SOURCE: HT
Arjun Subramaniam is a retired Air Vice Marshal from the Indian Air Force and the author of India’s Wars: A Military History 1947-1971 and Full Spectrum: India’s Wars 1972-2020. On the 49th anniversary of the victory in 1971, he spoke to HT about India’s moment of triumph:
How do you look back at the 1971 war and India’s triumph?
There are a few issues that immediately strike a historian when one looks back at the 1971 war.
The first is that the war and the liberation of Bangladesh were an outcome of a “whole-of-government” approach. There was perfect synergy between the political establishment, the military commanders and operational commanders. If one recollects that time in history, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wanted General Sam Manekshaw to go into Bangladesh in March-April of 1971. But Gen Manekshaw explained to PM Gandhi the need for a fairly long preparatory period that would allow him to offer a decisive outcome to the military operation. It goes to the credit of PM Gandhi that she listened to her Army chief, and waited for six more months, even though it cost India quite heavily in terms of the increased number of refugees that came into the country.
The second is the jointness among the three armed forces: The Indian Army, Navy and Air Force. There was also a clear understanding among the higher levels of operational leadership in the Indian military of what were the outcomes expected from them.
Third, by going into the country in December, India gave itself the time to train the Mukti Bahini — which emerged as the eyes and ears of the Indian Army when it moved into Bangladesh in 1971.
Lastly, at a tactical level, there was professional acumen and courage across junior leadership.
What were the key elements of India’s military strategy that helped it win the war?
Right from the beginning, it was decided that there would be different strategies for the western front and the eastern front.
On the eastern front, the strategy was one of creating overwhelming superiority to drive a decisive outcome — the defeat of the Pakistan Army in East Pakistan. The creation of Bangladesh or the liberation of East Pakistan was not one of the initial military objectives. It came in later because of the spectacular success of the three armed forces in pressurising the Pakistanis to the point of psychological collapse in East Pakistan.
On the western front, what Gen Manekshaw and India’s strategic establishment realised was that there was near-parity of ground forces between the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army. But India realised that to drive any decisive victory, you needed the Indian Army to be able to score decisive victories across the western front, which was a difficult proposition. Therefore, Gen Manekshaw’s strategy for the western front was what was called “offensive defence”. His move to pull out forces from the western front to the eastern front was a deliberate attempt to create this overwhelming superiority in the east. India did not try to bite off too much. To expect a spectacular victory on both fronts was just not possible. There was significant superiority as far as the Indian Navy and Indian Air Force was concerned. What emerged out of the 1971 war was that the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy grew out of the shadows of their big brother, the Indian Army. They performed spectacularly during the war. They emerged as independent service entities and contributed significantly in operations on both the western and eastern front.
The arrival of the US seventh fleet remains an abiding memory and scarred generations about the United States. At the same time, India was able to rely on Soviet support to an extent. How did India deal with the international geopolitics of the war?
One thing that deserves mention is that we must not undercut ourselves to look back on our own performance in isolation in the 1971 war. Yes, the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was a big confidence-booster. It allowed India a strategic buffer, but ultimately, we must give ourselves credit for the outcome of the war.
As far as international opinion is concerned, and why I call it a “whole-of-government” approach, is that by March, PM Gandhi realised that India had to go to war, but being a mature democracy, it did not want to go to war. From March to November, even as the Indian armed forces continued to build up capability and deploy for war, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and foreign minister Dr Swaran Singh along with the PM’s advisers tried their best globetrotting across the world to impress upon the West to call upon Pakistan to stop the genocide in Bangladesh. But that didn’t happen. Significant efforts were made by India in the international arena to prevent the war. This is how India emerged internationally as a mature State. Not one country, except China, criticised India’s move into East Pakistan. The world realised that had India not intervened, there would have been a genocide of even more horrific proportions. This raised India’s stature on the world stage.
Do you think we failed to convert the military victory into a political advantage in Shimla?
Of course. By any yardstick, India failed to derive adequate political and strategic leverage from the operational outcomes of the 1971 war. Put simply, we were not able to drive a quid pro quo agreement that met our strategic requirements. It happened because India was under tremendous pressure, both globally and internally, to return the 93,000 prisoners.
This was when Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto pleaded with PM Gandhi that he had just come to power, and if issues such as Kashmir, the Line of Control and the redrawing of boundaries were to come into the agreement, it would mean a sure-shot downfall for him in Pakistan. He used democracy as a leverage against PM Gandhi.
One statement that remains etched in everyone’s memory of that time was that he said “bharosa kijiye” — which means to say that he promised to address all of these issues at some time in the future. But many of these issues linger even today and are festering in India-Pakistan relations.
Despite the support to the war of liberation, how do you see the ebbs and flows of the relationship with Bangladesh?
Bangladesh is emerging as the driving force for India’s Act East Policy. Therefore, every political establishment in India understands the need to develop and maintain good relations with Bangladesh. It is even more so now, because the trajectory of Bangladesh’s economic growth indicates that it is an emerging economy that has been doing well despite various setbacks in South Asia. There will always be contentious issues between our nations, but the onus lies on India as the larger nation to be able to manage the relationship. A good relationship with Bangladesh has many positive outcomes for India. This is well understood.
