Memoirs Of A Military Man_stranger In Own Country 6f5u6o

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Memoirs of a military man Print Edition FRIDAY, 13 JULY 2012 AUTHOR / SOURCE : MANI SHANKAR AIYAR Major General Khadim Hussain Raja‟s A Stranger in my own Country, East Pakistan, 1969-71 is a cry of despair from a distant time and even a distant land. For the Pakistan in which General Khadim Raja found himself a stranger no longer exists. Its pretensions were ended on 16 December 1971, when Governor Niazi signed the surrender documents proclaiming a new country, Bangladesh, out of the debris of the illconceived Pakistan artificially created a quarter century earlier “as a homeland for the Muslims of the sub-continent”, to quote General Raja in his final peroration, which it never was and could not have become. Raja was witness to the last days of the Quaid‟s Raj, a witness who had intimations of the coming catastrophe but was swept along to be part of the disaster by his duties as Deputy Martial Law in East Pakistan and commanding officer of the Division occupying Dhaka. His , by no means in the league of Herb Feldman‟s The End and the Beginning or even Raja‟s contemporary, Brigadier Abdur Rahman Siddiqi‟s Pakistan: The End Game, An Onlooker‟s Journal, 1969-71, is valuable as a worm‟s eye view of how Islamabad‟s self-inflicted wounds turned gangrenous, leaving the limb with no alternative but to be cut off. Raja arrived in Khulna towards the last quarter of 1969 to find himself “in an environment so strikingly unfriendly that I felt like a stranger in my own country, and totally unwelcome as a West Pakistani”. A more intelligent worm would have understood that this was because of fundamental flaws in the conception of a nation which was to be “the homeland” for “the Muslims of the sub-continent”, but that never crops up anywhere in this . Instead the blame attaches to “the 20 per cent Hindu minority on Pakistani territory” providing “ideal conditions for infiltration, subversion and sabotage” and exposing the “big labour force in Khulna” to “bribes and subversion by a potent Hindu minority”. And as for “the massive crowds” attending Sheikh Mujib‟s meetings, they all, says Raja, “fell prey to his propaganda, hook, line and sinker”. It is this kind of misreading of the causes of seething discontent, more even than the “evident complacency” of Governor Abdul Monem Khan, that left the (West) Pakistani establishment stranded in the quicksands of Bangladesh‟s assertion of its separate identity, an identity of language, culture, history and secularism far truer to the origins of the end of the beginning, and far more deeprooted, than the bogus, uni-dimensional sectarian assertion of Pakistan as the “homeland of the Muslims of the sub-continent” on which Jinnah had founded his political ambitions. Indeed, it is instructive that General Raja mentions only in ing the Quaid-e-Azam‟s folly in declaring Urdu the sole national language of a country in which no more than 4% people spoke Urdu as their mother tongue (see Farzana Shaikh‟s Making Sense of Pakistan), a declaration made in Dhaka, with supreme lack of sensitivity or understanding, within months of Pakistan coming into being. That, much more than the follies of Yahya Khan, was what led to the historical inevitability of the birth of Bangladesh. Instead, Raja recalls the delinquencies of the comical and cruel cast of characters assembled by Yahya Khan to deal with the crisis in Dhaka: Governor Niazi who asks General Raja for the phone numbers of his Bengali “girl-friends” after having earlier proposed, apparently in all seriousness, the mass violation of Bengali women as the way to teach the Bongs a lesson; the “venality” of Tikka Khan, military chief of the Pakistan forces in East Pakistan; and Yahya himself cavorting in the Governor‟s palace while keeping his principal aides in Dhaka at bay from arrival to departure. I had not realized till I read this slim memoir http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/others/freeforall/120505-memoirs-of-a-militaryman.html

http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/others/freeforall/120505-memoirs-of-a-militaryman.html the extent to which the West Pakistani army officers regarded Dhaka as the Hira Mandi of the East. No wonder then that Raja recalls a meeting soon after his arrival, chaired by the military commander the urbane and sophisticated General Sahibzada Yaqub Khan (later Foreign Minister of Pakistan), at which the former Chief Minister of East Pakistan, Ataur Rahman, gently enquires when the “West Pakistan Army of Occupation” will quit the East Wing. There was “pin-drop silence” in the hall; the statement “elicited not a single response.” Raja says, “Ataur Rahman‟s statement came as a great shock and still rings in my ears. I will never forget the scene as long as I live. It clearly indicated the polarization that had taken place by then.” Raja, of course, is a soldier and can clearly not be held responsible for neither digging deeper nor having any alternative political course to offer. The problem is that Raja is no less a non-comprehending fauji than those who were then running his country. One would, however, have expected Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to devise a more intelligent response. Instead, Raja describes Yahya flying out of Dhaka on 12 January 1971, after the Awami League had “swept the board” on “a tidal wave of public opinion” in the December 1970 elections, direct to Larkana to confer with the Pakistan People‟s Party chairman who had done almost the same in West Pakistan. They were ed in Larkana by the Pakistan Chief of Army Staff, General Abdul Hamid Khan. The trio agreed on “a military crackdown” code-named Operation Blitz. (The sheer unsuitability of using Hitler‟s precedent for their Hitlerian plans seems not to have struck either Yahya or his COAS or even the less illiterate Bhutto.) On the March 1, at Bhutto‟s instance, Yahya postponed the inaugural meeting in Dhaka of the National Assembly (Parliament) scheduled for March 3. Bhutto had earlier ordered his elected not to go to Dhaka. (The only one to defy him was Ahmed Raza Kasuri; for his defiance, Kasuri‟s father was shot dead after Bhutto became the Big Boss in the West; and for that murder, Bhutto paid with his life to Ziaul-Haq. Politics is so much easier in India!) Yahya followed this up with a provocative broadcast on March 6, in which he placed all the blame on Mujib and none on Bhutto. Mujib, therefore, came under intense pressure from within his movement to use the opportunity provided by his public meeting on March 7, to unilaterally declare independence. General Raja claims that twice on March 6, first in the early evening and later in the middle of the night, “emissaries” of Mujib (whose names he cannot now “” nor “have recorded”) turned up at his home clandestinely seeking the General‟s intervention to arrest Mujib and bring him to the safety of the cantonment to protect him from the wrath of his own followers. In point of fact, Mujib‟s oration on March 7, was a model of restraint in the face of severe provocation. Indeed, he categorically asserted that “Pakistan must remain united” and that he was “not seeking separation”. Raja claims the credit for this restraint by saying he told Mujib‟s unnamed “emissaries” that he, Raja, was “convinced that Mujib was a patriot, and that his role as a student leader in Calcutta during the movement and agitation for Pakistan was well-known to me” but that “I would have the army – armed with guns and tanks – standing by in the cantonment, ready to move immediately” if he declared independence, adding “I would have the army march in immediately with orders to wreck the meeting and, if necessary, raze Dhaka to the ground.” If he meant it, frankly I can see no difference between General Khadim Raja and the General Tikka Khan whom he so excoriates. In all fairness, Raja includes in the Appendix to his book an alternative version of the events of March 67, by the Bangladeshi intellectual and patriot, and close adviser to Mujib, Rahman Sobhan, who says, “Subsequent suggestions that he (Mujib) lost control to extremist elements in his party bear no relation to facts, and overlook the point that the crucial issue (relating to whether or not UDI should be declared at the public meeting) had been resolved before March 7, after which Mujib‟s authority on all substantive issues was unchallenged within the party.” Notwithstanding Mujib‟s restraint, General Tikka Khan replaced the moderate General Yaqub the following day. A week later, Yahya arrived and was bluntly told by the Air Force Commander, Air Commodore Masood, that “military action was not the solution”. For his pains, Masood was promptly http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/others/freeforall/120505-memoirs-of-a-militaryman.html

http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/others/freeforall/120505-memoirs-of-a-militaryman.html relieved of his command and replaced by the more accommodating Air Commodore Inam-ul-Haque. Vice iral S.M. Ahsan had quit in disgust a few days earlier. A completely new team, raw, uninformed about the East Wing, led by Tikka Khan whose “knowledge of the province was superficial” and “who obviously had a negative approach to those of us who were at the helm of affairs” took over. And readied for the military crackdown. General Sahibzada Yaqub Khan had already on March 4, decided he had had enough and, in the face of Yahya not confirming that he would soon arrive in Dhaka to defuse the situation, sent in his resignation. Raja claims he and General Rao Farman Ali had also sought Yaqub‟s permission to put in their papers but been advised against doing so. On 17 March, secret orders were issued to Raja and his fellow-Number Two, Rao Farman Ali, orally but not in writing to keep matters even more secret, “to be ready for military action and to prepare a plan accordingly.” Next day, Raja arranged for his wife to “keep our Bengali ADC busy and away from the office” so that they could get on with their planning, a plan that was approved on March 18 “without any discussion”. Bhutto then arrived on March 21, in an atmosphere “where he could have been lynched.” At this point, General Raja‟s reservations over his complicity in what he believed was the wrong strategy, appeared to have peaked. He says a person he “does not want to name” suggested that he and his colleagues “take the military and political leadership, then assembled in Dhaka (that is, Yahya and Bhutto, Niazi and Tikka), into custody and assume control of the country.” Raja apparently “pondered over it”, then decided against doing so as “I would continue with my work in the line of duty”. (Raja does not seem to realise the irony of how he sounds exactly like Hitler‟s generals) Operation Searchlight, as Raja code-named his plan, began by hoodwinking Brigadier M.R. Mozumdar, “the highest-ranking Bengali officer in the province”, then commanding the East Bengal Regimental Centre in Chittagong, into accompanying General Raja to Dhaka where he “was taken into protective custody (?!) and later moved to West Pakistan where he remained until repatriation”. Such chicanery towards a fellow-officer is described by Raja as "a little ruse”. Yahya fled East Pakistan secretly on the night of March 25. Bhutto fled the same evening after watching with quiet satisfaction Dhaka University burn from the roof of the Intercontinental. On March 26, Mujib was arrested by a colonel and lodged “in a girls‟ school.” Meanwhile, in Chittagong, young Major Zia-ur-Rahman (later to be instrumental in the overthrow of Mujib and the wanton massacre of his family) had “killed his Commanding Officer and two other West Pakistani colleagues (and) took up a defensive position and isolated the town from the cantonment." Making full use of the transmitter located on Kaptai road, Zia then “incited the Bengalis to rise in revolt” but General Raja succeeded in striking the station from the air and putting it out of action. Chittagong was retaken on March 29. “The Bangladesh flag (that Zia-ur-Rahman had hoisted) was pulled down and presented to me as a war trophy which I cherish to this day”. That, however, did not help Raja. Niazi, Tikka Khan and Yahya decided two days later to post Raja back to a sinecure in West Pakistan as their way of scorning his warnings and apprehensions. He, therefore, escaped defeat, dishonour and imprisonment. “What happened later is a matter of history”. Yes, indeed, “a matter of history”. But reflecting back on events now four decades old, General Raja allows himself a final chapter, “Last Words…”, given over to asking what happened and why. He wisely sets “the Pakistan nation” the task of “analys(ing) the tragedy in detail, recognis(ing) the mistakes made; and resolv(ing) not to repeat them”. Yet, his own effort to do so remains superficial and episodic, impregnated with blatant bias and perverted racial prejudice. The people of Bangladesh are dismissed as “starved and famished”, “indolent or unemployed”, “very volatile and easily excitable”: “Like most illiterate people, they were also very gullible. If you sneezed loudly enough, you could collect a crowd of several thousands in a few minutes.” And this is the same commentator who deplores the “haughty, colonial attitude” of West Pakistan civil servants allegedly “serving” in East Pakistan. Talk of the kettle calling the pot black. http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/others/freeforall/120505-memoirs-of-a-militaryman.html

http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/others/freeforall/120505-memoirs-of-a-militaryman.html Without really understanding the economics of exploitation which charactersied the relationship between the two wings, Raja touches on the small land-holdings in the East contrasted with the vast holdings of the latifundia who ruled (and sill rule) the roost in rural West Pakistan. He mentions the lack of industrialisation in the East in comparison to the “explosive growth” in the West, but does not appear to comprehend the need to reconcile growth with regional equality and social justice (Montek Ahluwalia, please note), focusing instead on the East Wing‟s comparative lack of natural resources. Of course, he does not even begin to explain why if Bangladesh were such a basket case, it is now doing far better than rump Pakistan in overall economic performance. If Raja‟s economics is deficient, his history is worse. He describes Muslims as being reduced to “serfs and menials” after the Battle of Plassey in 1757 with no sense of the Mughals having reigned for 101 years further – or of the Muslim “serfs and menials” who made up the bulk of the Muslim population even in the Mughal heyday (and suffered the opprobrium of not being „Ashrafi‟, which is how the highborn and largely foreign-descended Muslim aristocracy described itself). Historical illiteracy is taken to further heights (I mean lower depths) by his description of the British having created “a class of Hindu rajas and landlords in Bengal who dominated and exploited the Muslim peasantry”. No mention of the biggest “raja” of them all, Khawaja Nazimuddin, Nawab of Dhaka and second Governor-General of Pakistan, whose oppressed and exploited Muslim peasantry far exceeded that of any “Hindu raja” – or of the Muslim “rajas and landlords” who held sway all over north and central India from the foothills of the Himalayas to the Deccan, or, indeed, of the millions of Muslim “haari” who to this day are in the pawn of Muslim landlords in Pakistani Punjab and Sindh. It is this kind of vulgar communalism that lies at the heart of, and damagingly distorts, whatever insights General Raja may have about why his country split in two. At one point, he seems to recognise that while “Islam was a common bond” it could not make up for “the shortcomings caused by physical separation”. Then he slips into the key factor of “differences in language and culture” but immediately loses track by blaming it all on “the large Hindu minority – about 17 per cent in East Pakistan – (who) took advantage of these differences and did all they could to emphasise and accentuate them.” This is followed by the worst line in a bad book, “The Bengali Hindus became one with the Bengali Muslims, through the medium of the Bengali language and the so-called (sic) Bengali culture”. That forty years after the event and 65 years after the creation of Pakistan, there should still be such blindness as to not recognise the typically South Asian diversity of Bangladesh and India, and, of course, Pakistan itself, tells us more about the fundamental flaws in the very conception of Pakistan than all of General Raja‟s railing against the fripperies and the fopperies of the politicians and military leadership of the Pakistan of that time. Which is why the best thing about this book is the inner flap on the dust jacket which tells us that General Khadim Hussain Raja was born in 1922; which means he was a fully-grown adult of 25 at Partition; 43 when Pakistan went to war with India in 1965, thereby starkly showing the East Pakistanis how vulnerable and exposed they were; 47 when he arrived in Dhaka and 49 when he left. Today, he has crossed 80 and belongs to the generation that is now being phased out of “Pakistanis who were Indians before they became Pakistanis”. From what I know of Pakistanis born immediately before Partition (as I was) or well after Pakistan came into being, they are Pakistanis because they are Pakistanis and have no need to define themselves in negative as being Pakistani only because they are emphatically “not Indians”. Few of them would harbour the kind of communal prejudice that permeates General Raja‟s thinking; indeed, a former Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, born in the same year as I was, pointed out to me the other day that nearly 90 per cent of Pakistanis have never met a Hindu in their lives and, indeed, that I was the first Hindu he had ever met when we arrived together at the same Cambridge college in the same year (1961). Even in the Pakistan armed forces, let alone vast swathes of Pakistani pubic opinion, Raja‟s view that “The enemy has not given up. He is now trying to break up the remnants of Pakistan” would sound Jurassic Park. We have to thrust the Khadim Rajas and the generals of his time http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/others/freeforall/120505-memoirs-of-a-militaryman.html

http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/others/freeforall/120505-memoirs-of-a-militaryman.html into the dustbin of history to move towards a sane and sensible relationship between our two great nations. Our biggest mistake would be to think, as most Indians do, that the Raja syndrome is the typical Pakistan syndrome of the 21st century. The author is a former Indian diplomat turned politician. He is a member of the Indian National Congress party and was a part of first (2004–2009) Cabinet of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh

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