General Yahya Khan

Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War By Sarmila Bose, Hachette, Rs 1,882

All freedom movements give rise to myths and legends, tales of unalloyed heroism and sacrifice on the one side and unqualified injustice on the other. It falls on the historian to separate fact from fantasy. Sarmila Bose has attempted to undertake this task in the case of the Bangladesh War of 1971.

Focusing on some select events, Bose interviewed a number of participants and eyewitnesses on both sides. She offers a lively narrative of these interviews, accompanied by vivid pen portraits of the interviewees. These accounts might have been used to arrive at a more nuanced chronicle of the events in question than those in current circulation. Bose, however, has a larger ambition. She offers nothing less than a revisionist history of the Bangladesh liberation struggle based on her interviews — and fails to carry conviction.

According to Bose, the “allegations” of exploitation by West Pakistan and charges of genocide in 1971 are to be explained by the cultivation of a “victim culture” by the Bangladeshis. She cites G.W. Chaudhury, a Bengali who held high office under the Yahya regime, in this connection — “the Bengalis are noted for a negative and destructive attitude rather than for hard work and constructive programmes; they also have a tremendous tendency to put the blame on others”.

Bose argues that the statistical evidence about per capita incomes and the provincial origin of senior military and civilian officers only shows disparity, but not necessarily discrimination, between the two wings of pre-1971 Pakistan. She closes her eyes to the discrimination inherent in the decision to declare Urdu as the sole national language in the early days of Pakistan, ignoring the claims of the Bengali-speaking majority, or the denial of an effective voice to the more populous province under military regimes run by generals hailing exclusively from West Pakistan.

Bose views the “demonization” of Yahya Khan as “supremely ironic”. She casts him as a benevolent ruler, “sensitive to Bengali grievances”. “The picture that emerges from the available material is again somewhat counter-intuitive,” she writes, “in that it is the military ruler, General Yahya Khan, who appears to have made strenuous efforts to bring the politicians, Mujib and Bhutto, to the negotiating table to arrive at a means of transferring power to the new assembly and an elected government.” “Yahya found himself squeezed between the uncompromising attitudes and soaring ambitions of both political leaders each of whom suspected him of giving too much away to the other.”

The record, of course, shows that Yahya Khan had no intention from the outset of permitting the elected representatives of East Pakistan to implement their Six Point programme, which he viewed as a secessionist demand. As early as on February 1, 1971, Ambassador Farland reported to the state department of the United States of America that Yahya had confided to him his worries about the possibility of East Pakistan’s secession. In a grotesque parody of Churchill, the military ruler declared that “he did not intend to preside over the dissolution of Pakistan”. The telegram has been reproduced in two publications that are essential reading for any serious student of the events of 1971 — Roedad Khan’s The American Papers and volume E7 of the Foreign Relations of the United States. One is left wondering whether Bose chose to deliberately ignore the evidence or whether she is unfamiliar with these well-known volumes. Neither publication finds a mention in her bibliography.

In Bose’s account, Yahya’s restraint amounted to “appeasement” of the Bengalis. “The regime’s decision to keep the army in the barracks despite widespread curfew violation and violence, and tolerate — and thereby legitimize — Mujib’s rule by decree might be termed a policy of ‘appeasement’, while it hoped for a political solution”. She completely ignores the evidence that the army’s seeming patience was due to the inadequacy of its troop strength in the province until reinforcements could be brought in from West Pakistan for a savage crackdown .

While admitting that the Pakistan army was guilty of genocide against the Hindus of Bangladesh, Bose absolves it of the charge in relation to the Muslim population. According to her, the killings fall short of the crime of genocide as defined by the United Nations because of the limited scale of the slaughter and the fact that the army targeted only adult males. On the other hand, she finds the Bengalis guilty of genocide. “The killing of non-Bengalis — Biharis and West Pakistanis — by Bengalis was clearly ‘genocide’,” she writes, disregarding the vast difference in the scale of these incidents compared to the massacres organized by the Pakistani army and its Razakar auxiliaries, as well as the efforts of the Awami League leadership to prevent violence against ethnic minorities.

Bose criticizes Bangladeshi writers for referring to the Pakistani army as an occupation force. “This is a mindless misrepresentation of reality,” she alleges. “In 1971, East Pakistan was a province of Pakistan... There was only one ‘invading force’ in East Pakistan in 1971 — that was India.” Following what she claims is an “even-handed approach” in regard to nomenclature, she rejects the term “freedom fighter” in favour of “rebel” (or mutineer, in the case of Bengali military or police officers) and refers to the liberation struggle as a “civil war”. “Until the country of Bangladesh officially came into being at the end of the year, the country was still a province of Pakistan,” she explains.

From whose point of view did Bangladesh “officially come into being” at the end of 1971? As far as Bangladesh is concerned, the new nation state officially came into being with the declaration of independence on March 26, 1971. Bangladeshi nomenclature is consistent with this historical fact. As for the Indian army, even Bose can hardly dispute the fact that it received a massive welcome in Bangladesh as an ally, not an “invading force”. The American War of Independence provides a relevant analogy. History records the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, as marking the birth of the new nation, even though the War of Independence continued until 1783. And no serious historian describes the French forces which assisted the Americans as an “invading force”.

All considered, this is a disappointing book.