The third Indo-Pakistan War in 1971, which resulted in the birth of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh asan independent nation, had profound consequences on the power equations in South Asia. According tothe US State Department’s Milestones 1969-1976, this war “resulted in a decline in US influence in South Asia and India’s emergence as the most significant power on the sub-continent”.
Independent journalist Ushinor Majumdar’s book is a riveting and lucid chronicle of the crucial nine months that preceded the 13-day war which officially started on 3 December 1971and ended on 16 December with the surrender of the entire East Pakistan Military Command under General Niazi alongwith 93,000 POWs.
During these nine months the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) was given the front-line responsibility of unleashing a covert war on East Pakistan military and government establishments, in cooperation with Indian intelligence agencies and armed forces. BSF did it by training and then leading the local independence fighters known as ‘Mukti Bahini’ or ‘Mukti Fauj’ for operations deep into East Pakistan. Their activities included sabotaging vital military infrastructure, restricting Pakistan’s armed units to their bases to prevent them from dominating the local population, disseminating propaganda, and providing tactical intelligence to the Indian Army: all to create favourable conditions for the Indian armed forces to move in when war was officially declared.
The book is a primary source account and semi-official. The author was given total access to the BSF archives by former Director General Pankaj Singh, who also enabled his interviews with the personnel who had played leading roles during this momentous period. Majumdar interviewed 23 officers including a BSF official who had authored the chapter on the “liberation” war in the BSF’s official history book.
Majumdar has adopted a succinct style with short, event-filled chapters to hold the readers’ attention. He has included seven rare documents and 27 archival photographs to highlight how the BSF worked closely with the Bangladeshi freedom fighters. Yet, with a touch of humility he calls his book “the first draft of that history”, taking a cue from the remarks of the late Khusro Faramarz Rustamji, founder of the BSF, to one of his battalion commanders in November 1971: “BSF is making history.”
In fact, senior police officer PV Rajgopal, who has published two insightful books based on Rustamji’s papers and diaries, had already included a compact history of the “Liberation of Bangla Desh” running into 38 pages in his book The British, The Bandits and the Bordermen (2009). It mentions that Rustamji had shifted Golok Majumdar from the Headquarters to the Eastern Sector in Calcutta to take charge of all East Pakistan operations as soon as the situation in East Bengal worsened after Mujib’s defiant address on 7 March 1971 at the Racecourse Ground in Dacca. However, formal orders to BSF to initiate action came only on 28 March 1971 after the brutal massacre during the night of 25/26 March which forced Indian Parliament to adopt a resolution on 31 March 1971.
From then on, Golok Majumdar was totally in charge, under Rustamji’s overall command, for the high-level meetings with the future Bangladesh leadership, their meetings with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 4th April, and various other responsibilities which arose from time to time. These entailed liaising with the Indian Army leadership at all levels, preparing a draft constitution for the new nation, choosing the design of their national flag, arrangements for the swearing in ceremony on 17 April at Baidyanath Tala later known as Mujib Nagar, briefing international journalists, and even persuading the East Pakistan Deputy High Commissioner in Calcutta to defect.
Ushinor Majumdar acknowledges his reliance on Rustamji’s personal narrative by mentioning PV Rajgopal’sbook 15 times among the references. His thorough research unveils the historical background of the East-West divide in Pakistan and discloses others in the BSF who had greatly contributed to this massive responsibility. In Chapter One he describes how within two years of the 1947 partition, the Bengali-speaking politicians of East Pakistan had found that their political goals were so different from their “Islamist” colleagues in West Pakistan. That was the beginning of the political and emotional divide between both wings of Pakistan. In 1948, East Pakistani students protested when Bengali was dropped from the list of national languages. This became the mass “Ekushe” movement, following the gunning down of five protesting Dacca University students on 21February 1952.
Quoting Gary J Bass (The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Forgotten Genocide, 2014), Majumdar claims that in 1962 Mujibur Rahman had secretly reached out to Jawaharlal Nehru for assistance to secede from Pakistan. However, there was no response from Nehru.
Many may be unaware of the fact that the BSF was compelled to undertake such an onerous military-related task within six years of its formation in December 1965. In Majumdar’s view it was Rustamji’s sagacious and innovative mind that enabled him to shoulder such an important responsibility. With his long experience of working in New Delhi, especially in intelligence, he realised that competence in dealing with Pakistan was the key to success. That was why he decided to use the vast pool of about 600 Emergency Commissioned military officers (ECOs) for manning at the officer level instead of fresh and inexperienced candidates.They were originally commissioned for the 1962 Indo-Pak War and had seen action. He wrote in his diary on 21 July 1965, that starting with himself as “a lone Borderman — nobody below me, nobody above me”, he enlisted some of the best talent from“the Police, the Army, Airforce, the Navy and the academic world”.
Majumdar writes about some of the lesser-known BSF officers who had played exceptional roles in undertaking covert objectives during those nine months. The late Assistant Commandant Parimal Kumar Ghosh (who was a Captain in the Indian Army) was one of them. His involvement started on 26 March 1971, two days before BSF was officially involved. While in charge of the Srinagar border post in Tripura he used to cultivatesome East Pakistan Rifles (EPR) personnel. One such contact was Havildar Nooruddin. On that day, when Nooruddin came to him, he brought along with him Obaidullah Majumdar, a member of the National Assembly and Amir Hussain, an Awami League leader. They spoke about the East Pakistan army’s atrocities and requested for immediate Indian intervention.
After he reported the situation to his higher authorities, Ghosh “changed out of his uniform into civvies”, assumed a cover name as “Professor Ali”, crossed the international boundary and met a group EPR constables who wanted to revolt against Pakistan. They had .303 rifles and about 50 rounds each. “This was the first group of freedom fighters of Bangladesh and Asst Commandant Ghosh suggested that they should be administered an oath of allegiance.” Later this alliance was responsible for the first ambush in East Pakistan killing three Pakistani soldiers and the first demolition of the Subhapur bridge on 28 March. Subsequently Professor Ali or Captain Ali, as Major Ziaur Rahman (later President of Bangladesh) called him, figured in many such encounters. The book includes handwritten notes from Maj Ziaur Rahman to Capt. Ali about joint operations.
Many such vignettes appear in the book: how in 1969 Rustamji sent his team under Dy Commandant Bhatnagar to meet Dr Vikram Sarabhai to improve the trajectory of BSF’s rockets, which were to be very successful on the Western front; how General Jagjit Singh Arora, the flag bearer of India’s victory in the 1971 War, strengthened Parimal Kumar Ghosh’s fire power; how the BSF units prepared the ground for the Indian Army’s operations; how on27 March 1971, Chief of Army Staff General Sam Manekshaw and Rustamji jointly authorised a BSF contingent in Malda under Assistant Commandant Chaturvedi for a cross border operation; how the BSF and Mukti Bahini under Deputy Commandant PK Chatterjee neutralised a huge howitzer gun installed secretly by Pakistan in Akhaura on the Tripura-East Pakistan border which had been deployed to play havoc on Agartala city; and finally how a small stretch of road in Bangladesh is named ‘Captain Ali Road’.
This meticulously researched book could have been of far greater benefit had a map indicating different arenas of BSF operations been provided, and an index too.
Book Reviewed by: Vappala Balachandran
The Author is a Former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat at Govt of India.
This review was commissioned and first published in Biblio: A Review of Books, Vol 28, Nos. 10-12, October -December 2023
Courtesy: BIBLIO: October-December 2023
