We fought for their freedom. They fought to regain it
The ignominious and precipitous fall of Sheikh Hasina from her high pedestal as Prime Minister of Bangladesh is a reminder to many autocratic world leaders that when they are surrounded by sycophants they cannot hear the voice of the people, and blinded by power they cannot read the writing on the wall, till the gates of their palaces are breached by enraged citizens.
History is in front of us showing how violent upheavals overthrow tyrannical regimes, and yet autocrats are delusional that they can rule forever — till events in a karmic twist strike them.
As I read the newspapers and watched the young nation caught in the throes of tumultuous events to overthrow an autocrat, and even as I write these lines, memories and images of the 1971 India-Pakistan War, or the Bangladesh Liberation War, flitted past me.
I had just passed out of the Indian Military Academy (IMA) at Dehradun. I was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the regiment of artillery and was undergoing training in gunnery at the school of artillery, Devlali (Deolali), Maharashtra. Our training was abruptly cut short, and we were dispatched to the eastern and western front of what was then known as East Pakistan and West Pakistan. I was all of 20 years, and like my other batchmates ‘young in blood, and green in judgement’.
I took a train to join my unit, a mountain regiment which had moved to Siliguri situated at the strategic ‘chicken neck’ separated between East Pakistan and Bhutan, and was the only link to India’s North-Eastern states. Martial law was imposed on East Pakistan a year earlier, and the Pakistani military’s ruthless and blood-thirsty rule saw in total of over 10 million people cross the border into India. The refugees were in camps in all eight border states. More people kept streaming in every day threatening and undermining the integrity of the Indian State and the livelihoods of its people.
A revolutionary underground rebel group called Mukti Bahini, supported by India, sprung up to fight the Pakistan Army. Tens of thousands of citizens were put in jail. Villages were pillaged by the Pakistani forces and atrocities against women were rampant. The people were up in arms. Among their leaders was a fiery, fearless, and charismatic politician, and Member of Parliament Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who demanded independence for East Pakistan.
War was in the air! Every train that headed toward the western and eastern fronts was carrying armed troops, guns, trucks, and tanks under camouflage nets. The railway stations wherever the train stopped had a buzz of milling soldiers — of young, fresh recruits, and veterans who had seen action in the 1962 and 1965 wars — huddled together and a palpable electrifying, indescribable, excitement, and sensation could be felt.
My battery of six mountain howitzer guns manned by 150 fine troops and me along with them plunged into the war in support of an infantry battalion. The initial battles were fierce, and the Pakistani battalion fought to the last man. Before long, the dissolute, disillusioned, and dejected men in uniform — a Pakistan Army bereft of a noble cause — collapsed before a superior, better-led, and better-supplied Indian Army and the invaluable support of the local populace. The people of East Pakistan yearned for freedom — the insatiable desire of humanity — from the oppression of the Pakistan Army. The Pakistan Army was also cut off from their distant lands, leaders, and logistics.
The war that began on December 3, 1971, ended on both fronts on December 16. Around 100,000 Pakistani soldiers laid down their arms and surrendered to the Indian Army led by General Sam Manekshaw. There was jubilation and the resounding cries of Bangladesh Zindabad, Indira Gandhi Zindabad, and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman reverberated over the free skies of a new Bangladesh. A new nation was born, and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman became its leader.
On August 5, I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my heart watching the helicopter carrying Sheikh Hasina out of harm’s way from her own people to her exile in India. The father liberated the people from Islamabad’s despotic rule and became their leader; decades later the daughter, who is accused of being a despot herself, has fled the same country. It’s a cruel irony, and a shameful end. Hasina’s legacy will now be one that is diametrically opposite to her father’s legacy.
(The writer is a soldier, farmer, and entrepreneur)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.