cross posted from 1971 sticky thread:
Anthony Mascarenhas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This Mascarenhas guy does not seem neutral and unbiased, mainly because he was a friend who knew Mujib to some extent and it shows from the way he tries to sugarcoat Mujib's many faults in his book. Also, his background could be another factor, he was a Christian of Goa origin with typical biased ethnocentric views most of us South Asians suffer from.
But there is some valuable info in his book that gets us closer to solving one of the puzzles I had for long. Was Mujib a traitor, did he commit treason, was he in touch with RAW?
I think people like Tajuddin, Tofael Ahmed and others in Awami League were. And if such close associates of Mujib were in touch with RAW then it was more than likely that Mujib knew about these connections, but was probably careful about not having any direct contact himself.
The other explanation is that Mujib was a poker player at professional level, so much so that he could make a living out of it, if he wanted to. So he was used to high stakes gambling. What he did in 1971 with Yahya Khan and Bhutto, the negotiation, and also whipping up of East Pakistanis into a frenzy, while allowing his underlings to be in connection with RAW, was geared towards getting maximum political windfall for the Eastern wing and himself. He was gambling with the future of entire people of Pakistan. Yahya Khan and Bhutto did give into most of his demands and the remaining points seemed to them to be unreasonable on Mujib's part, which reinforced their impression that Mujib was actually working with India to break Pakistan. By then Indian agents have already started killing Bihari's.
Even if I do not believe Mujib was a traitor in a strict legal sense as there is still no direct evidence, from circumstantial evidence, it is sufficiently clear that he did betray entire people of Pakistan of both wings and opened up a door for India to fulfill their dream of breaking Pakistan, by instigating a civil war with the killing of Bihari's using their agents. So I would say that Mujib can be blamed for the 1971 war and the death and destruction in this war, much more so than we can blame the planners of Operation Searchlight. I come to this updated view after going through some books in a website:
অধ্যায় ৩: ষড়যন্ত্রের পটভূমি
Patriot-Traitor Question
অধ্যায় ৯: ভারতীয় গুপ্তচরসংস্থা র’এবং মার্কিনী সিআইয়ের ভূমিকা