Past Imperfect: The Multiple Narratives of Bangladesh's creation

This article was triggered by Rahul Gandhi's claim that his family "divided Pakistan". It appeared first in Hindustan Times April 18, 2007

In a subcontinent where literacy and education are in short supply, it's not surprising that popular narratives, and even myths, take on a life of their own.Take the case of Bangladesh. We probably have two major versions of how Bangladesh was created in Pakistan, two in Bangladesh and one in India.
The Indian account is fairly simple and mostly accurate: geography compelled India to get involved in the Pakistani civil war of 1971.Through the determined leadership of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, it faced down the US, aided the creation of Bangladesh and inflicted a major military defeat on Pakistan.

So, as election rhetoric, Rahul Gandhi's statement listing the "division of Pakistan" as part of his family's achievements is hardly remarkable since it's based on how most Indians recall the events of those times anyway.
But the narratives linked to Bangladesh's two major political parties are more complex. The Awami League believes that Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and the movement that he led single-handedly created Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) prefers to shift the focus to the efforts of the erstwhile East Pakistan Rifles, whose rebellion provided steel to the movement.The leader of this struggle was Major Zia-ur Rehman, the man who later founded the BNP and became President of the country.

The Pakistani version of the events was visible in two successive statements of its official spokesperson, Tasnim Aslam. On Sunday, reacting to Gandhi's remarks, she said that it 'validates' the fact that 'India has always been trying to interfere in Pakistan's internal affairs'.
On Monday, she modified it slightly: "Maybe there were some circumstances; India took advantage of those circumstances to dismember Pakistan".

This duality is more striking in President Musharraf's autobiography, Line of Fire, which pins the blame on the 'wily' Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, incompetent generals and politicians, as well as on India, which "stabbed Pakistan in the back by attacking it across the border on several fronts in East Pakistan on November 21, 1971".

Historians would continue to debate whether the Indian military intervention was good, bad or even necessary.But the fact that Bangladesh firmly established itself as a nation, despite internal turbulence, indicates that the Indian role in its creation, however significant, was secondary. What was central was the circumstances around the emergence of Pakistan, the actions of its leaders in 1947-71, the criminal conduct of the its army in its eastern wing in 1971 and the determination of the Bangla people to safeguard their identity.

This judgment is not an 'Indian' pronouncement. It was arrived at by the Hamoodur Rehman Commission, appointed by the Pakistan government to inquire into the war. The report was readied by 1972 and declassified only in 2000 after large chunks of it were published in India Today. Though it grossly understated the number of people killed, ignored Bhutto's role and that of the 'butcher' of Dhaka, Lt Gen Tikka Khan, it did not quite whitewash the conduct of the Pakistan army in Bangladesh.

The division of their country, or the creation of Bangladesh, is clearly something Pakistan inflicted on itself. After the pre-emptive atrocities of its army in 1971, the chances of the two wings of Pakistan remaining one were nil. The Bangladesh government estimates that between March 1971 and the surrender in Dhaka in mid-December, the Pakistani military regime was responsible for the death of three million people. The Pakistanis claim that only about 26,000 people died. Scholars who study genocide place the figure at hundreds of thousands and rank it as one of the terrible events of the last century.

Since they are not works of history popular narratives do sometimes tend to be one-sided over-simplifications. But whether as folklore or history, the events surrounding the Bangladesh war continue to have a powerful bearing on contemporary affairs of South Asia. This is, of course, most manifest in Bangladesh, where the rival versions of the freedom struggle have led to a political deadlock between Hasina Wajed, daughter of the martyred Mujibur Rehman, and Khaleda Zia, widow of the martyred Zia-ur Rehman.

To an extent, this rivalry is a modern myth. Two days after Sheikh Mujib announced the formation of Bangladesh in Dhaka, Zia endorsed it and called on all Bengalis to fight the West Pakistan army in the name of the motherland. Zia was neither an opponent of Mujib, nor was he implicated in his assassination. He was merely propelled by several coups to assume the presidency of Bangladesh which, unfortunately, remains divided by the imagined history of its own freedom struggle.

Ignorance of history often leads to imagined grievances and imputed motives, which have their own baleful consequences. India's role in "stabbing Pakistan in the back" has for long been used as a means to justify Pakistani support for terrorist and separatist activity against India.In the case of Bangladesh, the multiple interpretations of its creation lie in the contemporary uses various parties wish to give to an event.

But the myth of Indira Gandhi being hell-bent on war is inaccurate. As the country's leader, her reaction was essentially defensive. The outbreak of civil war and the massacres in Bangladesh led to a huge exodus of refugees into India. This was when the Naxalbari movement was at its height and Maulana Bhashani, the peasant leader with pro-Chinese inclinations, was a major influence on East Pakistan's peasantry.

A prolonged civil war in East Pakistan, with violence spilling over into parts of India, was seen as a major threat to the stability of the region. In retrospect, Indira Gandhi's action may seem faultless, but they were fraught with a great deal of risk. By mid-1971, she knew that Indian policy risked confrontation with the US and China as well, and she carefully prepared for the eventuality.

In 1965, India had been forced to call a ceasefire because of a Chinese ultimatum, so a discarded Soviet proposal for an Indo-Soviet treaty was revived to give India some diplomatic-security cushion. This was a period when the Soviets were locked in a near conflict with China. Indira Gandhi travelled across the world in the face of US opposition to build a climate of opinion against Pakistan.

Only when everything was in place, by the end of November, were Indian forces asked to press the Pakistani forces in Bangladesh. Even then nothing was foreordained. Pakistan had the option of making a deal with Sheikh Mujib at any time, but it did not act. Neither did the US. Indian war plans were cautious. They did not initially envisage the capture of Dhaka; their aim was to systematically tighten the ring around it. Some good generalship on the Indian side and a great deal of softening up by the Bangla rebels led to the abrupt collapse of the Pakistan army.

No wonder Henry Kissinger's assessment, uttered at a crisis meeting in Washington at the time, "The lady is cold-blooded and tough," has become part of a popular historical narrative that rings true to many Indians even today.

The Two Headed Eagle Lands: Vladimir Putin's New Delhi visit

The Putin visit has transformed a relationship based on strategic-political congruence to one based on mutual economic gain. Hindustan Times January 24, 2007

At a press briefing in New Delhi in the late-Eighties, a Soviet academician, when pressed on the quality of technology in his country, said somewhat plaintively, “Surely a country that has flown the Buran cannot be backward.” In the field of space science and military technology, it was not. The Buran, which flew in October 1988, was a Soviet space shuttle that could be launched, manoeuvred and landed automatically. But the Buran never flew again. The country that launched it dissolved, in part because it was bankrupted by programmes like Buran, aimed at giving the USSR strategic parity with the United States. Like a nova, the Soviet Union briefly lit up the earth and suddenly dimmed.

Nearly 25 years later, the core of the USSR — Russia — is once again lighting up the sky. This time as an energy and commodities superpower. It ended 2006 with its eighth straight year of growth, averaging 6.7 per cent annually. Oil and commodity prices have played a key role in this, but investment growth and consumer spending are now beginning to kick in. Oil export earnings have allowed Russia to increase its foreign reserves from $12 billion in 1999 to some $315 billion at the end of 2006, the third largest in the world.

At the helm of affairs in Russia is a no-nonsense leader termed ‘ruthless’ and ‘cold’ by his adversaries, but hugely popular in his own country. Vladimir Putin became acting President on the last day of the 20th century, December 31, 1999. He was anointed President in May after the election and was re-elected for a second term in 2004. Over the years, Putin has undertaken a policy of concentrating political power in Kremlin and re-nationalising Russia’s oil and gas industries.

In international affairs, Putin has begun to re-establish the strong and independent role for Russia, once played by the Soviet Union, without its revolutionary or imperial pretensions. He has accepted American and European influence over the Baltic States, but sought to keep traditional Slavic States like Ukraine and Belarus under a close embrace. Till now, he has acquiesced with the US dominance in West Asia and gone along with American activities in Central Asia. Even in the case of Iran, he has chosen to avoid direct confrontation with the US. However, America’s self-inflicted infirmities in these regions have created a vacuum that Kremlin could once again seek to fill.

Russia’s resurgence under a powerful leader is good news for New Delhi. The Soviet collapse, formalised in 1991, took with it the scaffolding around India’s strategic architecture. The Soviet Union had been the inspiration for our planned economy, supplier of some 70 per cent of military hardware and an uncomplaining supporter of all our causes, from Kashmir to Bangladesh. Soviet weapons systems, provided at ‘friendship prices’, enabled India to field a robust military force that made us a regional power of sorts.

Despite the scramble to re-orient its foreign and security policies, New Delhi never had to go through what Russia did in the Nineties. Russia’s GDP halved, as did its government revenues. By the end of the decade, it witnessed an unprecedented decline in its standard of living, resulting in a sharp rise in poverty and mortality rates. Drastic privatisation led to the State’s vast resources being skimmed off by a small group of oligarchs linked to the Kremlin. Universities and institutions of higher learning, culture and publishing houses that were subsidised by the State found their budgets slashed, if not entirely eliminated. There was an enormous rise in the influence of the West and its institutions in Moscow.

India can perhaps no longer expect the kind of political relationship it had with the Soviet Union to be replicated with Russia. But then, New Delhi no longer needs uncritical friends. Its own foreign policy has been drastically overhauled, it has taken important initiatives with neighbours, made advances in its relations with the US, Europe and Japan, and developed an autonomous self-defence capability in the form of nuclear weapons. Most important, its booming economy has given it a self-assurance and standing that does not need the kind of props the Soviet Union once provided.

Russian trade and technology transfer relations with China are booming, but a demographically imploding Russia also fears for the future with an economically booming and demographically gigantic neighbour with whom it shares a 3,600 km border. Despite a shared culture, Russia’s relationship with the rest of Europe has been historically troubled and continues to be so. As for the US, the Russians remain suspicious of its agenda in the former Eastern Europe and Central Asia. So, while a shared history of good relations brings Russia and India closer, what makes for the glue today is that the two do not have any conflict of interest or suspicion of each other. Russia remains sensitive to Indian security concerns in its dealings with our neighbours, especially Pakistan; they are with us in trying to stabilise Afghanistan and Central Asia.

No matter how you look at it, Russia remains one of the more important world powers. It is the largest producer of natural gas and the second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia. It is also the source of significant military and space technology. Though two-way trade between India and Russia is abysmal — Indian exports are $ 0.74 billion and imports $ 2.2 billion — the potential is enormous. The upturn in the Russian consumer-led expenditure offers huge opportunities for Indian firms in the pharma, textiles, IT and automobile sectors.

India failed to take advantage of the collapsing Russian military machinery, when some of its best scientists and engineers were hired by the West and China. Today, there is greater awareness that relations need to be based on joint development of technology, rather than simple export or licensed production of weapons systems. There is, of course, far greater interest in India today on Russian energy resources. The reassertion of Kremlin’s control over oil resources does give some advantage to State-owned Indian oil giants. But as of now, the Russian energy policy remains in a state of flux.

India’s new strategic architecture is based on shoring up its strategic autonomy in the economic and security field. To this end, it is pursuing policies to promote economic growth, resolve disputes with neighbours and strengthen relations with all significant nations of the world. This is not very different from what Russia is doing. A resurgent Russia has important implications for India’s regional and global policy, because it enhances the options available to New Delhi. Arguably, there is a closer identity of interests between the two on Central Asia, Iran and West Asia, than between New Delhi and Washington. With the US mired in Iraq and its stock in West Asia at a low, India can work with countries like Russia to provide a stabilising influence, especially in the vital Persian Gulf region.

New Delhi and Moscow have the opportunity, and an apparent inclination today, to rebuild their ties on a new basis, albeit on solidly established older foundations. In a study published in 1991, Santosh Mehrotra noted that while relations between India and the USSR were based on a “compatibility of strategic-political interests”, they also had a basis in strong mutual economic interest. New Delhi and Moscow have clearly understood that they still share important strategic interests. What they need now is to put in work to buttress this with mutually beneficial economic ties.

Annus Mirabilis

This article on India's wonderful year that was. Published in Hindustan Times December 27, 2006 'It's been a good year, arguably the best since we became an independent nation. We have never been as well off as we are today.' This is how our long-standing columnist and well-known author Khushwant Singh wrote in Hindustan Times last Saturday. Despite his brief infatuation for Sanjay Gandhi and the Emergency, Singh is no court historian. His work, both as columnist and writer, spans the country's history since Independence and his telling of the fads and foibles of our leaders and politicians have won him a legion of fans. Remarkably, this latest pronouncement comes from a 91 year-old whose leitmotif could well have the 'good old days'. In his piece, Singh led off with the quintessential 2006 phenomenon that has so warmed the cockles of the middle class's hearts -- the judiciary's message to the rich and powerful that no one is above the law. But at the core of the good times lies that other phenomenon powering the country's self-confidence - economic growth. With three years of 8 per cent plus growth, there can be little doubt that the country's economy is now on a sustainable fast growth path. With almost all domestic constraints, barring infrastructure, more or less eliminated, India is poised for a manufacturing revolution which should be able to make a bigger dent on the poverty and unemployment front. Our economics have perhaps changed the quality of our relationship with neighbours as well. In the past years, we have witnessed political upheavals in three neighbouring nations - Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka - and India has not been named as a malevolent meddler by any of the significant parties. Indeed, New Delhi's subtle handling of the Nepal crisis exemplifies this changed situation. To begin with, there were scores of alarmist reports about how the Nepalese and Indian Maoists making common cause to destabilise the country. But India persisted on the middle path and, if Nepal follows the current trajectory, there will be little to worry about in the future. Scare-mongering on a large scale accompanied that other great foreign policy achievement - the Indo-US nuclear deal. Some see the nuclear agreement as an Indo-American thing aimed at undermining our nuclear weapons programme. The facts, however, are that the Nuclear Suppliers Group - made up of the P-5 members of the UN Security Council and all significant industrial nations - has more-or-less accepted India's nuclear weapons as a given, and are moving on to get India to join their club. For this process, the NSG has made the US the lead negotiator: the Indo-US agreement is the key that was needed to open 45 doors. Contrary to some perceptions, the decision of the world's hegemonic power to stand its nuclear proliferation policy on its head is not an event. It is a process through which a rising power is accommodated at the high table where nations that effectively run the world are seated. Their interest in doing so is both altruistic and expedient - they want to ensure that India's rise does not disrupt the world in which they have a great deal at stake, as well as to seek out opportunities for profit, both political and commercial. Much the same process took place with regard to China in the Eighties and Nineties. Celebrating the good times is also a time to reflect on the bad ones the country has gone through. The bad times have been many -- the bloodbath of Partition, the Kashmir wars, the assassinations of the Mahatma, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, the Bihar famine, political breakdown leading to the Emergency in the mid-Seventies, the terrorist movement in Punjab, the Kashmir insurgency, the economic crises of the mid-Sixties and of 1991 and so on. In the scale of bad times, nothing could be worse than the November of 1962. The defeat of the army at Namka Chu was inevitable, given the location of the Indian positions, but the subsequent disasters of Se La and Bomdi La is something the country will not forget in a long time. Its ripples were felt across the country and the resulting panic led the army and the civil administration to abandon upper Assam for a brief moment. Tezpur was evacuated, the prisoners in its jail freed and its treasury emptied into the Brahmaputra. In New Delhi, the architect of non-alignment, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote an abject letter to the President of the United States proposing a military alliance. Those were indeed bad days. But so were those in 1990 and 1991 when the country was in the grips of social turmoil, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and economic crisis led creditors to demand that we fly our gold reserves to London. At the time the writ of terrorists ran across the most prosperous state, Punjab, and the Kashmir rebellion was at its peak. Today, separatist insurgency still afflicts Kashmir and the North-east and the Maoist cadre has the free run of large tracts of territory in central India. Yet, all those fighting the Indian State know they have little or no chance of ever prevailing, even locally. With a limited number of nuclear weapons, India also has the ultimate weapon against external threat and blackmail. We may not be the strongest military power around, but we are not that badly off either, and we have shown that we are a great deal more resilient than many countries around the world. One reason why there is a general air of caution over celebrating the good days upon us is the 'Shining India' effect - the hyperbolic tendency to irrational exuberance that grips the middle-class to the point of excess. Even today, large parts of the country and its people continue to live in the thrall of poverty, illiteracy and disease. A recent Unicef report pointed out, for example, that India's maternal mortality ratio (MMR) could be as high as 300 per 100,000 live births, with some states like UP and MP recording more than double that figure. There are several reasons for this, but the primary one is that not many women, especially in rural areas, receive skilled medical attention during childbirth, and they don't get this because there is no infrastructure of rural healthcare across large swathes of the country. The persistent MMR problem is only one manifestation of the deep rooted illiteracy-disease-poverty cycle that afflicts the country. In the past 50 years, an enormous amount of money has been spent to break this cycle, but to little avail. In great measure the problem has been managerial. Both the state and Union governments have failed to provide the kind of leadership - political and bureaucratic - needed to deal with the situation. They point to one key area that the country needs to do something about - the quality of its urban and rural management. It has already become apparent in India's teeming cities that the colonial-era administrative structures and styles are unable to cope with the complexities of the challenge they face. Yet, none of the recent governments have come anywhere near reforming the system. Every government claims that it is doing so, yet ground realities, especially chronic problems like MMR, show that things go on as before. Yet, the good news is, and Khushwant Singh is its privileged harkara, that the country may have arrived at a critical mass of people - call them middle-class if you will - with a level of education and income that can sustain the chain reaction of growth and prosperity.