of the Bengali language movement, brought up the issue, stating that 56 % of Pakistan’s population spoke Bengali and it should be used alongside Urdu in state matters , whilst also citing the agony of the common man, he was spurned by leaders like Liaquat Ali Khan and Khawaja Nazimuddin, with Liaquat Ali Khan even stating that the objective of this amendment was to create a rift between the people of Pakistan, to take away from the Musalmans the unifying force that brings them together .He claimed that it wasn’t a harmless demand to make Bengali the state language. As if this wasn’t enough, the insolent leader also menaced Datta that he wouldn’t be spared for trying to break up Pakistan. The cartographic distance between the East and the West , bridged by the Indian subcontinent , was starting to mirror the emotional distance between the same people who once united to form Pakistan, an ideological country supposed to be a sanctuary for equality and justice.
As time passed, military rule was enforced in Pakistan by Ayub Khan and later succeeded by Gen. Yahya Khan. Under the increasing pressure from the people and the weakening of the army due to the war with India in 1965 , Yahya Khan succumbed and held the first democratic elections in 1970. Against the vehement expectations of Yahya Khan , the Awami league gained majority, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Nonetheless he was deprived of his legitimate democratic mandate to form the government. As unrepentant megalomaniacs, the bigoted West leaders could not endure the substantial weight of a Bengali governing them as the prime minister . The mandate of democracy was slaughtered upon the altar of military expediency . The period that followed was the epitome of political gaslighting. While the West delayed the inaugural session of the National Assembly, troops of soldiers quietly docked in Chittagong.
Then came the dark and foreboding night. 25 March 1971, a date well capable of being etched in black letters in not only the history of Bangladesh but in the history of mankind. As Operation Searchlight began, the army preyed upon the populace of East Pakistan. Some desperate survivors, in an attempt to live, crossed the border to enter India. The unfortunate ones adorned the fields and ditches with their blood and bloated bodies disfigured by bayonet holes and the gunshot wounds. Anthony Mascarenhas, in the raw pages of The Rape of Bangladesh, details how a secret warning reached Sheikh Mujibur Rahman: the soldiers were coming. But Rahman wouldn’t be moved. He refused to slip away into the night, deciding instead that a prison cell was better than the cowardice of running. His home was subsequently trashed by the military.
The months that followed showed no mercy. Bengali Newspaper offices like ‘Daily Ithefaq’ and ‘The People’ , that stood in support of the Awami league, were atrociously burned. University hostels like Iqbal hall, where the muslim students were residing and the Jagannath hall where hindu students lived were the favoured targets of the army’s sadism. After surrounding the buildings, and blind firing, the bodies of the Hindu pupils were buried in a trench, dug outside the hostels . However the students of Iqbal Hall were not even granted that honor. Dragging them away was a mercy the students of Iqbal Hall weren’t even granted, many were simply left to rot where they fell, right on the building’s roof. Even more perverse were the executions for curfew violations- curfews that the regime hadn’t even bothered to announce to the public yet.
A pattern in killings emerged, as people realised that the genocide was a systemic one, a ruthlessly planned one. The Awami leaguers, the Hindus, the armymen of the East Bengal regiment, the students and the teachers and professors were targeted. The conscience had been so dead that, in Comilla , Anthony was told, “We are determined to cleanse East Pakistan once and for all of the threat of secession, even if it means killing off two million people and ruling the province as a colony for 30 years.”. Anthony describes what he saw as more outrageous than anything he had read about the inhuman acts of Hitler and the Nazis.
By autumn, more than 10 million people, which is more than the population of several European countries, had walked in the knee deep mud of the monsoon to cross the border and enter India. The monsoon of 1971 was not a season but the physical manifestation of the tears and blood of the people crying from loss, loss of everything from their homeland to their loved ones, from their humanitarian rights to even their right to freedom of speech. The people found solace in makeshift camps, built in west Bengal, Meghalaya and Tripura. The sudden influx of refugees, that large in numbers was a geopolitical ultimatum for India, apart from being a logistical challenge. Against the pitter- pattering sounds of rain, the cries of people in agony enduring yet more trials from cholera and more, could be heard.
It was during this time that the world was starting to hear rumors of the humanitarian catastrophe in East Pakistan. The Pakistani military regime, under Yahya Khan in an unsuccessful attempt to wash away the stains of blood from their whitewashed collars of kurtas, handpicked eight Pakistani journalists, including Mascarenhas to send them on a ‘guided tour’ and use them as conduits for a state sponsored propaganda and write adulated articles about the west. While the others did as told, Mascarenhas, compelled by his moral rectitude and humanity, was haunted by what he saw. He realised that he had to bring out the truth to the world. The man saw the calculated genocide , naked and clear however, wrapped meticulously behind layers of lies of ‘stabilisation of province’. Mascarenhas orchestrated an escape to London, and subsequently exposed the truth in an article published in The Sunday Times dated June 13, 1971. The article was also met with a praiseful remark from Harold Evans, the editor stating that it was the ‘most impactful story’ he had ever published. So when the article reached the desk of then serving prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi , it served as a chilling confirmation of what India had known. While the intelligence on Gandhi’s desk had long whispered of the horrors in the East, Mascarenhas’s article gave those whispers a global scream. This act of journalistic defiance finally forced the international community and Indira Gandhi to confront the unquestionable reality that the turmoil in Pakistan was no longer an internal matter but rather turning into a crime against humanity.
Gandhi found herself trapped in the web of global realpolitik, weaved by unscrupulous leaders. The USA , led by Kissinger and Nixon, maintained a tilt towards Yahya’s regime , using Pakistan as a bridge to create relations with China. But a conscientious man named Archer Blood, the last American consul general in Dhaka, sent the famous ‘Blood telegram’, officially labelling the atrocities being done by the West as selective genocide. The Blood telegram , often considered to be one of the most pivotal acts of internal defiance, went blatantly unheeded. Sensing the potential threat of a joint alliance of USA and China, Gandhi signed the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation in August 1971. Backed by the support of the USSR, Gandhi embarked on a journey to world capitals like Washington, London, Paris, and Bonn, confronting the world leaders about their silence on the brutalities occurring in East Pakistan. She famously quoted to the western media that “’You can’t annihilate people and be allowed to do it, even if it’s in your own country”. She further cited that this matter was regarded by the world community as an internal affair , even though according to the United Nations, it wasn’t, further adding the adversities faced by India in giving refuge to ten million people.
In April 1971, Indira Gandhi impatiently demanded military action but was met with a pragmatic Manekshaw’s strategic defiance. He implied that an early strike would be a logistical quagmire with the Himalayan passes open inviting Chinese intervention from the North and due to the monsoons East Pakistan would be regressed to a swamp. He demanded time , time to give clandestine training under Operation Jackpot to the Mukti Bahini, which was the liberation force of East Pakistan. The operation was designed by Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw and his team to weaken the West Pakistani forces before the final war in December 1971. He did not work with anger or in haste, his strength was a calculated, surgeon like precision.
Months passed, as the chilling winds of December began to rule the atmosphere. As Indian forces closed in on Dhaka, the USA under Nixon administration sent the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal with the malignant intention of intimidating India. The HMS Eagle was also sent by the UK. India was currently being threatened by the two greatest naval powers of the world. It was under this adversity that the Indo-Soviet treaty proved its worth. Under the shadow of Soviet submarines, acting as silent, underwater shields, India pushed forward to finish the mission. By the afternoon of December 16, 1971, the Ramna Racecourse became the stage for a scene that had been unprecedented since the second World War. There, General A.A.K. Niazi put pen to paper, surrendering 93,000 soldiers and effectively ending the era of West Pakistani hegemony.The event marked the birth of a sovereign nation and the death of hegemony. The ramifications led to cartographic changes , fueled by the moral necessity of human rights. India’s intervention was the first time in the 20th century that a genocide was stopped by a neighbor’s military action, what we now comprehend as responsibility to protect. As the sun of inhumanity dawned upon the vast horizon of earth’s timeline, the moon and the stars of emancipation arose, gleaming with contentment.
By: Aarya Neema
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