Countering false narratives

For over half a century, we have been led to believe distorted versions of the events of 1970-71 in erstwhile East Pakistan, painting Pakistan as marauders, rapists and mass murderers. There has been a bombardment of false narratives by India about the 1971 Pakistan India War, which have been accepted as truth by Bangladesh and some gullible Pakistanis. Some of our authors and researchers tried to present Pakistan’s viewpoint but, apart from a few, most were drowned in the crescendo of boisterous Indian propaganda, which was also echoed sometimes by Bangladesh. A handful of international authors, including some from Bangladesh, endeavoured to separate the grain of truth from the chaff of falsehood, but much more was needed to done by Pakistani researchers.

It is time to finally unveil the truth in the light of available evidence. Atrocities were carried out by both the Mukti Bahini guerrillas as well as the Pakistan Army. It is the exaggeration that has to be verified and negated. My book ‘Tormented Truth and Beyond’ has been published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the bloody episode to examine the causes of the severance of Pakistan’s Eastern Wing, the heinous role played by India and try to burst the myths regarding Pakistan Army’s alleged atrocities against Bengalis. The role of the current Awami League in meting out death sentences to its political opponents under the garb of alleged collaboration with the Pakistan Army has also been exposed.

I was born in Dhaka, spoke the Bangla language and have maintained a steady friendship with many of my old Bangladeshi class fellows and seniors in Pakistan Air Force (PAF). My penchant for seeking the truth prompted me to conduct research to burst the myths created about the 1971 saga, as well as present a balanced view of the events and aftermath in light of evidence from independent sources.

The prologue of my book describes how Bengal led the region in the freedom struggle against various invaders. Nawab Siraj ud-Dawlah, disturbed by the incursion of the British under the garb of traders, marched against their fortification of Calcutta (Kolkata) undertaken without his permission by the British East India Company. On 16th June 1756, the governor, the majority of his staff, and several British inhabitants fled Fort William for the safety of English ships in the harbour and the Fort surrendered on 20th June. As is wont of the British, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Clive and Admiral Charles Watson, in 1757, exactly 100 years before the Indian War of Independence in 1857, treacherously plotted using Mir Jafar, Siraj ud-Daulah’s general and managed to overthrow the Nawab at Plassey.

In 1971, the Indians severed our Eastern Wing through machinations and treachery leading to the independence of Bangladesh. Unfortunately, strife and turmoil have been the destiny of Bangladeshi history. Its founding President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated in 1975, as was the next President, Zia ur-Rahman. On 24th March 1982, General Hossain Mohammad Ershad, Chief of Army Staff, took control in a bloodless coup but was forced to resign on December 6th, 1990, amid violent protests and numerous allegations of corruption.

A succession of prime ministers governed in the 1990s, including Khaleda Zia, wife of the assassinated President Zia ur-Rahman, and Sheikh Hasina Wajed, daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina completed her five-year term as Prime Minister in July 2000—the first leader to do so since the country separated from Pakistan in 1971. In October 2006, violence erupted when Zia’s term ended and President Ahmed took over as the head of a caretaker administration. After two years, despite cyclones and torrential rains in the country, elections were held. In January 2009, Sheikh Hasina Wajed was elected as the Prime Minister and continues to reign.

In any conflict, truth gets trampled and distorted. The victors write their own version while the vanquished have their personal narrative which often gets drowned in the cacophony of the vanquishers’ boasts of heraldry. The 1971 Pak-India War is no different. India was the victor but in the wake of the conflict, which changed the map of the subcontinent, numerous myths were floated which in Chanakyan fashion, being repeated often, came to be accepted as facts, even by Bangladesh. My book is an attempt to set the record straight in light of fresh evidence and historical research.

The first exaggeration is India’s justification for its assault on Pakistan. It quotes numerous rationales, but the General Elections of 1970 and the delay by the military government in the transfer of power to the elected representatives was part of an internal democratic process and should not have been used as a pretext for India’s nefarious aggression to dismember Pakistan. The seeds of the secession of East Pakistan, however, were laid nearly a decade earlier. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the acknowledged founder of Bangladesh had been surreptitiously visiting the Indian border town of Agartala to meet Indian co-conspirators. Indian involvement in the heinous conspiracy was at various levels. Its Parliament approved the support for Bengali insurgents while its military and intelligence clandestinely trained Mukti Bahini insurgents well before the 1971 war.

It has been widely propagated that the Pakistan Army killed over 3 million people in military action and that they all were innocent civilians. Independent researchers have critiqued this propaganda of India and Awami League. Unless the record is set straight, younger generations will continue to give credence to the myths and shibboleths of the 1971 Indo-Pak war and history will remain distorted.

In the epilogue, it has been proposed that we should let bygones be bygones and move ahead, allowing the wounds to heal. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Europe brings the hope that Bangladesh and Pakistan will reunite; not under one flag but perhaps in a cooperation initiative of SAARC, akin to the European Union, since Bengal at one time was at the forefront of the Pakistan Movement.

Bengalis are an emotional nation who, despite their government’s close relations with India, demonstrate fervently to support Kashmiris and protest against the Indian draconian Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), meant to target Muslims and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which excludes 1.9 million of northeastern Assam state’s 33 million population. The controversial CAA promises to fast-track Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from the three neighboring Muslim-majority countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The law threatens India’s secular foundations by marginalizing its 200 million Muslim minority population. This book also depicts India’s highhanded behaviour with Bangladesh. The current disposition ruling Dhaka was inclined towards India, but the people of Bangladesh resent any efforts to subjugate them and react strongly.

Rationality demands that we look inwards, accept the truth, learn lessons and move on. A grim reminder of 1971 are the 250,000 Biharis who live in squalor in ghettos and camps, stranded in Bangladesh. Neither Pakistan will accept them, nor does Bangladesh want them. Their only crime is that they stood for a united Pakistan.

The writer is the former Group Captain PAF and an author.