India must learn from mistakes of 1962, Pakistan from its excesses of 1971
The 60th anniversary of the India-China war is a great opportunity for our politicians, military leaders and strategic thinkers to take stock of what went wrong.
The number 1962 is etched deeply in the Indian psyche, not merely as the year of a devastating defeat in war, but also as a metaphor for national humiliation. Something that reminds the nation of the perils of political hubris and nepotism in the military. The 60th anniversary of the India-China war, thus, is a great opportunity for Indian politicians, military leaders, strategic thinkers and commentators to once again take stock of what went wrong and plan to prevent another ‘Himalayan blunder’.
The Tribune has been publishing a series of articles commemorating the 60th anniversary of the war and some of our readers found it revealing that even in defeat, Indians in uniform displayed extraordinary fortitude. Former Chief Election Commissioner MS Gill was so thrilled to read of the brave Sikhs fighting till the last man and the last bullet, not allowing their posts to be run over, that he phoned in for more stories of individual valor; and, letting out his characteristic chuckle, Gill sahib also wanted us to chronicle the tale of a member of an old colonial-collaborator family who ran away from the battlefield, leaving his turban behind. Well, let the cowards lie and the fearless be remembered. PM Jawaharlal Nehru, defense minister VK Krishna Menon, Army chief Gen PN Thapar, defense secretary O Pulla Reddy, Intelligence Bureau Chief BN Mullick, Corps Commander Lt Gen BM Kaul and others are, rightly, blamed and remembered for their respective roles in sending India’s matchless troops to death on the icy heights of the Himalayas without even basic winterwear, to say nothing of war-winning materiel. None of them is spared for the lack of preparedness and for getting conclusively fooled — politically, diplomatically and militarily. Now, after every incident in the north and east — be it at Doklam or Ladakh — Indians are reminded of the 1962 debacle, making policy-makers aware that no number of military exercises with the US at the eastern border will ever be enough to remain prepared against the neighbor’s ambition to be a world leader. Compare the Indians’ somber remembrance of their defeat with that of the Pakistanis’. The 50th anniversary of the 1971 War fell a year ago. Not much was heard from the all-powerful Pakistani military-intelligence establishment, which had been exulting over the Americans handing over Afghanistan back to them: Why look back when the future looks rosy, with a $450-million military grant, getting dropped from the FATF watchlist and getting reinvited to the tango at Pentagon! Yet, the Pakistani military leadership did the unthinkable recently, which was one part ridiculous and one part scary. Former army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, on his retirement tour to military units, blamed the political leadership for the 1971 defeat. As if that was not enough, he claimed that only 34,000 troops fought the war for Pakistan against 2.5 lakh Indian and two lakh Mukti Bahini fighters. It is a well-documented fact that just 3,000 Indian soldiers defeated 30,000 Pakistani troops in the final battle for Dhaka. Of course, everybody but Bajwa knows that 92,000 Pakistani officers and men were captured as prisoners of war and that India treated them with honor and returned them graciously even as Indian pilots were languishing in Pakistani prisons. The Pakistani government had even issued a postage stamp in April 1973, seeking the return of 90,000 PoWs.
Worse, Bajwa seems to have forgotten that Pakistan was ruled by Yahya Khan, a military General, who claimed to be a descendent of Nadir Shah, the medieval invader who sacked Delhi. The debauched dictator was feted in Washington for facilitating Nixon’s National Security Adviser Kissinger’s meeting with Mao, thus opening the US-China strategic partnership lasting for about 40 years. Yahya Khan had chosen an equally brutal General, Tikka Khan — the Butcher of Balochistan — to be the governor of East Pakistan and another General, AAK Niazi, to be the military commander. The three Generals were responsible for the worst post-WW-2 genocide which the western media forgot to report. The official Bangladeshi count of the deaths during the conflict that ended in the Liberation War is 3 million dead — half the number of the victims of the Jewish holocaust. Officially, Pakistan admits that 26,000 civilians were killed.
Of the three million killed, at least half could be Hindus, but Indira Gandhi (whom Nixon loved to call ‘that b***h’) did not have a political agenda to count or categories the bodies of the innocent dead. Over one crore refugees poured into India. While Hollywood still has not made a movie on the Bengali holocaust, the American leadership celebrated Yahya during the holocaust and Tikka soon after. Tikka succeeded Yahya as the chief of army staff. The US, of course, did not think it right to deny visas to the butchers of Bangladesh. The death of hundreds of thousands, if not three million, never seemed to have overwhelmed the predecessors of those who denied the Gujarat chief minister a US visa over a communal riot that was investigated for 10 years by his political rivals.
The fatalities of the 13-day war that India won were few compared to the civilian deaths. But western-funded organizations like Amnesty International, which sought the commutation of the death sentences of the foot soldiers of the old US allies, never really investigated the 1971 war crimes or established the murders and rapes committed on the explicit orders of Yahya, Tikka and Niazi. Had their crimes been established, and their political careers exposed and visas denied to them, their successors would not have launched their Islamist misadventure in Kashmir that resulted in the exodus of Hindus from the Valley, nor the Kargil incursion, nor the attack on Mumbai.
After every failure, the Pakistani army gives itself a fig leaf of lies, blaming a non-existent political leadership. There was only a military leadership, in alliance with the US, in Pakistan in 1971, just as there is one now, too. Wonder what mischief the new one is up to.
(The author is editor-in-chief of Tribune, India) .