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'Indians are bastards
anyway'
By Debasish Roy
Chowdhury
HUA HIN, Thailand - Indians are
"a slippery, treacherous people", said president
Richard Nixon. "The Indians are bastards anyway.
They are the most aggressive goddamn people
around," echoed his assistant for national
security affairs, Henry Kissinger. The setting: a
White House meeting on July 16, 1971, during the
run-up to the India-Pakistan war which ultimately
led to the birth of Bangladesh, erstwhile East
Pakistan.
The US State Department recently
declassified some of the Nixon White House tapes
and secret documents that bring to light the way
in which the Nixon administration went about the
Bangladesh saga, reflecting the potential of
mindsets and personal equations taking precedence
over ground realities in White House
decisionmaking.
In 1971, some 3 million
people are estimated to have been killed in the
genocide unleashed by Pakistan's military
government on East Pakistan, leading to a rush of
refugees into India, drawing India into a swift
and decisive war that eventually forced Pakistan's
hand. But all along, the Nixon administration
sided with the military establishment of Pakistan
over democratic India because of Nixon's "special
relationship" with Pakistan's handsome military
dictator, General Yahya Khan, and his uncontrolled
revulsion at the "old witch" Indira Gandhi,
India's then prime minister.
Despite the
avowed goal of containing war, the US
administration, in its zeal to put India in a
spot, even went to the extent of pleading with the
Chinese to initiate troop movements toward the
Indian border in coordination with Pakistan, and
assured it support in case the Soviet Union jumped
into the fray. Near the end of the war, in a
highly secret meeting on December 10, 1971,
Kissinger pitched the idea to Chinese ambassador
to the UN, Huang Ha. The declassified documents
reveal that China took a couple of days to think
about it and finally said it was not game, much to
Kissinger's disappointment.
The seeds of
the Bangladesh war were sown in India's freedom in
1947, which came with a bloody partition, with
India keeping the Hindu-dominated areas of British
India and Pakistan the Muslim-dominated ones - to
the extent they were geographically divisible. The
Pakistan that was born as a result had two flanks
- East and West. East Pakistan comprised the
Muslim-majority Bengali-speaking areas, while West
Pakistan consisted of primarily Urdu-speaking
Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and North-West Frontier
Province.
Separated by 1,200 miles, East
and West Pakistan were hardly comfortable in the
compact. Though the East was more populous, West
Pakistan cornered the bulk of the Pakistani
budget. The West was given more representation in
the legislature than the East, and further fueling
Bengali sub-nationalism, Urdu was made the
official language. West Pakistan, with a 97%
Muslim population, was also far less liberal than
the East, where at least 15% of the population did
not practice Islam. With Pakistan mostly under
military rulers - all from West Pakistan - since
1958, any scope for political accommodation was
limited. Successive military regimes tried to deal
with the problem the only way they knew how -
savage repression, adding to the spiral of hatred
and tyranny.
The relationship between the
two Pakistans became progressively more
neo-colonial, with the protest against the West's
domination growing shriller by the day in the
East. The tension reached a flashpoint when in
1970, the Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman swept the national elections, winning 167
of the 169 seats allotted for East Pakistan,
giving it a majority in the 313-seat National
Assembly and the right to form government at the
center. Neither West Pakistani political leader
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto nor General Yahya Khan would
accept this Bengali ascendancy in national
politics, and the convention of the newly elected
National Assembly was postponed indefinitely. The
Awami League, now convinced that there could never
be any political cohabitation between the East and
the West, called for "full regional autonomy" and
Mujibar Rahman announced that he was taking over
the East's administration.
The military
now decided enough was enough. At a meeting of the
military top brass, Yahya declared: "Kill 3
million of them and the rest will eat out of our
hands." Accordingly, on the night of March 25,
1971, the Pakistan army launched "Operation
Searchlight" to "crush" Bengali resistance in
which Bengali members of military services were
disarmed and killed, students and the
intelligentsia systematically liquidated and
able-bodied Bengali males just picked up and
gunned down. Death squads roamed the streets of
Dacca, killing some 7,000 people in a single
night. "Within a week, half the population of
Dacca had fled. All over East Pakistan, people
were taking flight, and it was estimated that in
April, some 30 million people were wandering
helplessly across East Pakistan to escape the
grasp of the military," writes Robert Payne in
Massacre. Mujibur Rahman was arrested and
the Awami League - which should have been ruling
Pakistan - banned.
Then began the rapes.
In Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape,
Susan Brownmiller likens it to the Japanese rapes
in Nanjing and German rapes in Russia during World
War II. "... 200,000, 300,000 or possibly 400,000
women (three sets of statistics have been
variously quoted) were raped." Reporter Aubrey
Menen describes an incident targeting a
just-married couple: "Two [Pakistani soldiers]
went into the room that had been built for the
bridal couple. The others stayed behind with the
family, one of them covering them with his gun.
They heard a barked order, and the bridegroom's
voice protesting. Then there was silence until the
bride screamed. Then there was silence again,
except for some muffled cries that soon subsided.
In a few minutes one of the soldiers came out, his
uniform in disarray. He grinned to his companions.
Another soldier took his place in the room. And so
on, until all the six had raped the belle of the
village. Then they left. The father found his
daughter lying on the string cot unconscious and
bleeding. Her husband was crouched on the floor,
kneeling over his vomit." (Quoted in Brownmiller's
Against Our Will.)
As East Pakistan
bled, refugees began to pour into India, some 8-10
million over the period of the genocide. India
repeatedly pleaded with the US administration that
it could not cope with any more refugees, and
appealed that it use its influence over Pakistan
and rein in Yahya. But Nixon continued to condone
the repression. To a Pakistani delegation to
Washington, DC, he said: "Yahya is a good friend.
I understand the anguish of the decisions which
Yahya had to make." Strangely, in his eyes, the
military dictator was the victim - one forced so
much against the wall that he had to conduct mass
murders and rapes.
Even
American consul general Archer Blood couldn't take
his administration's position any more. In an act
of open rebellion, he sent a telegram through the
"dissent channel", condemning his country for
failing "to denounce the suppression of
democracy"; "to denounce atrocities", and for
"bending over backwards to placate the West
Pakistan-dominated government". "We, as
professional public servants express our dissent
with current policy and fervently hope that our
true and lasting interests here can be defined and
our policies redirected in order to salvage our
position as a moral leader of the world," the
telegram read. Nixon's answer: "Don't squeeze
Yahya at this time." Both the consul general and
the head of the United States Information Service
were subsequently transferred out for their
anti-Pakistan 
views to prevent "any further
negative reporting on the situation".
In
India, US ambassador Kenneth Keating also made it
clear that "military aid to Pakistan is just out
of the question now while they are still killing
in East Pakistan and refugees are fleeing across
the border". He told Kissinger on June 3, 1971:
"We are on the threshold of better relations with
the one stable democracy in that part of the
world. They are making real progress and want to
be more friendly with us." Replied Kissinger: "In
all honesty, the president has special feelings
for Yahya. One cannot make policy on that basis,
but it is a fact of life."
Nixon had a
simple explanation for the wayward behavior of his
ambassadors. At a meeting with members of the
Senior Review Group in August 1971, he said:
"Ambassadors who go to India fall in love with
India. Some have the same experience in Pakistan,
though not as many because the Pakistanis are a
different breed. The Pakistanis are
straightforward and sometimes extremely stupid.
The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart
that we fall for their line."
Even as the
refugee situation was escalating, the Nixon
administration kept playing politics. Sample this
conversation at the White House a day after George
Harrison and his soul mate, Indian sitar player
Ravi Shankar, held the "Concert for Bangladesh" to
raise money for the refugees. "So who is the
Beatle giving the money to - is it the goddamn
Indians?" asks Nixon. "Yes," says Kissinger,
adding that Pakistan had also been given $150,000
in food aid, but the major problem "is the goddamn
distribution". Nixon butts in: "We have to keep
India away." Agrees Kissinger: "We must defuse the
refugee and famine problem in East Pakistan in
order to deprive India of an excuse to start war.
We have to avoid screwing Pakistan that
outrageously ... We should start our goddamn
lecturing on political structures as much as we
can, and while there will eventually be a separate
East Bengal in two years, it must not happen in
the next six months."
By now India had
completely given up on the US. In August 1971, it
ended its non-aligned stance and signed the Treaty
of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation with the
Soviet Union to safeguard itself against any
American intervention. At the end of October,
Indira Gandhi embarked on a tour of Moscow,
Washington and several Western capitals to assess
the international mood. It is widely believed that
she had already planned to attack East Pakistan
before this public relations tour.
Nixon and Kissinger met at
the Oval Office on the morning of November 5 to
discuss the president's conversation with Indira
on the previous day. Kissinger's assessment:
"While she was a 
bitch, we
got what we wanted ... She will not be able to go
home and say that the United States didn't give
her a warm reception and therefore in despair
she's got to go to war." Replied Nixon: "We really
slobbered over the old witch." After she got home,
the "old witch" wrote to Nixon: "I sincerely hope
that your clear vision will guide relations
between our two democracies and will help us to
come closer. It will always be our effort to clear
any misunderstanding and not to allow temporary
differences to impede the strengthening of our
friendship."
Within a day of Gandhi's
return on November 21, Indian forces attacked East
Pakistan at five key areas. Yahya's 70,000
soldiers deployed in the East were hopelessly
outnumbered against the 200,000 Indian troops and
the Mukti Bahini, Bengali guerrilla freedom
fighters. Within 10 days, India had completely
taken over the East. On December 16, after a final
genocidal burst, Pakistan surrendered
unconditionally. Awami leader Sheikh Mujibar
Rahman was released and returned to establish
Bangladesh's first independent parliament.
The US government supplied military
equipment worth $3.8 million to the Pakistani
dictatorship after the genocide started, even
after telling Congress that all shipments to the
regime had ceased. Throughout the war, the US
government tried everything in its power to hinder
India. The US policy included support of Pakistan
in the United Nations, where it branded India as
the aggressor, and putting pressure on the Soviets
to discourage India, with the threat that the
US-Soviet detente would be in jeopardy if Moscow
did not play ball. When war broke out, Nixon
promptly cut off economic aid to India, and at one
point dispatched the nuclear-powered aircraft
carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal to
"intimidate" India. When nothing worked, it
pleaded China to join the war to scare off India.
As millions suffered in East Pakistan, the
only focus, an obsessive one, of the Nixon
administration continued to be China. One of the
reasons why Nixon sided with Yahya - apart from
"he has been more decent to us than she [Indira]
has" - was that the general was his conduit with
China. In a personal letter of thanks to Yahya for
his role in Sino-American rapprochement, Nixon
wrote, "Those who want a more peaceful world in
the generation to come will forever be in your
debt." Yes, indeed. But once the war ended, the
same US policy changed overnight. It quickly
spotted a regional hegemon in India, and began to
respect it. Though it had made it clear before the
war that it would never have anything to do with
Bangladesh, ever, it advised Pakistan to accept
India's ceasefire offer, recognized the new
country, and went about building bridges with
India.
In that sense, this war was the
turning point in Indo-US relations, triggering a
slow and long process of engaging Delhi - a policy
that picked up steam under Bill Clinton and
accelerated further under George W Bush.
Testifying before the House International
Relations Subcommittee for Asia and the Pacific,
Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia,
Christina Rocca, last week said: "We are
accelerating the transformation of our
relationship with India, with a number of new
initiatives." With India "this is a watershed
year", she said, with Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh scheduled to visit the US next month and
President Bush promising to go to India some time
later this year".
Seen as a possible
counterweight to the same China for which it
sacrificed the lives and honor of millions of
Bangladeshi men and women three decades ago, the
US is even said to be tilting to India as a
possible permanent UN Security Council member.
Even Kissinger has come out strongly in favor of a
permanent seat for India. "I'm known as a strong
advocate and one of the originators of close
relations with China. I believe that today I am
also a strong advocate of close relations with
India," he was recently quoted as saying. Bring
home the bastards, such are the compulsions of
geopolitics.
This is the same India whose
nuclear tests a few years ago drew sanctions from
the US. But as in the Bangladesh war, it has lost
little time in reversing its position. Now it
conducts military exercises with India and offers
to make fighter jets with it. In addition to US
Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas
Burns' agenda when he reaches India on Friday is,
curiously, a deal on civilian nuclear energy,
which may be unveiled during Manmohan Singh's
trip. This serial policy infidelity has only one
explanation: the US understands power, and
respects power. That's why it pounces on Iraq and
engages North Korea. Manmohan Singh would do well
to remember this when he embarks on his trip to
the US to chase India's UN dream. Groveling won't
help, growling might.
And yes, he might
also consider coloring up his staid beard a tad
lest a declassified UN document 30 years hence
finds him mentioned as an "old fogey".
Debasish Roy Chowdhury is a
Correspondent for Asia Times Online based in
Thailand.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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