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Ghosts of December - Taj M Khattak
Perhaps each one of us have moments in our lives when time slows down and the air stands still , making that moment as one we can never forget. One such moment was December 16, 1971 when a colleague walked into our bombed out trench in Chittagong and broke the news that the Eastern Command in Dhaka had decided to surrender to the advancing Indian army.
I must confess my instant reaction was that of relief – the full weight of the news hit a bit later. I could never figure out why. The closest I ever came to finding an answer was in Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s verse, ‘I was like a dying patient who, for no reason, smiles’.
Such were the emotions of a 23-year-old who along with 93,000 others was caught up in war-torn East Pakistan. We were all but abandoned and left to our fate by the masters of Pakistan who were playing their own games. This, if you like, was our own version of PTSD; on the one hand the land we had been fighting for didn’t own us, and on the other, we were the cause of national humiliation back home.
In West Pakistan, December 1971 was also a moment of reckoning for the Pakistan Movement generation which had struggled for the country and were now sprawled on their prayers mats crying hysterically at what had happened. It was also a moment of introspection for the younger generation who, instead of being thankful for Pakistan, had slipped into decadence. Many smashed their glasses vowing never to hold them again – some in earnest, others not quite so, such being the human nature.
The naïve among us expected an early repatriation but the more matured soldiers knew better. Eventually, it was after over two years and that too after then PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto paid the ransom of the ‘bilateralism’ clause in the Simla Accord as demanded by Indira Gandhi. The prisoners got their freedom but Pakistan was shackled to an agreement in bad faith which continues to be a stumbling block towards regional peace and harmony.
We were not impressed by the bevy of brass and politicians who came to address us off and on in the POW camps. But we were impressed by their financial discipline, visible in the use of indigenously made vehicles right up to their prime ministerial level while newspaper photographs showed our military delegation using shiny Mercedes limousines for border meetings. This, even in defeat – we thought to ourselves.
It is a tribute to the parents, siblings and wives of that period who waited with sombre dignity for over two to three months after the surrender at Dhaka before they received the first letters from their loved ones that they had survived the disaster or that their lives had changed forever and there would never be any letters.
The tragedy of the break-up of Pakistan had its roots in the 1954 elections to the Bengal provincial assembly in which the Muslim League won only 10 out of 309 seats and the political battle began whether Pakistan should have two ‘units’ – East and West – or many ‘units’ one of which should be East Pakistan, and what should be the representation of those ‘units’ in parliament. The constituent assembly wrestled with this problem, finally settling down on ‘parity’ or equal representation of the west and east ‘units’ in a two-wing Pakistan. This was like lighting the fuse to ‘slow burn’ for a huge explosion later.
Philip Oldenburg, an assistant professor at Columbia University, in a well researched article ‘A Place Insufficiently Imagined: Language, Belief and the Pakistan Crisis of 1971’, goes even deeper into the causes. Interestingly, he does not entirely subscribe to the ‘inevitability’ of the breakup of Pakistan due to oft-cited reasons.
He is of the view that the tragedy of Pakistan was in part the result of the failure of its people to understand the meaning of their country. The West Pakistanis failed to understand what the Bengalis understood to be the meaning of Pakistan. The West Pakistanis displayed a blind commitment to their own meaning of what Pakistan stood for and stubbornly held on to that meaning.
The West Pakistani’s notion of Pakistan was inseparable from the Muslim nation of the Subcontinent, a nation locked in combat with Hindus. For them safeguarding the Indian Islamic heritage, exemplified by Allama Iqbal’s poetry, in which Urdu played a major role, was what Pakistan meant above all.
On the other hand, for the East Pakistani, Pakistan was primarily a place where Muslims would rule and be secure from Hindu domination. Their view of their Bengali identity and language exemplified by nationalistic poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, would contribute to the Pakistan they believed in, which differed significantly from the perception of their West Pakistani compatriots.
Whatever be the causes for the shattered dream of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the month of December every year compels us to look back if things have improved. In the prevailing political turmoil mainly in the cities of Punjab it is a valid question to ask if the dominant mindset of Pakistan’s largest province with overwhelming representation in military, bureaucracy, judiciary, and economic pursuits, is steering the country in the right direction.
As for the military, which was eventually the instrument for the country’s break-up in 1971, it is fair to state that while the dice were loaded against it in east, there was no reason for the way the country was defended in the west. It hurts to recall that when the Pakistan Army so valiantly blunted a major Indian attack launched in Shakargarh near Sialkot with an overwhelming force of three infantry divisions supported by three armoured brigades with just one infantry division, it failed to drive home the advantage through a counter-attack at an appropriate place.
Or the case of the Pakistan Navy which ordered its ships to de-ammunition on the sixth day of the war even though the onslaught of the Indian navy against Karachi was blunted after sinking INS Kukri by one of our submarines. Or the PAF sticking to its own doctrine of ‘Force in being’ to fight another day – which other day?
Have we overcome this paucity of strategic thinking through greater realisation that timely decision-making is the essence of success? On the road to preparedness for war, have we learnt the virtue of saying what we mean and meaning what we say? Do we encourage an environment in which, staying within the parameters of good discipline, subordinates can say what they want to because in the long run it is what they don’t say that weakens the institutions?
And finally, do we realise that there is always more power in a few grains of truth than a bushel of blubber? Let’s hope the ghosts of December torment us enough to jolt us for the better.
The writer is a retired vice admiral. Email: tajkhattak@ymail.com
Perhaps each one of us have moments in our lives when time slows down and the air stands still , making that moment as one we can never forget. One such moment was December 16, 1971 when a colleague walked into our bombed out trench in Chittagong and broke the news that the Eastern Command in Dhaka had decided to surrender to the advancing Indian army.
I must confess my instant reaction was that of relief – the full weight of the news hit a bit later. I could never figure out why. The closest I ever came to finding an answer was in Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s verse, ‘I was like a dying patient who, for no reason, smiles’.
Such were the emotions of a 23-year-old who along with 93,000 others was caught up in war-torn East Pakistan. We were all but abandoned and left to our fate by the masters of Pakistan who were playing their own games. This, if you like, was our own version of PTSD; on the one hand the land we had been fighting for didn’t own us, and on the other, we were the cause of national humiliation back home.
In West Pakistan, December 1971 was also a moment of reckoning for the Pakistan Movement generation which had struggled for the country and were now sprawled on their prayers mats crying hysterically at what had happened. It was also a moment of introspection for the younger generation who, instead of being thankful for Pakistan, had slipped into decadence. Many smashed their glasses vowing never to hold them again – some in earnest, others not quite so, such being the human nature.
The naïve among us expected an early repatriation but the more matured soldiers knew better. Eventually, it was after over two years and that too after then PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto paid the ransom of the ‘bilateralism’ clause in the Simla Accord as demanded by Indira Gandhi. The prisoners got their freedom but Pakistan was shackled to an agreement in bad faith which continues to be a stumbling block towards regional peace and harmony.
We were not impressed by the bevy of brass and politicians who came to address us off and on in the POW camps. But we were impressed by their financial discipline, visible in the use of indigenously made vehicles right up to their prime ministerial level while newspaper photographs showed our military delegation using shiny Mercedes limousines for border meetings. This, even in defeat – we thought to ourselves.
It is a tribute to the parents, siblings and wives of that period who waited with sombre dignity for over two to three months after the surrender at Dhaka before they received the first letters from their loved ones that they had survived the disaster or that their lives had changed forever and there would never be any letters.
The tragedy of the break-up of Pakistan had its roots in the 1954 elections to the Bengal provincial assembly in which the Muslim League won only 10 out of 309 seats and the political battle began whether Pakistan should have two ‘units’ – East and West – or many ‘units’ one of which should be East Pakistan, and what should be the representation of those ‘units’ in parliament. The constituent assembly wrestled with this problem, finally settling down on ‘parity’ or equal representation of the west and east ‘units’ in a two-wing Pakistan. This was like lighting the fuse to ‘slow burn’ for a huge explosion later.
Philip Oldenburg, an assistant professor at Columbia University, in a well researched article ‘A Place Insufficiently Imagined: Language, Belief and the Pakistan Crisis of 1971’, goes even deeper into the causes. Interestingly, he does not entirely subscribe to the ‘inevitability’ of the breakup of Pakistan due to oft-cited reasons.
He is of the view that the tragedy of Pakistan was in part the result of the failure of its people to understand the meaning of their country. The West Pakistanis failed to understand what the Bengalis understood to be the meaning of Pakistan. The West Pakistanis displayed a blind commitment to their own meaning of what Pakistan stood for and stubbornly held on to that meaning.
The West Pakistani’s notion of Pakistan was inseparable from the Muslim nation of the Subcontinent, a nation locked in combat with Hindus. For them safeguarding the Indian Islamic heritage, exemplified by Allama Iqbal’s poetry, in which Urdu played a major role, was what Pakistan meant above all.
On the other hand, for the East Pakistani, Pakistan was primarily a place where Muslims would rule and be secure from Hindu domination. Their view of their Bengali identity and language exemplified by nationalistic poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, would contribute to the Pakistan they believed in, which differed significantly from the perception of their West Pakistani compatriots.
Whatever be the causes for the shattered dream of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the month of December every year compels us to look back if things have improved. In the prevailing political turmoil mainly in the cities of Punjab it is a valid question to ask if the dominant mindset of Pakistan’s largest province with overwhelming representation in military, bureaucracy, judiciary, and economic pursuits, is steering the country in the right direction.
As for the military, which was eventually the instrument for the country’s break-up in 1971, it is fair to state that while the dice were loaded against it in east, there was no reason for the way the country was defended in the west. It hurts to recall that when the Pakistan Army so valiantly blunted a major Indian attack launched in Shakargarh near Sialkot with an overwhelming force of three infantry divisions supported by three armoured brigades with just one infantry division, it failed to drive home the advantage through a counter-attack at an appropriate place.
Or the case of the Pakistan Navy which ordered its ships to de-ammunition on the sixth day of the war even though the onslaught of the Indian navy against Karachi was blunted after sinking INS Kukri by one of our submarines. Or the PAF sticking to its own doctrine of ‘Force in being’ to fight another day – which other day?
Have we overcome this paucity of strategic thinking through greater realisation that timely decision-making is the essence of success? On the road to preparedness for war, have we learnt the virtue of saying what we mean and meaning what we say? Do we encourage an environment in which, staying within the parameters of good discipline, subordinates can say what they want to because in the long run it is what they don’t say that weakens the institutions?
And finally, do we realise that there is always more power in a few grains of truth than a bushel of blubber? Let’s hope the ghosts of December torment us enough to jolt us for the better.
The writer is a retired vice admiral. Email: tajkhattak@ymail.com
