16th December, 1971- Lest We Forget Indira Gandhi & Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw
{ Sitting Lt Gen Aurora, Lt Gen Niazi ; Standing from right Maj General Jacob & Lt Gen Sagat Singh : Niazi -Pak Army East Pakistan signing instrument of surrender on 16-12-1971 }
On 16th December 1971 Pakistan lost half of its country. It had to publicly surrender to India at Dhaka.
The
India – Pakistan war of 1971 came to be known as a landmark in the history of
warfare.
In
just 12 days, the Indian Army brought Pakistani army to its knees. It took
93,000 Pakistani prisoners and gave people of Bangladesh their independence.
1971 war was planned and executed by Field
Marshal Sam Manekshaw and his team . The Eastern
Command of Indian Army was led by Lieutenant General JS Aurora & his Chief of Staff Maj General JFR Jacob. It was
Lieutenant General Sagat Singh, General Officer Commanding of 4 Corps that led
the charge and created panic in Pakistani minds by using the forces available
to him with ingenuity and courage.
The
war which India fought to liberate Bangladesh was perhaps the first in which
all three forces fought in unison. In fact, the MiG-21 may be the only aircraft
in aviation history to have forced a nation to surrender. A case in point was
the attack on the building by IAF in which the governor of East Pakistan was
holed up. The puppet government of East Pakistan had declared it would not
surrender to the Indians.
War
was officially declared on 3rd December, 1971 , after Pakistan
aircraft strafed some 11 Indian Air Bases in the west in an attempted
pre-emptive strike. As Indian engaged with the Pakistanis in the east and the
west, the Soviet Union and the United States took sides. The US, under
President Richard Nixon, chose Pakistan. But before the nuclear powers and cold
war rivals could actively involved, Pakistan’s eastern wing surrendered to the
Indian forces. The war was over. A new country- Bangladesh was born.
Indira Gandhi as the PM was decisive during 1971.
''I have seen several
angry women, including my wife. But never one like Mrs Gandhi,'' said the field
marshal during release of book, Liberation
and Beyond: Indo-Bangladesh relations , written by J N Dixit,
former foreign secretary.(1999)
It was the afternoon
of April 29, 1971. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had called an urgent cabinet
meeting. Those present were Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram, Agriculture Minister
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, Finance Minister Y B Chauhan, External Affairs Minister
Sardar Swaran Singh, and a special invitee, army chief Gen. Sam Manekshaw.
''What are you
doing?'' a fuming Mrs Gandhi asked the general, throwing reports of refugee
influx from East Pakistan send by the West Bengal Chief Minister, Siddartha
Shankar Ray, on the table.
''I want you to walk
into East Pakistan,'' Mrs Gandhi told her army chief. ''That means war,'' the
general said. ''I don't mind if it is war,'' was Mrs Gandhi's characteristic
reply.
Manekshaw was
unruffled by the outburst. ''Have you read the bible?'' he asked the PM in his
usual breezy manner. ''What has the bible got to do with this?'' Swaran Singh
intervened. ''In the beginning there was darkness. God said let there be light
and there was light. He then divided light from the darkness,'' Manekshaw
quoted the Genesis to impress upon the ministers that the army was not prepared
for a sudden war.
''I have only 30 tanks
and two armoured divisions with me. The Himalayan passes will be opening
anytime. What if the Chinese give an ultimatum? The rains will start now in
East Pakistan. When it rains there, the rivers become oceans. I guarantee 100
per cent defeat,'' Manekshaw told Mrs Gandhi, disapproving the idea of an
immediate attack.
Mrs Gandhi, who
adjourned the meeting to 1600 hrs held back Manekshaw, who was the last man to
leave the room. ''Shall I send in my resignation, on grounds of health, mental or
physical?'' he asked. Mrs Gandhi finally gave her army chief the time he wanted
to elaborate his strategy.
Seven months and four
days on the evening of 3 December, at
about 5:40 pm, the Pakistan Airforce (PAF) launched surprise pre-emptive
strike on eleven airfields in
north-western India, including Agra, which was 300 miles (480 km)
from the border.
In an address to the nation on
radio that same evening, Prime Minister Gandhi held that the air strikes were a
declaration of war against India .
Manekshaw had by then amassed two brigades within the border
for going in the next day.
Thirteen days later
Bangladesh was born marking one of the high points in Indian diplomacy: in nine
months the country was able to isolate the US, bring Western Europe on to our
side and win over the world media.
Anecdote
Manekshaw often recalled
his acquaintance with President Yahya Khan when the latter had worked under him
in the military operations directorate of the British Indian Army just before
partition.
Yahya Khan, then a
colonel, was impressed by Manekshaw's James motorcycle which he had bought for
Rs 1400. ''I told him that he could have the vehicle for as much. He said he
would give only Rs 1000. I said okay,''
''But I don't have a
thousand rupees now, I will send it to you later,'' Yahya Khan had said. It was
August 13, 1947. Twenty-one years later Yahya Khan became the president of
Pakistan. ''I never received the Rs 1000, but he gave me the whole of East
Pakistan,'' -
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