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Indira Gandhi planned a mass invasion of Pakistan | CIA Records

She was very ambitious lady, no doubt she may have like to put Pakistan army to test, while she is still living.
I wonder if US had any role in this murder! as at this point in time, US had very different plans, and estimates, than her. and as we already know, that US knew all about her intentions, muchmore deeply than Pakistan.

'Ambitious' might not be the right word.

She had strong political convictions, and a sense of destiny. She quite obviously believed that she was the best person to lead India. At that point, where she was the national leader, what 'ambition' might she have had?

It is also unlikely that she wanted to put the Pakistan Army to the test. India has always been strategically conservative. Nehru's utter dementia and waywardness was an aberration. Indira Gandhi herself was content to keep a hostile neighbour off-balance, but there is no evidence whatsoever that the events of 1971 were the result of a long-conceived plan of the Indian leadership. Instead, it makes much more sense, from reading the memoirs of various politicians of the time, as well as of other evidence, that there was innate hostility, there was a difficult refugee situation, there was a very strong popular sentiment primarily located in West Bengal against Pakistan and an obvious opportunity to put all these into line and make something of it. Brilliant opportunism, rather than a planned attack, in other words.

US involvement is unlikely. She fell victim to what she started. Giani Zail Singh's involvement in setting up and encouraging Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale is well known. An attempt to neutralise Akali Dal influence in the Punjab by setting up a fanatical religious stooge backfired very, very badly.
 
Indira Gandhi,one and only leader from subcontinent who reminds of a strong leader,though i dont agree with some of the things she did,but she is the one leader who has what we call balls of steel.
 
She is the only individual from the Nehru/Gandhi clan that I have any respect for. Although I only have a little respect.
Her treatment of Sikhs was appaling and she was essentially isolating an important community in our land, this led to her demise. However she was a strong leader and incredibly ambitious.
 
A minister of Indira Gandhi's cabinet betrayed India's "war objectives" to the Central Intelligence Agency in December 1971, causing an abrupt end to the Bangladesh war under vicious US armtwisting.

This is the highlight of the book CIA's Eye on South Asia by journalist Anuj Dhar. Published by Delhi-based Manas Publications, which is facing government's ire for coming out with a book on the R&AW, the book compiles declassified CIA records on India and her neighbours. It specifically spotlights what arguably has been India's biggest spy scandal.

In the run up to the 1971 India Pakistan war over what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), The New York Times first hinted at the presence of a CIA operative in the Indian government. By December The Washington Post had reported that US President Richard Nixon's South Asia policy was being guided by "reports from a source close to Mrs. Gandhi."

Records and telecons declassified recently - but not properly explained up till now - show that a dramatic turnaround came on December 6 when a CIA operative, whom Dhar pins down as a minister of the Indira Cabinet, leaked out India's "war objectives" to the agency. Prime Minister Gandhi told Union Cabinet that apart from liberating Bangladesh, India intended to take over a strategically important part of the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and go for the total annihilation of Pakistan's armed forces so that Pakistan "never attempts to challenge India in the future."

When he came to know of the CIA report, a furious Nixon blurted out that "this woman [Indira Gandhi] suckered us," thinking that Mrs. Gandhi had promised him that India won't attack East Pakistan - not to speak of targeting West Pakistan and ***. "But let me tell you, she's going to pay," he told his National Security Advisor Dr Henry Kissinger even as he tried to leak out the CIA report to give her bad press.

The CIA went on assess that fulfillment of India's "war objectives" might lead to "the emergence of centrifugal forces which could shatter West Pakistan into as many as three or four separate countries."

As a direct result of the operative's information, the Nixon administration went on an overdrive to save West Pakistan from a massive Indian assault. Because the President felt that "international morality will be finished - the United Nations will be finished - if you adopt the principle that because a country is democratic and big it can do what the hell it pleases."

Nixon personally threatened the USSR with a "major confrontation" between the superpowers should the Soviets failed to stop the Indians from going into West Pakistan. Kissinger secretly met Chinese Permanent Representative at the UN to apprise him of the CIA operative's report and rub in that what India was planning to do with Pakistan with the Soviet backing could turn out to be a "dress rehearsal" of what they might do to China.

Dhar quotes in the book the official records showing that USSR's First Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov visited Delhi after Nixon's threat and told the "Indians to confine their objectives to East Pakistan" and "not to try and take any part of West Pakistan, including Azad Kashmir" as "Moscow was concerned about the possibility of a great power confrontation over the subcontinent." Kuznetsov also extracted a guarantee from Prime Minister Gandhi that India will not attack West Pakistan. This decision was promptly conveyed to Nixon. On 16 December 1971 when Nixon was told that India had declared a ceasefire, he exulted: "We have made it… it's the Russians working for us." Kissinger congratulated him for saving West Pakistan - India's main target, as per the operative's report to the CIA.

Dhar repudiates recent assertion by a former Indian Navy chief that showing up of America's biggest nuclear powered carrier into the Bay of Bengal during the war had something to do with the accidental destruction of a US plane in Dhaka during an Indian strafing. "Declassified records make it unambiguously clear that the month-long show of strength by the USS Enterprise and accompanying flotilla was a byproduct of the CIA operative's reports," he writes, reproducing chunks from official records detailing how Nixon ordered a naval task force towards the subcontinent to "scare off" India from attacking West Pakistan.

In subsequent years, former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, and two deputy PMs - Jagjivan Ram and Y B Chavan - were alleged to be the CIA operative active during the 1971 war. However, all such charges lacked any substantiation because there was no confirmation whether or not such an operative ever existed. As such no constructive discussion on the issue ever took off. This has changed now given the unassailable evidence in the form of US records making it clear that the CIA had a "reliable" agent operating out of the Indian cabinet in 1971.

In declassified records the name of the operative has been censored because the CIA Director has "statutory obligations to protect from disclosure [the Agency's] intelligence sources." Dhar writes: "Naming the Indian operative even after so many years will adversely impact the Indo-US relations, and hit the Agency's prospects of recruiting new informants."

However, he suggests that Indian government may have known the identity of the operative. "R&AW under the most capable R. N. Kao could not have missed the reference to the 'source close to Mrs. Gandhi' and must have dug deeper," he writes, adding that in 1972 Mrs. Gandhi herself charged that "she had information that the CIA had become active in India".

More pertinently, Dhar quotes from the declassified record of a 5 October 1972 meeting between Indian Foreign Minister Swaran Singh and US Secretary of State William Rogers. During the meeting, Singh asserted that "CIA has been in contact with people in India in 'abnormal ways.'" and that India had information that "proceedings of Congress Working Committee were known to US officials within two hours of meetings".

End the secrecy: CIA Records Take Lid Off High Treason By Indira Cabinet Minister

It is likely that every single person of general rank in the services knew who the mole was. Very many civilians consequently knew, in the sense that the service people 'knew', who was doing the leaking. That did not do him or his reputation or credibility much good.

Incidentally, why Desai's name occurs in this context is mystifying.

Finally, it does not seem to have been noticed that even according to this rather mysterious report, the Indian war aims are said to have been to take over a strategically significant part of Azad Kashmir, and to permanently neutralise the Pakistan Army. Why should this be associated with Indira Gandhi alone? Apart from the Punjabi Prime Ministers - Inder Gujral and Manmohan Singh - nobody else has rejected this superordinate objective. Many sensible Indians, even those disposed towards peace and cooperation with Pakistan would be inclined to share this view.
 
If India had another leader like Indra it would lead no where but self destruct and balkanized. Sooner or later it would grow weakers, sanctioned and every neighbouring state jumping in for a pie. Indra by herself had no balls..she borrowed them from Russians..with Russian gone it was saga of impotency once again. On the flip side what did India do to protect their all weather friends in Afghanistan??

Reading this very old thread is rather frustrating. Opinions do not seem to have moved much, judging by other threads, and by other posts elsewhere.

As far as this is concerned, this post continues to be difficult to clarify. Rather an involved analysis, with neither beginning nor end, if I may humbly suggest so.

Why would Indira-like leadership have led to self-destruction and balkanisation? Were there signs of such developments under her? Is it the Sikh issue that is hinted at? Surely precisely the reverse should be our conclusion: if she and the Indian leadership had in fact recovered Azad Kashmir and disabled the Pakistan Army, there would have been precious little by way of arming and aiding the Khalistanis, no Blue Star, no assassination.

This pipe dream of a balkanised and weaker India falling victim to every "neighbouring state" is a recurring leitmotif in strategic narratives of Pakistani origin. It requires no comment.

We are also informed that India was in effect acting as a Russian agent. Why enlisting their help in neutralising the egregious and more than overt American support for the Pakistani dictatorship is considered borrowing their balls is not clear. Presumably the Pakistani dictatorship's use of American gonads is not considered an equivalent.

Finally, while this analysis is the past seen through a gel-coated lens for the most part, the bit about Afghanistan is plain silly. Afghanistan very successfully tore itself apart. Nobody could have intervened in any positive way; those who did were uniformly negative. India chose not to be one of those vultures. Not a bad thing to do, all things considered.
 
fair enough and Pakistani moral and other support to Kashmiri freedom fighters is not invasion either...good, we see eye to eye on this issue then




in india's case they just took in floods of refugees (promoted an influx of hindu refugees especially) -- armed em trained em and sent em back to fight....india certainly meddled in the affairs and partook in what would today be labelled "terrorist support" in the interests of freeing BD from Pakistan. BD was an issue from the very beginnign and in hindsight it should've been independent from the very beginning.

Get your facts straight; the rest is lost.

The vast bulk of the Mukti Bahini were Muslim Bengalis. In fact, Osmani was frustrated at the reluctance of the Hindu refugees to fight. That is not to imply that there were no Hindu MB at all.


you conveniently forget that apart from local militias (which work under the directives of the political agents in each tribal area) -- there is also FC apart from regular army and they draw a sizable % of their manpower from KPK and FATA region.

if FATA were perceived as "invaded" then the locals would not cooperate and provide intel to the military/security forces who are busy blowing up terrorist hideouts at the moment

Good luck with your counter-insurgency campaign.

No one here claims that Pakistan is considered a saviour but had Pakistan not existed, India's neighbouring countries would have lived under fear.

Funny, isn't it? India's neighbours live without fear, according to you, and the credit goes to the single most belligerent state in the neighbourhood.

shastri tried and went to hell , indra went to hell even before she gave it a try ... hahaha epic india fail as usual

What is it that you are blabbering about? Do you even know the issues involved? What did Shastri try, and why do you think he went to hell? Apart from the fact that he was a Hindu and died. And what could Indira not give a try, before she, in turn, went to hell?

Shouldn't you be doing your homework instead?
 
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this iconic picture brings me immense joy
what a fitting end to a hag that conspired in the breakup of Pakistan and continued to conspire against Pakistan

Is this really you? I can't believe that you wrote this post.

Truly disappointing.
 
this iconic picture brings me immense joy
what a fitting end to a hag that conspired in the breakup of Pakistan and continued to conspire against Pakistan
but sir, havnt you thought, about her counterparts in pakistan, in bangala desh, all gone in the painfull manners?lolzz

So the butt still hurts?

That brings immense joy to us.
no it brings more pain to you, surly its a point of joy to us?
 
How many innocent Sikhs paid with their lives, no guessing whose Butt did get hurt.
ohh sure, mumbai has jst witnwssed that pain too?:yahoo::omghaha::yay:
can give more, if you still insist!:cheers:


ohh sure, when was the mumbai attack?:omghaha:
no i ,know you , you wouldnt be feeling pain about it?:omghaha:
...because those are exactly same as loosing an integral part of a sovereign State.
 
...because those are exactly same as loosing an integral part of a sovereign State.
The extra emoticons in his post seems to be a way to overcompensate.

I dont think anything comes even close to having your country cut up in half. Reeks of an incompetent Armed Forces and an incompetent leadership.
 
Not Indira .Indian Generals planned mass invasion and Indira stopped that.
And I think that was one of the best move .Improve's the India's image on world stage.

@Angel88

At the end of the day,Whether Bangladesh was liberated and anything else was done,you will remain a indian aka inferior race

Really .But World's opinion is directly opposite to yours.Ask them who is inferior
Thank God still this so called 'race' mentality drives the youth of Pakistan .And that is the main reason we outclass our western neighbour in all fields.And that will remain like this in future.
 
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