I don't think so. It was a political failure. If you look at Mujib's political history, he was a loyal Pakistani right up to early 1971, and even until Operation Searchlight, from his written and spoken words, he might have been open to reconciliation.
You are precisely right in saying that "...it was the call of the president to accommodate Mujeeb or not". That was the crucial decision, the deal breaker.
You are precisely wrong in saying the next, in saying that "... Mujeeb was already on the same page with the Indians".
Please think this through for a few moments, for more than a fraction of the time that it takes to read that sentence. Imagine a Pakistan administration that was friendly with India, an India that was getting itself together under Indira Gandhi, who really was not bothered with what Pakistan was or was not doing. She knew Bhutto and had known him for years, she knew Bhutto's track record, and she was shrewd enough and suspicious enough to keep an eye on him. RAW was just being put together. the ISI had been formed years earlier and was actively encouraging dissent in India from its base in East Pakistan, specifically in the north-east. Now suppose this concealed hostility was genuine neutrality, under a Bengali politician. Would that have destroyed the world?
Please also remember that in 1947, Suhrawardy, on the one hand, and Sarat Bose, Netaji's brother, and Kiron Shankar Roy, a prominent East Bengali Congress politician, were agreed on a third Dominion, separate from India and from Pakistan. An annoyed and frustrated Jinnah said, more or less, do whatever you please, and the deal was through, except for the alarmed Hindu leaders in Calcutta and in west Bengal. They had Bose and Roy summoned to Delhi and hectored by Nehru and Patel, and this initiative just petered out.
The roots of Bengali separatism, both east and west Bengali separatism, had been there from before Independence.
I wish Pakistani members of this forum would think once in a while about the possibility that Pakistan unilaterally thought of peaceful co-existence with India. When there were ample opportunities for that, they spurned it. Both countries suffer today, and will continue to suffer in future because of this. I have already pointed out that Indira Gandhi was not at all interested in pursuing a hostile policy towards Pakistan until Fate, assisted by the coterie around Yahya, dumped a refugee problem on her doorstep. Please don't forget that she was thereafter under tremendous pressure from her own province of West Bengal to do 'something', anything to stop the agony.
I won't comment on your opening lines, because I feel too lazy to look up the Muslim population, in 1970, of West Pakistan only, that of East Pakistan, and the Hindu population of the two provinces respectively, to demonstrate to other members what you mean. Already,
@PakSarzameen5823 has misunderstood what you are trying to say.
As for the rest, it is futile to comment. It is saddening to see a live demonstration that not very many people are able to see, far less willing to admit, that genuine opportunities for peace were given short shrift.
:p
