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- [00:01]
A
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B
At New Balance we believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running is all about. Run your way@newbalance.com Running Hey Olivia from Ollie here to help you ease into all things back to school homework, meal prep and pickup duty piling up. Goodbye Stress gummies help you keep your cool. Start the day with kids multi and probiotic for digestive and immune system. Love to take them and that makes mornings easier. When back to school gets real, Ollie helps you deal. Find these and more@ollie.com or retailers nationwide. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
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C
Hello and welcome to Empire with me.
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A
Anita Anand and me, William Drymple. Today we're going to do a bit of the Partition story that's probably the least familiar to many listeners. I think it's true to say that when people think of the map of South Asia being formed, they think of 1947, 1948, all the different tumultuous events that led to the creation of India and Pakistan. But what we often forget is that the actual map on the map today, the lines which are drawn, demarcating territories today was formed as regions recently as 1971. Sam, do you want to open by giving us a brief picture of what has happened since we left the last episode with the accession of Kashmir to India?
- [02:21]
D
So let's begin. In 1950, a UN brokered ceasefire has left Kashmir divided informally between India and Pakistan, with both countries claiming the entire territory but only being in control of half of it. And Suddenly there are two nation states where once there was one British India and 565 princely states. And I think we tend to imagine this as, you know, two nations born from blood, each hating their sibling. But actually, one of the surprising things I think to come out of the research that I did on this is quite how much both sides move to reconcile after the UN brokered ceasefire. So there's a lot of newly declassified intelligence files that have suddenly become available in the last couple of years and they've basically completely rewritten the story of the 1950s, which is probably the least studied decade of South Asian history in the 20th century. And it reveals that India and Pakistan not only cooperated throughout this decade, but they shared intelligence and even proposed a military alliance between the two.
- [03:27]
C
That's extraordinary. Just a minute. So this would be under Liakhat Ali Khan and Nehru. I mean that's the 1950s we're talking about.
- [03:34]
D
It goes right through to 1960. Ayub Khan in 1960 puts a military alliance. So it begins.
- [03:40]
A
Puts a military alliance on the table or suggests it doesn't.
- [03:42]
D
It doesn't happen. It's never signed. So it all begins with the signing of what's known as the Nehru Liarkat Pact. Liaqat Ali Khan being the first Prime Minister of Pakistan. Jinnah dies very soon after Pakistan's founder of tuberculosis.
- [03:55]
A
Is that right? He's quietly had tuberculosis.
- [03:59]
C
He was very sick with cancer. And you know, there's the whole lapierre and Collins argument that he had a Gujarati doctor and had the Gujarati doctor told anybody, a Hindu Gujarati doctor that he was so near to death, everything might have been different because India would have just held out a bit longer till he was gone. I mean it's one of those sort of fanciful thought experiment things.
- [04:17]
D
Pakistan might never have existed.
- [04:19]
C
Exactly. That's a follow on thought of if people really knew how sick he was.
- [04:24]
A
To return to Liakut. He's an enormously capable figure, isn't he, Sam? And rather an optimistic start to a sect Pakistan that is not either an army state or a Fundo state. Lyakat shows how it could have been.
- [04:38]
D
And he basically, within months of the ceasefire coming into effect in Kashmir, they signed this pact where India and Pakistan recognize their own duty to look after their minorities and stop them from being forced out across the border. They want to stem the partition migration which is still ongoing in 1949. But they finally signed this agreement to try and stop any further displacement and that they are going to, if need be, use their military on their own civilians to preserve communal harmony in their own territories.
- [05:11]
C
Nehru goes further. I mean, he starts talking about the possibility of having a United nations of South Asia. There could be such close cooperation.
- [05:19]
D
We could be a bloc, an Asiatic Federation, which is what everyone I think.
- [05:22]
A
Initially thought was going to happen. This is why Jinnah kept his house in Bombay, why Jinnah's daughter thinks she's going to see her dad in a month's time. Everyone thought they're going to be going backwards and forwards. So this is just going back to what the hope had originally been and as late as the 1950s, this hope is still a possibility.
- [05:40]
D
Yeah. Another crucial thing happens in April 1949 when Indian and Pakistani intelligence begins collaborating to prevent a communist takeover in neighboring Burma. This is a story that's entirely forgotten until it was dug out of the archives by this amazing scholar, Avinash Paliwal, who, you know, has done an amazing book called India's near east on the proxy wars between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
- [06:05]
A
Using again these recently declassified intelligence files which just got put in the Indian National Archives without any trumpeting. And he found them.
- [06:12]
D
Exactly. And it's a whole story. So Nehru basically says that this operation must be kept completely secret. But the governments of India and Pakistan recognising that cold war is spreading across Europe, there's an iron curtain developing. It's, you know, we're Suddenly entering the.
- [06:29]
A
50S, all that stuff we talked about in our Yalta episodes and our Berlin airlift episode.
- [06:35]
D
And the crucial thing is that the communists take over a neighboring China. Both Nehru and Liarkuts see communists as a threat to the government which they've inherited. Although both are quietly socialist, they are worried that kind of, you know, the call of violent revolution will lead to more chaos. And so they jointly basically flood Burma's government and army with weapons to fight a communist revolution there. And this is the first time that the intelligence operators of India and Pakistan are cooperating. And this sets the groundwork for more cooperation so that within a few years, in a way that's largely forgotten today, they introduced joint passports. If you go on Google right now and Google joint India Pakistan passport, the fact that there's one passport with both countries names on it is hard to believe.
- [07:26]
C
It's wild.
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D
It's wild.
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C
Yeah, it is wild.
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A
And what could you do? You could go backwards and forwards, backwards.
- [07:31]
D
And forwards to visit your relatives on the other side. And you had to apply for it. It was difficult to get, but it was available. And so you get people like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who's Benazir Bhutto's dad, the future Prime Minister of Pakistan, who retains his Indian passport until 1958 because he's trying to sell off his family property there, et cetera. But even though, you know, he's later one of the great Pakistani prime ministers, figures still can maintain to some degree a cross border life, a dual identity. A dual identity. In the 50s, when Jinnah dies, it's an Indian architect, an Indian Muslim architect from Bombay who creates his mausoleum. You know, this is a man from the city where his daughter still Lives.
- [08:12]
A
This is a sort of modernist version of a tukluk tomb, isn't it?
- [08:15]
C
Yeah, yeah. As well as the, you know, sort of the intelligence Treaty that is very under wraps. And, you know, sort of the amount of cooperation which both sides are keeping quiet but are quietly pursuing. You do also have the signing of the Indus Water Treaty, which again, has been in the news after the latest conflagration between India and Pakistan. So the Indus Water Treaty that they sign in. Is it about 1960, that they sign that between the two countries? What does that guarantee? What is on the table at that point?
- [08:44]
D
So we've got to remember that drawing of borders along religious lines creates all sorts of problems. For example, rivers don't follow these things. And so a lot of the rivers that entered Pakistan flowed through regions that fell to India. And so India had the ability to basically cut off the taps in Pakistan. And although not all of the rivers, quite substantial number of the rivers that enter Pakistan flow through India. And so the Indus Water Treaty resolved the fact that India would not stop the water going to Pakistan, but that they would divide the amount of water in these rivers between the two of them. And that's been taken off the cards in the wake of this recent conflagration.
- [09:22]
C
But yeah, just very recently, in the last few weeks.
- [09:24]
D
Yeah, but when it was signed, you get Nehru. Zindabad, India. Zindabad. Long live Nehru. And long live India cried in the streets of Karachi. So again, this. This world of the 50s is very different. And we've also got to remember that Pakistan is very different. Pakistan is a place that includes modern day Bangladesh is ruled by a slew of short term prime ministers, but the army is not running the show.
- [09:53]
A
And many of them are Bengali.
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D
Yeah. Four out of the first eight prime ministers of Pakistan are from modern day Bangladesh.
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C
Okay.
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A
And there's Bangla script on the coins, is that right? Yeah, yeah.
- [10:07]
C
And the first coins of Pakistan. There's Bangladesh, Quint. I mean, that's interesting, but with all of this sort of optimism and positive stuff, where did it all go wrong, Sam? Where did it all start turning to custard?
- [10:20]
D
So this is the interesting thing because I think most books on India, Pakistan say it all goes wrong in 47 in Kashmir. But as we've seen the 1950s, there's not that much animosity, in fact, remarkably little animosity between the countries. And the moment it goes wrong is one that virtually no one writes about. But it's the moment that the Indian army goes into Goa. So Goa is a Portuguese colony at this point and the Indians, and there's a. There's a big anti colonial movement that basically is saying, go home, Portugal. It's 1961. Why are there still Europeans ruling over Goa?
- [10:56]
A
And particularly when Portugal is ruled by military dictatorship of Salazar and a very unpopular regime even at home.
- [11:03]
D
So when the Indian army finally goes into Goa and essentially, essentially just annexes this Portuguese colony, it's viewed within India and in much of Goa, as you know, liberation is the word that they use. And yet within Pakistan's government, there's an increased worry that this is a sign of Indian expansionism and that India is reconquering bits of this greater India that it sees as unjustly separated from itself and not respecting international state boundaries. And so Pakistan's now military government. So in 1960, you've also got the first coup in Pakistan. So suddenly there's a military guy's in charge. And they begin to see this as very worrisome. They begin to see this as a national security threat. And perhaps wrongly, I'd say, but whatever the case, President Ayub Khan, the first military ruler of Pakistan in the aftermath of India's takeover of Goa, begins supporting Indian separatists not in Kashmir, but in northeast India. He begins sending money towards the Naga and Mizo communities, these communities that have been divided actually across the India and Burma border in the 1937 partition that we mentioned in episode one of this miniseries. But in the wake of this, Indian intelligence very quickly gets onto this. And again, this is all the stuff that Avinash Paliwal recently found using these intelligence files. But suddenly we have an actual chronology of how everything goes south. And Indian intelligence gets onto the fact that Pakistan is now funding its separatists, immediately assumes that actually there's far more funding of separatists than there actually is, and likewise begins funding Pakistani separatists across.
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A
The border who are, just to spell a doubt, the Baluchis.
- [12:50]
D
Baluchis, Pashtuns, and very specifically the Bengalis of East Pakistan, later Bangladesh.
- [12:59]
A
So tell us about that. You just mentioned a second ago that there'd been four Bengali prime ministers in the early days of Pakistan, which is something that we often forget. The impression, even those that know this story, even marginally, is that Bengal never felt itself a full part of the Pakistani Union, that Bengal was discriminated against.
- [13:19]
C
It was the poor relative. Yeah, they didn't get the best of anything. They got, again, it's my left boot, the story.
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A
They got the laces of the left boot.
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C
Yeah, I mean, they just were not respected, funded or looked after. And in the midst of all of that discontent, you have the rising figure of Mujibur Rahman, incidentally, is the father of Sheikh Hasina, who's the recently deposed.
- [13:43]
A
Leader of Bangladesh, and Tulip Siddiqui from the Labour Cabinets.
- [13:47]
C
Grandfather. Yes. So tell us about Mujibur Rahman. Who was he and what's his origin story?
- [13:54]
D
So he's a fascinating figure who in a sense embodies the way that Bangladeshis, or East Pakistanis as they were known, begin to turn against the Pakistani state. So when we talked about Direct Action Day. So Mujib was a Muslim League cadre and he was the right hand man of Suhrawardi, who we mentioned in that episode as being the kind of the figure who kicks off the violence of partition in some sense, or whether it was intentional, it's unlikely. But in the early days, he is very much behind the idea of a united Pakistan that stretches with an East Wing and a West Wing, and campaigned for such a fact. But when Pakistan tries to make Urdu the sole language, the sole national language of Pakistan in 1948, he begins to turn against it.
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A
Just to spell it out, that means not giving Bengali, which is the language spoken in the eastern wing of Pakistan, not giving Bengali the status of a national language.
- [14:57]
D
Yes, but I think crucially, Urdu wasn't the language of any of the states in the west either. Urdu was the language of North Indian Muslims around Delhi and Lucknow, as Ghalib.
- [15:08]
A
Says, an orphan found wandering in the bazaars of Shah Jahanabad. So it's originally a Delhi language, which. Which is not. Which is not spoken at all in the frontier.
- [15:19]
C
So, I mean, it's not a lingua franca, but it does show an intent of hierarchy. I mean, the new Pakistan, the power is in the north, the culture will be in the north, the language will be in the north. It's tantamount too, something that Williams talked about before, but with the Highland Clearances and sort of just stamping on, you know, sort of the Celtic languages and saying, you know, you will not speak this language anymore. And that's what, you know, importantly, most importantly, is what Mujib starts to feel, which is. Hang on a minute, what are you squishing us under your boots for? We were on your side.
- [15:50]
A
Sam, just a quick question. In terms of numbers, are there more Bengalis in what will become Bangladesh or what is then East Pakistan? Then? What are the population figures of east and West Pakistan?
- [16:03]
D
So, yeah, it's about 55% of the population of Pakistan lives in East Pakistan slightly more. So again, there's this language movement to try and get Bengali as recognized as a co official language. And in 1952, a bunch of protesters who are protesting for Bengali to be recognized as the co national language are shot in the streets of Taka. And for a lot of Bangladeshis today, this is the foundational moment of Bangladeshi nationalism. But a lot of research recently has shown that actually that's kind of projecting it back a bit too far because throughout the 50s, as you said, four of the first eight prime ministers of Pakistan are Bengali. Pakistan is a very different place. You've got. The economy of Pakistan is actually better than India's. It's recognized as one of the Asian tigers alongside South Korea and Singapore.
- [16:51]
A
Yes, again, this is a crucial point. Even when I was first sort of going between India and Pakistan in the 1990s, you had better roads on the Pakistan side of the border, better in Sindh than you did in Rajasthan that you would be able to get foreign imports like decent Coca Cola. Today, India is so much more prosperous that we kind of assume it's always been more prosperous and always been richer.
- [17:14]
C
Right. But I mean, again, focusing in on, on what will become Bangladesh. So Mujib is there. He's disappointed in what the direction of travel of Jinnah and those who follow him saying, you know what, what are you doing? So the language movement is the start. He writes about this being contrary to the Pakistan I had dreamt of the country that had become independent. Why wasn't anything being done to alleviate our. Now he's talking not just about the language here, but also this terrible famine that hits Bengal which kills around 20,000 East Pakistanis. And again there is this feeling that we are the orphan children. You should be helping us. You are the parents of this new nation. What the hell are you doing for us? And so that kind of discontent, cultural discontent, turns into a very real life or death discontent after the famine.
- [18:01]
D
Yeah. So I think we often think that famines end after the Bengal famine with the capital T are always the ones under the Raj. But there's at least two more famines after independence. There's the 54 famine in Kulna, which is often forgotten, but really begins to turn sentiment against the Pakistani government. And a lot of people in the east feel increasingly disillusioned. But it really gets going in the 60s. So this is when the military takes over and crucially, Bengalis, the population of East Pakistan, the majority population of Pakistan only constitute 1% of Pakistan's armed forces. The British recruitment strategy was based on this kind of colonial pseudoscience, which is still popular in South Asia today, of this idea called martial races, that Punjabis and Sikhs and people from the northwest.
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C
Frontier, we are fighty, apparently, we are much more.
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A
You're very proud to be a Shirni.
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C
Punjabi, Tigris, but it is a stereotype that if you're from the north, somehow you are fightier than everybody else. You know, taller, stronger, faster, and therefore the marshal races. It's also not true, but it is. It's a carryover from the Raj and it does afflict Bengali entry into the Pakistan army and the higher ranks of the Pakistan Army.
- [19:19]
D
So the way that they actually create the list of which races are marshal, it's actually based off which races fought with the British during 1857 and which didn't. So because the Sikhs accompany British troops to quash the uprising of 1857.
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A
Yes. Let's remind Anita that the Punjabi forbears fought with the British in 1857.
- [19:40]
C
I've written about it, absolutely acknowledge it. I mean, it is a real sore point. And it's why some people say, you know, that there was a huge animosity and lack of sympathy towards Punjabis who suffered during Partition because, you know, what the hell did you do to our regions, you buggers? So, you know, all of this stuff, memories are long in the subcontinent and you're absolutely right to point it out. But back to the Bengalis now, they are not represented, they are not considered martial races in the army and therefore they have a very real grievance that, you know, what if the army is running things now under Ayub Khan, where the hell are we in this picture? And that is where Mujib's fuel is coming.
- [20:21]
A
So it's the military coup that makes them. Got it. I hadn't understood that. The fact that there's none in the army and the army are now in control.
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C
Got it.
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A
Right.
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C
Right.
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D
So 55% of Pakistan's population are suddenly overnight excluded from having a say in the country's governance. And increasingly, in the course of the 1960s, you get this whole new vocabulary that colonial rule did not end in 47 and that it's all these guys in the west, all these soldiers, all these generals who are suddenly ruling over us from thousands of kilometres away. And that's a vocabulary that just doesn't appear in the 1950s.
- [20:55]
A
And Sam, just to clarify, when there is a military coup and Ayub Khan takes over, how is East Pakistan being run? Is there A governor sent in who's a military colonel or what's the method by which East Pakistan is ruled?
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C
It's like a sat trap. It literally is a satrap of the center of Pakistan.
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A
So now for the first time, you have Punjabis being sent from West Pakistan to East Pakistan and imposing a military authoritarian rule on the people that have no representation in the army.
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C
And also people who are sent over to administer this part of New Pakistan who have no respect for the people and a very low regard of what they're capable of. And so they get in there, very rightly start saying, hang on, we just shrugged off one colonial power, and what the hell is this now? So look, Mujibur Rahman, at this point, who is becoming, you know, really disillusioned by the very state that he fought to bring into existence, turns to his political party, the Awami League, which is still the Awami League of Sheikh Hasina. Still, that party is hugely present and powerful in Bangladesh today. You see a statesman sort of turn overnight, you know, become real overnight. You know, these big horn ring glasses, this very sort of bushy moustache, almost sort of matinee idol. Well, the matinee idol hair is what I'm thinking of. He has a very thick head of hair, which in subcontinental politics is unusual at this time. If you look at the baldy array of leaders who come and go. But what is it that the AMI League is now asking for? Are they asking for separation or are they asking for more respect?
- [22:28]
D
At this time, it doesn't seem that they're asking for separation. So he is asking for essentially more local governance, a federation of east and West Pakistan, but where they're, you know, half of the army is in the east, where potentially the east might even have their own currency. But they are still kind of attached as two parts of a confederation. The same newly released intelligence shows that in the early 1960s, a covert channel was established between Mujib and Indian Intelligence. And it seems that it's complicated and there are different people who would say different things. But what seems to be the case is that Mujib reached out to Indian Intelligence, saying, I want some help to help East Pakistan free and India. Nehru actually turns him down and says, we don't want East Pakistan to be independent. We actually would prefer you to become a figurehead for a secular, united Pakistan who we can be on friendly terms with.
- [23:30]
A
This is. This is brand new stuff out of the archives.
- [23:33]
D
Brand new stuff, exactly. And so Mujib goes back to India and becomes increasingly the figurehead for a.
- [23:41]
C
Democratic Pakistan, an alternative vision of what Pakistan could be. And it's like to reverse engineer it from and through the East. Yeah.
- [23:50]
A
Pakistani intelligence, is it the ISI already at this point, are they aware that he's reached out to Indian intelligence?
- [23:57]
D
So they become aware in about 67 and they arrest him for it, but then is unable to produce any evidence that he had intended to break Pakistan. So they're pretty certain, oh look, he reached out to Indian intelligence and they are convinced that he is out to, he's a separatist, basically. But by arresting him, by arresting this very popular pro democracy figurehead, most Bengalis in the east begin to wonder if this whole thing has been staged to undermine Bengali politics. And rather than destroying his reputation, he becomes a martyr. And when a student revolution breaks out and Ayub Khan is toppled, the President of Pakistan is toppled, a new president called Yahya Khan is brought in and he announces new elections. He announces new elections. In 1970, he lets Mujib out of prison. And then unexpectedly, when the election results are announced, it's completely down the middle. Mujib's Awami League wins every single seat in East Pakistan except for two. He's got a unanimous vote and yet he doesn't win a single seat in the West. And it's very clearly, suddenly, for the first time, you can see this complete political divide that cuts the country in two. And it's the army's response to this that will create what's known as the Bangladesh Liberation War and will lead to the creation of Bangladesh as an independent nation state.
- [25:26]
C
So you've just said the word Bangladesh. Now Bangladesh translates literally into the land of the Bengalis. Dish is land of and Bangla is the people of Bengal. When does that word first start being bandied around? Rather than East Pakistan, but Bangladesh as an alternative.
- [25:43]
D
So it's actually in 1970. It's when Mujiba's let out of prison to contest the elections, one of his new demands is that the eastern province of Pakistan will be called Bangladesh.
- [25:55]
A
Is the line he uses within Pakistan?
- [25:59]
C
Part of Pakistan's federation?
- [26:00]
D
Within Pakistan's federation. But increasingly by this time, he is using language which suggests to many that he's still got this kind of slight secessionist thing. He very much got it in his mind that if we can't hammer out a deal, then we'd prefer complete secession.
- [26:19]
C
Okay. And at this time in the west, it is Benazir Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who is in charge. So now he's got a very clear electoral warning stroke mandate for Mujibur Rahman in East Pakistan. So how does he react? Because you could go one of two ways. You could try and hammer out a deal with this person and power share, or you can throw them straight into the deepest dungeon you can find. You never saw this election. This election never happened. What choice does he make?
- [26:44]
D
The military basically suggest that because the results are so divided, that Bhutto and Mujib should hammer out a power sharing deal. But Mujib, having won the election outright, doesn't understand why he's being asked to negotiate with his defeated opponent. He's saying, you know, we've just got to. We're going to have a Bengali ruling Pakistan, like in the 50s. And in the aftermath of this, the army postpones the meeting of the assembly and it begins to become clear to the public that they're not going to hand over power in a very simple manner.
- [27:16]
A
And Sam, at this point, how powerful are the Pakistan Army? Are they doing their own thing over the head of Bhutto like they do today, or are they being a well behaved army obeying their Prime Minister?
- [27:26]
D
I think Yahya Khan, although he initiates the bloodletting that's soon to follow, does intend to hand over power. But he intends to hand over power once he's figured out a political system to hand over power to. Yahya basically begins discussing with Mujib what they need to do to keep Pakistan united. And it's actually in the presidential bathroom in Dhaka where they place two chairs.
- [27:50]
A
Why the bathroom?
- [27:51]
D
Because they. Mujib was convinced that everywhere else would be bugged. He wants an honest.
- [27:56]
A
This was what we discovered at Yalta, wasn't it? Everyone had to meet in the bathrooms because with the taps running away from.
- [28:03]
C
The flower beds because even they were bugged. So look, there's something else about this meeting between Yaya Khan and Mujibur Rahman which is really pertinent because there are a number of things that happen which Yaya Khan could feel is a complete slight to him because they welcome him as a guest of Bangladesh, first of all, which really will tick him off, because it's like, you know, hang on a minute, you're East Pakistan. What are we even starting with in this negotiation? And also sort of lots of little slights like that where Muji is too haughty. Yaya Khan thinks, you know, he should be more of a supplicant. He's making demands, he's talking about that boring language issue which we thought we'd put in the past. And he feels that he's dealing with somebody who is intransigent. So where he comes, maybe wanting to hammer out some kind of deal, he certainly leaves thinking, this is not a man I can do business with.
- [28:56]
A
And Yahya presumably is throwing his weight around as the army chief. While as far as Mujib is concerned, he is his servant. He's won the election. The army should be obeying him.
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C
This is a democracy. Who the hell are you to come and talk to me? What am I even talking to you about?
- [29:12]
D
So it's at tea time supposedly that Yahya finally loses it. All the news reports the previous day are that on the 24th of March 1971 are that everything's. An accord is about to be signed, there's going to be a handover of power, that Bhutto and Mujib will have a power sharing agreement. And why it all falls apart we don't quite know. But what we do know is that that evening Yahya Khan signed something called Operation Searchlight. A plan that he'd drawn up five days earlier as an emergency measure that entailed not only a crackdown on Mujib's party but also the disarming and if need suppressing of all Bengali soldiers in the Pakistani army. But this is nothing less than a declaration of war on the East.
- [29:58]
C
Well, let's take, let's take a break there. Join us after the break when we find out when Operation Searchlight is enacted. How the East Pakistanis stroke newly minted almost Bangladeshis will react. Welcome back. Okay, so on the evening of 25th March 1919 71, exactly two years after Yahya Khan is appointed President of Pakistan, he's flown out to Dhaka, he's met with Mujibur Rahman and he has enacted this secret plan to basically find the Bengali soldiers in the army, get them, confine them, disarm them, but also to deal with Mujib. And so how is he going to deal? What is Operation Searchlight say should happen to Mujibur Rahman?
- [30:46]
D
Operation Searchlight is absolutely brutal and a lot of people talk about what follows as a civil war. But I think a lot of Bangladeshis oppose that because it was anything but civil. Thousands of plainclothes soldiers begin to arrive in Dhaka airport and the army moves swiftly into motion, begins disarming Bengali soldiers, police, border force units. And as a post war Pakistani government report admits in The Kamila Cantonment, 17 Bengali officers and 915 men was slain by the flick of one officer's finger, day one.
- [31:18]
A
This is not something that escalates. This is the very beginning.
- [31:21]
C
So this is just a machine gunning of men who are lined up, machine.
- [31:24]
D
Gunning of soldiers, of Pakistani soldiers. Awami League politicians and supporters are rounded up.
- [31:30]
A
Do we know whether that was part of Yahya's brief?
- [31:32]
C
This is Operation Searchlight. This is the emergency measure.
- [31:34]
A
But he actually said just gun down all the officers.
- [31:37]
D
All the it's need suppressing I think was the line. So the Pakistani soldiers arrest Mujib, actually armed with rocket launchers at his house and he is put away. They don't want to turn him into a martyr. But other members of the Awami League are executed and the coders send them to Bangladesh. And there's a guy called Mr. Anupam Sen who remembers that the army killed people indiscriminately. They couldn't speak Bengali and they couldn't tell who was a friend and who was their enemy. And so everybody became their enemy. A lot of Mujib's men have been kind of, you know, talking about go away people from the west and intimidating a lot of basically these Punjabi and Urdu speaking soldiers. You know, they feel that they're in a foreign land.
- [32:19]
C
Whereas the Brits in Northern Ireland, isn't it, I mean, it's basically the Brit forces in Northern Ireland feeling like everybody is hostile. And what they do then, I mean, apart from arresting the leadership, is they turn on the young at Dhaka University. Again, this is a really painful chapter in Bangladesh's history. What do they do at Dhaka University?
- [32:38]
D
So Dhaka University had long been the hub of activism and Bengali nationalism in the eastern wing. So this was where the language movement for Bengali to be recognized as equal. This is where it started, actually. Ironically, it's also where the Muslim League was founded in the Nawab of Dhaka's palace, which was not far from Dhaka University. So actually the ideas of, of creating Pakistan were also rooted in this region. But there is actually recording footage recorded by one Professor Ullah showing soldiers rounding up unarmed students and executing them at point blank range.
- [33:10]
A
What sort of numbers, Sam?
- [33:12]
D
It's very unclear and this will remain. The issue with talking about this whole bloody period of history is that the numbers are so deeply contested. Pakistan basically claims very few people were murdered and that they were just going after one or two students who had stockpiled weapons. And there is no doubt that there were certain students on the campus who had stockpiled weapons at the same time. Bangladesh claims that the numbers are so ridiculously High that it's impossible to trust either numbers. And this is one of the issues with talking about this. But there is no doubt that huge numbers of innocent civilians are brutally murdered in Operation Searchlight. They also go after the press. So the daily Itifaq paper, the building of the press, is set fire. All foreign correspondents are rounded up and kept in the Intercontinental Hotel, including Sidney.
- [34:04]
A
Schanberg, who's the guy, isn't it, for the Killing Fields?
- [34:07]
D
Exactly. He's among the journalists trapped there and writes an amazing testimony. But whatever the case, I think a lot of people in East Pakistan had still kind of believed in the dream of a united Pakistan, one that was more equal, that didn't necessarily need separation. They needed equality within Pakistan. But it's that day that finally Jinnah's Pakistan drowns in blood and a new, more brutal reality begins to emerge.
- [34:33]
C
Right, okay. So, I mean, let's go forward, because there are so many, as you say, disputed but very well evidenced moments of complete barbarity here where Pakistani forces are opening up fire on unarmed civilians. But also, it's the kind of remarks that follow these acts of barbarism. No contrition at all. But actually just, you know, that whole thing we were talking about, that brewing spite against these Bengalis. But I just wanted to just point out that actually our army leaguers do manage to escape the crackdown. And this is really why we have a Bangladesh today, because they don't manage to round up all of them and they don't manage to destroy them all in that huge night of the long nine.
- [35:12]
A
I don't think people understand how significant 1971 is in many ways as important as 1947. Do you think so, Anita? What do you think?
- [35:21]
C
Absolutely, because you've got nine months of bloodletting, barbarism, which, you know, is still fresh in the minds of Bangladeshis today. It is the very foundation of this idea that we will not now be part of Pakistan if this is how Pakistan treats us. So you've got, you know, all classes, all backgrounds, all ages who are dragged into this. You've got, you know, horrific stories of people just being shot in cold blood. So, you know what Sam said earlier, this reference to a civil war, it's not civil at all. There's no reconciliation that goes on here because there's not even an accountability for the numbers who are killed. So I think arguably 1971 as important as 1947, if not more, because it is an absolute fracturing, emotional from people who did fight for Pakistan. So there's a sense of betrayal in this that doesn't exist in 47. In 47, there is this idea that you will have a home state for the Muslims and a home state for everybody else. But this is. Hang on. We trusted you and you are doing this to us. So I think arguably 71 is almost. I don't know, would I say more important, not more. Well, certainly defining for the subcontinent.
- [36:35]
A
What do you think, Sam?
- [36:36]
D
I think it's the. It's the year that creates the modern map. It's also the first time that there's a potential for nuclear war to be risked in South Asia, as we'll get onto in a bit. But the US Is allied with Pakistan at the time, and India is allied with the Soviet Union. And as this war pulls in India as well, the Cold War begins to conglomerate around this conflict.
- [36:58]
C
The Cold War becomes hot in 1971 because of what happens in East. I think that. I think that's what I was trying to, in a very clumsy and fumbling way, get to that. It is defining for world politics, not just subcontinental politics.
- [37:11]
A
So, Sam, let's look first at what India does and then look at what the US Does.
- [37:17]
C
Sure.
- [37:18]
D
Very quickly, in the wake of this crackdown, you get refugees crossing into India from East Pakistan seeking refuge. And it begins as a trickle, but it gradually becomes a torrent. Everyone talks about it. It's like partition all over again. They use the comparison, and it's unclear when the first orders are given, and it's probably earlier than the first official orders. But by 29th of April, 1971, about a month after the conflict begins, Mrs. Gandhi is supporting a total struggle for national liberation in Bangladesh. Mrs. Gandhi being Nehru's daughter, who is now the new prime minister of India. So they begin. The Indian government actively begins supporting the Bengali rebels that have got away. And it's often in these camps within India. So in Indian states like Tripura that you get these Awami leaguers who've escaped the crackdown as well as the military men, the Bengali military men who've escaped the crackdown, but also just kind of everyday people reaching these small villages and taking up arms and often being trained by members of the Indian army to go back and fight the Pakistani government. One of the people that I interviewed for the book, one of my favorite stories in the book was this guy, Sal Imam, who is the former rock and roll correspondent for the Harvard Crimson. And he'd been to Woodstock, been to Woodstock and had been writing about kind of, you know, taking acid and kind of you know, going to Janis Joplin, but after the crackdown and after saving his Punjabi friend, because crucially, Bengalis were also. In the wake of the scrap down, Bengalis also begin to turn on Punjabis and Urdu speakers. So his Punjabi friends are suddenly targeted, and so he has to help them escape across the border into India. But then when a mob comes after him, he goes and joins the freedom fighters, essentially. And crucially, I think Mrs. Gandhi and her cabinet have the possibility of potentially trying to reunite the two Bengals under one Indian sovereignty, but they are very wary of this because there's very much a sense amongst most people in East Pakistan at this time, or Bangladesh, as it's increasingly referred to, that things have gone too far. Even though they're against the Pakistani government, they don't want to just fall under Indian hegemony yet again. And that, you know, many of the people who are fighting for Bangladesh had earlier been fighting to escape Hindu Indian hegemony. But Pakistan sees India's support for these guys as only further convincing them that this was an Indian plot all along. And so they camp in essentially and grow more and more convinced that, you know, Bengalis from East Pakistan are just.
- [40:01]
C
Enemies of Pakistan, enemies of the state and destabilisers. Also. I just point out that there was, if not a majority view, that whatever the Bangladeshis wanted or the soon to be Bangladeshis wanted, there was not this appetite to let a whole heap of Muslims in to destabilize the balance of Hindu Muslim unity in the sort of secular India as well. So there were those arguments being made at the time as well. I just want to get back, though, to this international flashpoint business, because we mentioned this is the point where the Cold War gets hot. And I just want to know about sort of major troop movements at this time, because you've got sort of COVID involvement even before. But what really changes this is warships and who's sending warships and who's sending troops.
- [40:45]
D
Sure. So the crucial thing is the refugee crisis. So by December 1971, an estimated 10 million refugees are now living in India from Bangladesh. This is one of the few statistics that we can know with certainty, because it's the UN who's doing all the numbers and running all these refugee camps. So astonishing, 1 in 12 Pakistani civilians is now a refugee in India. It's enormous. It's the scale of the entirety of the displacement of partition based in one tiny region of the subcontinent. And India increasingly sees this as a threat to its own national security. And particularly Mrs. Gandhi is seeing the rise of the Hindu right in India who are seeing Hindus specifically targeted in Bangladesh and joining basically her opponents. So Prime Minister Modi, for example, India's current Prime Minister, joins the RSS after hearing tales of the suffering of Hindus who've come over and fled Bangladesh in 1971. There's a direct line that you can draw between the Pakistani government's attacks on specifically the Hindus of Bangladesh, who they see as you know, fifth columnists, increasingly in the course of 71, and the rise of Hindu nationalism in India today. There's a direct line. And in December, war finally breaks out between India and Pakistan. And this is partially driven by India's increasingly blatant backing of the Mukti Bahini, increasingly blatant backing of the Bangladeshi freedom fighters. And remarkably, the Indian army was already in control of large parts of East Pakistan long before the governments actually go to war.
- [42:18]
A
Soldiers across the border.
- [42:20]
D
Yes.
- [42:21]
C
So with India, you know, really flexing at this point and visibly flexing now, there's nothing covert about this kind of involvement. You've got America, which has historically backed Pakistan. They must be wondering, I mean, it's Nixon, who is president at this time going, hang on a minute, in this Cold War, have I backed the wrong side here? Because if Pakistan has done this to its people and India is winning, do I want to plough the resources in to turn this around? Am I backing the wrong side?
- [42:49]
D
So America kind of funds and keeps Pakistan running throughout this conflict. And a lot of Bangladeshis hold Nixon responsible for the continued bloodshed in Bangladesh and what they regard as a genocide of Bangladeshis, because Nixon's at that point in the Cold War where he's trying to create diplomatic relations with China through ping pong, diplomacy, etcetera, in order to try and get China's help to resolve the Vietnam War. And Pakistan is the only ally of America at the time who also has good relations with China. And so Nixon is actively siding with Pakistan and willing to put his pieces on the table to keep Pakistan afloat throughout this. And the US crucially sees all this through Cold War terms. So India sided with the Soviets and its socialists, so we're going to back Pakistan. But what he does is extraordinary. Kissinger, Nixon's advisor, proposes to threaten India with the US Navy. Nixon signs it off saying, I would tell the people in the State Department not a goddamn thing they don't need to know. And what he does is this hare brained scheme that I think, I feel not a lot of people know about, it sends the Cold War to its hottest point since The Cuban Missile Crisis, not as hot, but the hottest point since he sends in the US Enterprise, which is a nuclear armada, not to.
- [44:06]
A
Be confused with the Star Trek.
- [44:08]
C
Star Trek, no, this one's got nuclear weapons on them.
- [44:11]
D
This one's the same ship from the Cuban Missile Crisis. And he sends it into the Bay of Bengal to threaten India.
- [44:17]
C
Bloody hell.
- [44:18]
D
Into submission into. Into surrendering in its war with Pakistan.
- [44:22]
A
And there's some incredibly rude exchanges between Indira Gandhi, Nixon and Kissinger, aren't there?
- [44:27]
D
Exactly. They hate each other, but suddenly there's all these nuclear ships heading into the Bay of Bengal and the USSR in response sends in a bunch of nuclear submarines into the Bay of Bengal.
- [44:40]
A
Crikey.
- [44:41]
D
So they're each backing their own horse and it's really all going down. And so one Indian official calls it a nuclear studded armada, including the most powerful ship in the world, while Vice Admiral N. Krishnan warns that if they did engage in combat, it could cause the end of the world or mire Americans in a Vietnam to end all Vietnams. And Indira Gandhi herself says if the Americans had fired a shot, yes, the Third World War would have exploded. But in all honesty, not even the fear occurred to me.
- [45:08]
C
Right, okay, well that's so Indira Gandhi, isn't it? Just brush it off, just, you know, shake it off your sari. It doesn't matter. However, I mean, I think it's really telling. When Kissinger says, or it's Nixon, he says, you know, I'm not going to tell the State Department a goddamn thing because the State Department will be in sort of connections about this going, you know, what are we doing? Are we actually starting the Third World War? And so again, it sort of causes a huge re evaluation on the Hill about, you know, hang on a minute, we may not understand the subcontinent as well as we thought we understood the subcontinent and it is much more volatile than we thought. We need to rethink our allegiances. So you have again, sort of Nixon becoming slightly separated from a lot of the apparatus of state. And we all know how that ends up.
- [45:51]
A
And there's an exchange, Sam, which you have in your book, which says Nixon asking Kissinger what do we do if the Soviets move against them, start lobbing nuclear weapons in? And Kissinger replies, well, if the Soviets move against them in these conditions and succeed, that will be the final showdown.
- [46:08]
D
It really heats up. And it's a story that not enough people know, even within the subcontinent. But just days before the US Enterprise arrives, the Indian army basically pegs it for Dhaka. They come to the decision. It's now a race against time. And they get there in time. Just days before the USS Enterprise would have arrived near Kolkata and begun threatening India, they managed to force through a Pakistani surrender.
- [46:32]
A
It's a tank war. How are they marching forward up the road?
- [46:35]
D
Helicopter lifts and tanks and, I mean, it's the whole shebang. There's naval subterfuge and Field Marshal Manakshaw.
- [46:42]
A
In charge, Parsi commander to the Indian army.
- [46:44]
D
Yeah. But in December 1971, suddenly Niyazi, the Pakistani commander, signs the surrender document, that.
- [46:53]
A
Famous picture that you see all over India of all these generals around the table. But again, generals that knew each other at Staff College. It's still the generation that remembers being in the same class with these guys.
- [47:05]
D
The observer correspondent that goes to meet all these generals on the day of the surrender, I think he meets General Nagra, who is an Indian general, who's. He's sighing and looking upset. And the observer correspondent is amazed that he's not, you know, looking thrilled with the way that things have gone. And he says, oh, have you met Nyazi yet, the surrender general? To which Nagra says, yes, he was pleased to see me. We were friends in college. And so it's this kind of tragedy of one people divided still.
- [47:31]
C
Well, it's a recurring nightmare is what it is. Okay, so with that signed, we have about a minute left of this podcast to talk about the legacy of all of this. And the legacy is you've got Bangladesh now lost to Pakistan. There is a great feeling of resentment.
- [47:49]
A
Pakistan hugely weakened and morally besmirched by their massacres. Yeah.
- [47:54]
C
You've got India thinking that Pakistan is unstable and willing to go to any lengths, even incurring nuclear war by getting the Americans on side in this way. So feeling deeply insecure, you've got both sides now who are very willing to use proxy wars instead of a hot war. They don't want to get to the brink like this again if they can help it. But there is the accusation then, that we have an era of funding instability on either side of the divide. And with the last few moments of this podcast, tell me how that plays out.
- [48:25]
D
So there's an explicit document that we found in the archives where the first time that Pakistani army reaches out to Sikh separatists who are seeking an independent Sikh state called Khalistan, the first time that they do that is during 1971, in order, the quote is to create a situation similar to that created by India in Bangladesh. So they are seeing this as, let's back some separatists and break India apart.
- [48:50]
A
In the middle of the wall, in.
- [48:52]
D
The middle of the war. And it's also around this time that they begin thinking about funding separatists in Kashmir. So when a local uprising in Indian side of Kashmir happens in the 80s, which is led by Indian suppression of Kashmiri voters and constant toppling of Kashmiri governments, Pakistan will begin supporting Islamist fighters to head over the border.
- [49:13]
A
So initially they found secular revolutionaries and then under Benazir Bhutto, ironically, they send in the Islamists and the Islamists start kidnapping tourists. There are beheadings. A lot of the Afghans who are temporary out of work because the Soviets have just left Afghanistan are sent into Kashmir and have a completely different way of life to the Kashmiris, a whole range of new complications. But it's heading us towards the whole world of bin Laden, 9, 11 Islamist movements and that whole package of things which. So this comes out of that, that. Sam, one question I've got for you is that my impression when I go to Pakistan is that Pakistanis do not know this history, they are as ignorant of this as anyone, that they simply don't know even the accusations made against the Pakistani army. Is that your impression?
- [50:07]
D
It's changed rapidly in recent years, I think. I think there's much more conversations about what happened in 71. And it's begun like a reckoning is beginning, but it's still very much not there. And there's still a lot of silence regarding the events of 1971. But I think it's a hugely crucial moment because it's the first time that you get all of the nations of South Asia separate and suddenly you've got an independent Bangladesh, an independent India. If we remember back to the first episode we did in the 1920s, you could travel from Yemen to Burma and it was all still part of India. But now in 1972, there are 12 nation states where once there was a single British colony called India. And crucially, I think each of these divides worsens over time rather than heals. I think Pakistani historian who's wonderful and everyone should read, called Anam Zakaria, writes how every time that she interviews the younger generations, they always show more hostility to those across the border than those who actually survived the violence because they never knew the other before it really became the other.
- [51:11]
A
That's my impression too, definitely.
- [51:14]
C
We ought to just do one little tidy up here because this all comes to a head in 1971, Mujibur Rahman, after this, you know, after the surrender is signed over, he is free. He becomes the nation's first Prime Minister, first President, then Prime Minister. He introduces this one party system in Bangladesh in 1975, which actually is not as democratic as all the promises he made when he was fighting against West Pakistan. It's a one party system. But he and most of his family are assassinated in a military coup in 1975, where he's shot dead at his residence in Dhaka. So, you know, that I just thought a little tidy up of what happens to the man who is at the centre of this story.
- [51:54]
A
Meanwhile, Bangladesh becomes known in the west through this concert put on by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. And I remember growing up with the box set of those recordings in my room at school. That was probably the very first time I ever heard the word Bangladesh. And I think many of my generation know Bangladesh from that.
- [52:15]
C
Yeah. Anyway, look, it has been an absolutely fascinating tour of a region that we feel we know very well and a history. We all thought we did know, those of us who paddle in these waters, but the close proximity of the End of the world in 1971 was something that I had never really fully grappled with. So I'm really grateful to you, Sam. Thank you so much. It's been a delight having you. Your book is on sale. I recommend it to anybody. It's very, very good.
- [52:40]
A
Shattered Lands, the five partitions of India.
- [52:43]
C
Yes. And thank you very much for being with us, all of you, Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from.
- [52:48]
A
Me, Anita Arnand, and goodbye from a very proud William Drimple.