WAR AND AFTER

Stay away from Bangladesh 

By Ashok Mitra

   

Together we win: Mukti Bahini pilots and engineers with their Indian counterparts on the eastern front

It was my incarnation as chief economic advisor to the government of India. I was in my office in North Block on the morning of April 2, 1971 when I got a call at my residence at Lodhi Estate. There were two visitors. It was an emergency and they wanted me to get away from my office for about half an hour. Their names were Rahman Sohan and Anisur Rahaman. 
They were both economists whom I knew well. I immediately got up and drove home. They had managed to escape from Dacca through Agartala and had arrived at Delhi airport through the courtesy of Indian army authorities. Since they did not know my address, they had gone to a friend in the university area. In the morning they turned up at my home and I got to know from them for the first time the kind of things happening all over East Bengal. In the evening after dinner, I took them over to P N Haksar's residence. That was the beginning of the first, at least informal, contact between the rebels in East Pakistan and government of India.

Haksar was secretary to the Prime Minister and as everybody knew was the key man in the administration and even in the planning of political strategy. I left my two friends at Haksar's place and they got back home by Haskar's car around midnight. 
Obviously certain messages were passed and received. They went back but from then on my house in New Delhi became a den for Bangladeshsis. Every other day friends will arrive from Dacca. They are mostly scholars from the universities or senior civil servants.
They also had discussions with officials and others in New Delhi. We arranged Indian passports in fake Indian names for them, then plied them with plenty of foreign exchange so they could fly to Europe or USA. The purpose was they would propagate the cause of independent Bangladesh all over Europe and USA. Some three weeks later a young man arrived from Dacca, who was in the provisional government of Bangladesh's prime minister Tajuddin Ahmed's confidante, Moyeedul Hasan. He was the principal go-between the Bangladesh provisional government and government of India. He would stay for a week at my place, held discussions with Haksar, D P Dhar, P N Dhar carrying tidings back to Calcutta and come back after may be another fortnight.
This is how bit-by-bit liaison was established between government of India and the provisional Bangladesh regime over how to plan a Bangladesh liberation war. 
Meanwhile of course there were other developments. The flood of refugees coming to West Bengal; there was overwhelming strain on the West Bengal government. So there was the problem of constant liaison between New Delhi and Calcutta. So my role as chief economic advisor was put in abeyance for those for whom I became more a person involved in Bangladesh affairs than anyone else. Those Bangladeshis were not keen to reveal their identities.
So we had to keep up the pretence that they are Indians and are my friends from Kolkata or elsewhere. So there were all kinds of embarrassments over this.   
Then we had to set up an intelligent apparatus to ferret out what was happening in Pakistan economy. That was an important affair for us to know. So there was a liaison between external affairs ministry on what kind of discussion was going on between Pakistan military regime and USA. So there was kind of feverish activities all around. Liaison with ministry of external affairs, liaison with home ministry and state government of West Bengal all needed to be done. 
There was another interesting development. The escapists who could come over here were keen to set up a liberation army with Bangladeshi patriots. There was a Bengali general in Indian army at that moment Lt Gen B N Sarkar. He was put in charge of training this liberation army in Bangladesh and he was a good friend of mine from earlier days. When we formed the left front government in 1977, I persuaded him to come over and take charge as chairman of Calcutta state transport corporation.
He was here for a while but it did not last for long. I had to liaison also with him in 1971. 
I would also say about the role of P N Haksar. In the entire scheme of things he was the man behind the scene. He was the key player in negotiations with Soviet Union in the Soviet Friendship Treaty. In the public image it was the name of D P Dhar which came up. Yes he was there. But behind the scenes, the real strategy was drawn up by P N Haskar. In those days liaison with the government of West Bengal, liaison with political parties, particularly with the leftists in West Bengal, all were done by him. He had to liaison with political friends in two communist parties at that time. At the same time he had to plan a strategy about how to checkmate Richard Nixon's design on India. That was additional accretion of knowledge on my part that I was part of the entire process. But sometimes I was a watcher.
I watched how Haksar designed the entire thing and very few Bangladeshis even knew his name. Some old timers Anisur Rahaman, Nurul Islam, Kamal Hussein know. But the new generation in Bangladesh has no idea about Haksar's role. 
Then of course a time arrived (September onwards) when we receded in the background and military elements came forward. It was no longer diplomacy, economics or domestic arrangement. It was the involvement in real war. So we receded into the background. 
But I remember that as victory came I wrote a piece in The Economic and Political Weekly about what India's policy should be towards the newly liberated Bangladesh. I had said that it would be one of India's benign indifference. Yes we had played a part, a strategic part in helping Bangladeshis to get back their country as their own. But there our mission had ended.
We had done our duty, because our conscience said as a defendant of democracy all over the world, it was something we owed not only to ourselves but to humanity. But we should not get involved in Bangladesh's internal affairs and we should not be over-sentimental as some of the Bengalis tended to be at that time who started shouting openly about their vision of a reunited Bengal etc which scared Bangladeshis no end. 
But alas! Whatever we said, it fell on deaf ears. By then Indira Gandhi felt like she had become empress of India, she wanted to become empress of south Asia.
Aggressive stance in our foreign policy in the long run has not helped us. The kind of instability that is going on in Bangladesh, we cannot disown our responsibility for that, because whenever there is an opportunity, some group or other in Bangladesh use India as an excuse or apologia or villain for whatever problems arise in their country. We should be happy with the fact that people who are fond of their language and are proud of it have fought to assert their entity, personality and save the integrity of their culture and language. If they seek our assistance we should offer it, otherwise we treat them or ought to treat them like any other foreign country.
 SOURCE: THE WEEK) 


Mitra was chief economic adviser to government of India in 1971.

As told to Rabi Banerjee