Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. 358 pp. (Maps, illus.) US$29.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-674-72864-6.
This book deftly and intricately shows the various hesitations, strategies, machinations, contexts, geopolitical interests, complex mixture of motives, strategic interactions, and unintended consequences that went into understanding the events of East Pakistan and the subsequent independence of Bangladesh during the nine months from March 1971. The book outlines the games of chess that were being played by various actors and countries in determining their support, hesitation, and encouragement to the movements in East Pakistan, or to the activities of the West Pakistani government. Based on exhaustive archival research in various countries, this book brings out the intricate details and behind-the-scenes manoeuvres of the big stories that are intertwined with the known and lesser-known political narratives of 1971.
The prologue and the first two chapters map the situation in 1971 leading to the chilling events of Operation Searchlight on March 25 by the Pakistani army in Bangladesh. The subsequent chapters outline the role of the Indian government and the varied reasons for its support and scepticism of the movements and struggles in Bangladesh; the Kissinger-Nixon and US government machinations over its support for Pakistan in order to seek an alliance with China; and the reluctance of the Russians in supporting Bangladesh. The chapter titled “Poster Child and Pariah” shows how “Bangladesh distilling the hopes and fears of the swinging sixties” (147) and the atrocities relating to the war catches international attention. The next chapter outlines the different diplomatic manoeuvres undertaken by varied countries; the complicated strategies that determined China’s concerns; and increased support by the Indian government followed by the victory of the Indian army over the Pakistani military strength. The epilogue maps the impact of 1971 on the Bangladeshi political trajectory.
The book is fantastic in locating the war of 1971 within varied sets of local and international contexts: namely public opinion, globalization, humanitarian politics, and sixties counterculture, especially music, the global and Pakistani student revolts of 1968, and diasporas. The events of Biafra, the Vietnam War, international and internal dynamics within the White House and its need to align with China, communal politics in India, the dynamics of Congress politics, and Indira Gandhi’s advisors—all of these factors impinged on the course of events in 1971 and its consequences thereafter. The book shows how the Russian government did not want Pakistan to break up and rather than Cold War realpolitik (which was the main reason for USA’s involvement with the 1971 war), it was concerned about Chinese influence in East Pakistan. Similarly India’s scepticism and support for Bangladesh liberation waxed and waned in the early months of the liberation struggle and only gained momentum in the last few months of 1971. Overall, the book brings out the central role of refugees as political tools and shows that relationships with China were pivotal to the diplomatic manoeuvres relating to 1971.
The book makes a substantial contribution to the disciplines of international relations and diplomacy. However one of the conspicuous absences in this book is the lack of reference to the extensive history of rape during 1971 and how it became a tool for international relations. The issue of rape is mentioned once in the epilogue when referring to collaborators who are being tried by the current Bangladesh war crimes tribunal. There is no dearth of images, photographs and press reports on rapes during 1971 and the raped woman emerged as a mobilizing figure for various national and international actors. In the documentary Dateline Bangladesh (1972), Indira Gandhi, in making a case for India’s humanitarian and military intervention in the Bangladesh war said: “Shall we sit and watch their women get raped?” On The Frost Programme (1972), Sheikh Mujib agonized over how Muslim men could rape Muslim women. In fact Raghavan, when referring to the existing scholarship on 1971 relating to memory, violence and identity (5), seems to suggest, disdainfully, that “these themes detracted from a serious engagement with the staid but ineluctable questions on the causes, course and consequences of the conflict”(5). In fact the global history of Bangladesh is not confined to the diplomatic games of chess described in this book. The history of rape during 1971 is intrinsically a global one given the intricacies of abortion and adoption, and the images and photographs – all of which involved individuals from across the world and a global audience (Nayanika Mookherjee, The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War of 1971, Duke University Press, 2015).
There is a brief reference to the East Pakistanis being “animal cunning” (46) but the Bengali Muslim discourse is not further expanded. However this point is raised in the case of the Pakistani army’s perception of themselves with regard to the Indian army. Following from the British martial policy one Muslim soldier is deemed to be equal to ten Hindu soldiers. However that this policy itself is deemed to be a reason for the instances of rape in the case of 1971 is lost on the author. According to Bangadeshi accounts,
the Pakistani army perpetrated the rapes so as to make better Muslims of the ‘half Muslim’ Hinduized Bengalis of East Pakistan. (Nayanika Mookherjee, “The absent piece of skin: Sexual violence in the Bangladesh war and its gendered and racialised inscriptions,” in Modern Asian Studies 46, no. 6 [2012]: 1572–1601). The book also remains uncritical of Khandaker Mushtaque (218), needs to elaborate more on the Militant leaders of March 1971 (mentioned throughout chapter 2) and there is inadequate (76–77) reference to the Indian government’s position on 1971 vis-à-vis the Naxalite movement occurring at the same time in West Bengal.
One of the notable arguments that the book makes is that if India had intervened earlier it would have helped avoid such hardship in Bangladesh. At the same time the book contends that the emergence of independent Bangladesh is not a given but the result of historical chance and conjunctures that went beyond South Asia (265). More controversially, the book argues that the tensions that existed between various actors in independent Bangladesh emerged during those nine months. According to Raghavan, this in turn made it inevitable that the liberation war created the groundwork for the failure of democracy in Bangladesh (272). This argument attributes a minimal role to Bangladeshis in their own liberation struggle. Overall, it is the human stories of the diplomatic decisions taken and the nature of the unintended consequences emerging out of this humanitarian crisis of 1971 that come through most strongly in this book.
Nayanika Mookherjee
Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom
pp. 952-955