India After Gandhi (146 page)

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Authors: Ramachandra Guha

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20. T
HE
E
LIXIR
OF
V
ICTORY

Thought, 22 November 1969.
See Election Manifestos 1971 (Bombay: Awake India Publications, 1971).
Rajaji to Minoo Masani, 2 January 1971, in Subject File 142, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fourth Instalment, NMML.
Indira Gandhi to Dorothy Norman, 23 April 1971, in D. Norman, ed., Indira Gandhi: Letters to an American Friend, 1950–1984 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), p. 132.
Thought, 20 May 1972.
‘A Special Correspondent’, ‘The Making of Fifth Lok Sabha’, Thought, 20 March 1971.
Khushwant Singh, ‘Indira Gandhi’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 14 March 1971.
See D. R. Mankekar, Accession to Extinction: The Story of Indian Princes (Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1974), chapter 21.
D. N. Dhanagare, ‘Urban-Rural Differences in Election Violence’, in S. P. Varma and Iqbal Narain, eds, Fourth General Elections in India, vol. 2 (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1970).
This section is based on Election Commission of India, Report on the Fifth General Elections in India, 1971–72 (New Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1973), passim. The CEC was named S. P. Sen Varma; his report the mystical preface apart – was clearly modelled on the first such, written by his great predecessor Sukumar Sen.
This and the following paragraphs are principally based on Herbert Feldman, The End and the Beginning: Pakistan 1969–1971 (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), chapters7 to 9. Cf. also D. R. Mankekar, Pak Colonialism in East Bengal (Bombay: Somaiyya Publications, 1971).
Lt. Gen. A. A. K. Niazi, quoted in Muntassir Mamoon, The Vanquished Generals and the Liberation War of Bangladesh (Dhaka: Somoy Prakashan, 2000), p. 159.
R. K. Dasgupta, Revolt in East Bengal (Calcutta: G. C. Ray, 1971), pp. 4, 7, 9, 21, 24–5, 29, 39, 52, 61 etc. For the colonial treatment of East Pakistan by the West Punjabi elite, see also Anthony Mascarenhas, The Rape of Bangla Desh (Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1971).
Cf. reports by eyewitnesses collected in Anon., Bangla Desh Documents (Madras: The BNK Press, 1972), chapter 6.
Jyoti Sen Gupta, History of Freedom Movement in Bangladesh, 1943–1973 (Calcutta: Naya Prokash, 1974), pp. 314–16, 325–6. The major who made the announcement was Zia-ur-Rahman, later president of Bangladesh.
State Department telegram dated 2 July 1971, reproduced in Roedad Khan, comp., The American Papers: Secret and Confidential India-Pakistan-Bangladesh Documents, 1965–1973 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 613–15.
Maj. Gen. Hakeem Arshad Qureshi, The 1971 Indo-Pak War: A Soldier’s Narrative (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 60, 71. The sentences quoted could as easily have been penned by an Indian army commander writing about Nagaland in 1957.
Werner Adam, ‘Pakistan’s Open Wounds’, Washington Post, 6 June 1971; report in the New York Times, 25 June 1971; World Bank team report in Subject File171, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
Anon., Bangla Desh Documents, chapter 7.
K. C. Saha, ‘The Genocide of 1971 and the Refugee Influx in the East’, in Ranabir Samaddar, ed., Refugees and the State: Practices of Asylum and Care in India, 1947–2000 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003).
Iqbal Akhund, Memoirs of a Bystander: A Life in Diplomacy (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 201.
25-page secret report entitled ‘Threat of a Military Attack or Infiltration Campaign by Pakistan’, RAW, January 1971, copy in Subject File 220, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
Dhar to Haksar, 18 April 1971, ibid.
Cf. reports in Subject File 169, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
The letter is reprinted in F. S. Aijazuddin, ed., The White House and Pakistan: Secret Declassified Documents, 1969–1974 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 129–30.
‘Record of PM’s Conversation with Dr Kissinger’, 7 July 1971, in Subject File 225, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
Indira Gandhi to Richard Nixon, 7 August 1971, copy in Subject File 220, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
See the documents in Louis Smith, ed., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. 11: South Asia Crisis, 1971 (Washington, DC: Department of State, 2005), pp. 28, 35, 164, 167, 288–9, 303, 316, 324, 557 etc.; and the documents in Aijazuddin, The White House, pp. 242–6, 258–62.
For the broader context of India’s changing relations with the superpowers in the early seventies, see T. V. Kunhi Krishnan, The Unfriendly Friends: India and America (New Delhi: Indian Book Co., 1974); Shashi Tharoor, Reasons of State: Political Development and India’s Foreign Policy under Indira Gandhi, 1966–1977 (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1982); and Linda Racioppi, Soviet Policy towards South Asia since 1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
This paragraph is based on letters and papers in Subject Files 163, 225 and 229, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
Top Secret Note of 5 June 1971 in Subject File 89, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
‘Record of conversations between Foreign Minister and Mr A. A. Gromyko, Minister of Foreign Affairs, USSR, on 7th June 1971’, in Subject File 203, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
The text of the treaty is reproduced in A. Appadorai, ed., Select Documents on India’s Foreign Policy and Relations, 1947–1972, vol. 2 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 136–40.
Indira Gandhi, India: The Speeches and Reminiscences of Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975), pp. 162–4.
See Aijazuddin, The White House, pp. 313, 336–9.
Robert Jackson, South Asian Crisis: India-Pakistan-Bangla Desh (London: Chatto and Windus,1975), p. 102.
Letter of 23 November, in Aijazuddin, The White House, pp. 364–5.
Jackson, South Asian Crisis, pp. 106–7; Brian Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army: Wars and Insurrections (Karachi: Oxford University Press), pp. 148–9.
B. G. Verghese, An End to Confrontation: Restructuring the Sub-Continent (New Delhi: 1972), pp. 35–50.
Cloughley, A History of the Pakistan Army, p. 222.
Lt. Gen. A. A. K. Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan (Delhi: Manohar, 1998), p. 132.
Ibid., p. 114.
D. R. Mankekar, Pakistan Cut to Size (New Delhi: Indian Book Co., 1972), pp. 54–63.
Jackson, South Asian Crisis, pp. 137–8.
Telegram quoted in Niazi, Betrayal, p. 180.
See Aijazuddin, The White House, pp. 447, 449–50.
Niazi, Betrayal, pp. 187ff.
Lok Sabha Debates, 16 December 1971.
Living not far from the border then, I heard Yahya’s speech as it was delivered – he had (as Pakistani accounts also suggest) consumed a goodly amount of whisky before taking up the microphone.
Air Chief Marshal P. C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer International, 1986), p. 321.
Smith, Foreign Relations, pp. 439, 499, 594, 612, 674 etc. Cf. also the letters exchanged between Mrs Gandhi and Nixon after the end of the war, reproduced in Aijazuddin, The White House, pp. 476–80.
Time, 3 January 1972; James Reston, ‘India’s Victory a Triumph for Moscow’, New York Times, undated (?20 December 1971) clipping in Subject File 217, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
Thought, 29 January 1972.
Quoted in C. M. Naim, Ambiguities of Heritage: Fictions and Polemics (Karachi: City Press, 1999), p. 139.
See ‘India After Bangla Desh: A Symposium’, Gandhi Marg, vol. 16, no. 2, 1972.
Letter of 8 December 1971, in Carol Brightman, ed., Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy,1949–1975 (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1995), p. 303.
A. B. Vajpayee quoted in Thought, 20 May 1972.
Ranajit Roy, The Agony of West Bengal: A Study in Union-State Relations, 3rd edn (Calcutta: New Age Publishers, 1973), pp. 3–4; Sajal Basu, West Bengal the Violent Years (Calcutta: Prachi Publications, 1974), p. 78.
‘Message to Mrs Gandhi from Sir Alec Douglas-Home’, 20 March 1972, in Subject File179, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
As quoted in S. R. Sen to I. G. Patel, letter dated 2March 1972, in Subject File 225, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
Untitled note in Subject File 236, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
Sajjad Zaheer to P. N. Haksar, 23 March 1972, in Subject File 243, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML (emphasis in original). Mazhar Ali Khan was the father of the student radical, and later prolific author, Tariq Ali.
A. Raghavan, ‘Five Days that Changed History’, Blitz, 8 July 1972.
Note by Dhar dated 12 March 1972, in Subject File 235, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.
The text of the Simla Agreement is reproduced in Appadorai, Select Documents, pp. 443–5.
The text of the speech is to be found in Subject File 93, P. N. Haksar Papers, Third Instalment, NMML.

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