![]() Meanwhile, the ‘Provisional Government of Bangladesh’ was declared in the town of Baidynathtola (renamed Mujibnagar) in East Pakistan on April 10, 1971. Gandhi, who was of a similar view herself, took his advice and played for time. Courtesy: Nehru Memorial LibraryĪlso, in April 1971, General, later Field Marshall ‘Sam’ Maneckshaw, then Indian Army chief, bluntly told Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that the Indian army was not prepared to enter a war immediately and that he needed a few months’ time. Haksar (principal secretary to the prime minister) and two East Bengali economists, Anisur Rehman and Rahman Sobhan, both personally knowns to Mitra and Sen, who had somehow managed to escape to Delhi from Dhaka. The ground work for this meeting had been done by among others, Ashok Mitra, (then economic adviser to the Prime Minister, later CPI(M) minister in West Bengal), Amartya Sen (then Professor at Delhi School of Economics), P.N. ![]() Tajuddin Ahmed, the senior East Bengali opposition leader who would go on to be the acting head of the Provisional Government of Bangladesh, met Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on April 3, 1971. ![]() The Indian government’s authorised ‘Official History of the 1971 War’ has many details of the turbulence in the Indian political and government scene with regard to the question of conferring immediate recognition to the ‘independence of Bangladesh’.Įvents moved quickly after the last week of March, 1971. She pointed out that Pakistan was a sovereign member of the United Nations, and that the taking of immediate and precipitate steps by India would be unlikely to find favour, or support, internationally. She told the opposition leaders that whatever steps may be contemplated by the Indian government in response to the escalating situation in East Pakistan should not be a matter of public debate – as that would ‘defeat the purpose of giving such comfort as we can to democratic forces in Pakistan as a whole’. Gandhi had already had a meeting with the principal opposition leaders on Mawhere she had discussed the limited options available to the Indian government. Sensitive to the flux of international realpolitik, the resolution stopped short of endorsing the ‘declaration of independence of Bangladesh’ that had been made in the radio announcement by Zia Ur Rahman just four days before. The resolution said that the Indian parliament expressed ‘whole hearted sympathy and support for the people of East Bengal’. Indira Gandhi, India’s prime minister at the time, moved a resolution in parliament drafted by her principal secretary, P.N. The killings on that day included the massacre of a very large number of East Bengali intellectuals and academics, including those of Dhaka University. The Pakistan army’s premeditated attack on unarmed civilians in Dhaka on March 25 spared no one. ![]() Operation Searchlight, the Pakistan Army’s mass killings to ‘clean up’ East Pakistan of opposition began on March 25. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had already been arrested in Dhaka on the midnight between March 24 and Maand flown to prison in Rawalpindi, West Pakistan on April. This followed the declaration of martial law in East Pakistan in the wake of widespread disaffection arising from the annulment of the results of Pakistan’s 1970 general election, which saw the mainly East Pakistan-based Awami League win a majority. The ‘Independence of Bangladesh’ had been announced on ‘Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra / Radio Centre’ from Kalurghat Radio Station in Chittagong by then Major Zia ur Rahman on March 27, 1971. While this assertion was greeted with both derision as well as admiration, depending on how one retrospectively views the political capacities of the 21-year-old Narendra Modi, it may be worthwhile to look at the events of 1971 more closely, to scrutinise Modi’s attempts to insert himself into the history of struggle for Bangladesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a statement on March 26 – at the 50th National Day Celebration of Bangladesh, where he was an invited guest – asserting that he had been jailed in 1971 for his participation in a ‘satyagraha’ with friends in support of the independence of Bangladesh. ![]()
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