The Long Wait

The Mukti Bahini cadres were the ‘eyes and ears’ of the Indian Army during the early days of the Bangladesh Campaign. They ensured that we did not have to manoeuvre in a vacuum. That was their greatest contribution in our victory.1From an interview on 12 October 2014 with Lieutenant General Shamsher Mehta, a key participant in the race to Dacca.

– LIEUTENANT GENERAL SHAMSHER MEHTA (RETD)

THE MUKTI BAHINI AND COVERT OPERATIONS

Initially formed as the Mukti Fauj or the Mukti Bahini, or simply the ‘Freedom Fighters’ when translated into English, the force primarily comprised the armed organizations that fought alongside the Indian armed forces against the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War. It was dynamically formed by Bengali regulars and civilians after the proclamation of Bangladesh’s independence on 26 March 1971. Subsequently, by mid-April 1971, the former members of the East Pakistan armed forces formed the ‘Bangladesh Armed Forces’ and M.A.G. Osmani assumed their command. The civilian groups continued to assist the armed forces during the war. After the war ‘Mukti Bahini’ became the general term to refer to all forces of former East Pakistani origin fighting against the Pakistani armed forces during the Bangladesh liberation war. Inspired in part by the revolutionary Che Guevara, the Mukti Bahini operated as a highly effective guerrilla force to keep the Pakistan Army on tenterhooks.

The ‘soldier nucleus’ of the Mukti Bahini comprised regular officers and men of the East Bengal Rifles (EBR) who rebelled against the Pakistan Army after the crackdown of March 1971. Led by commanders like Colonel Osmani and Major Zia-ur-Rahman (later president of Bangladesh), they operated in a diffused manner alongside local commanders like ‘Tiger’ Siddiqui with two primary objectives. The first was to exert pressure on the Pakistan Army from the periphery using Indian territory as firm bases; the second and more dangerous one was to chip away at the core of Pakistan’s defences in the heartland by carrying out hit-and-run attacks and then melting away into the countryside.

India’s role in indoctrinating, training and equipping the Mukti Bahini prior to the commencement of actual operations in December 1971 is well documented from both the intelligence and military angle. It had identified as early as 1968 that East Pakistan offered immense potential for covert action – this emerged as one of the two main tasks assigned by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). R&AW was hived off from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to develop covert capability; East Pakistan was one of its first tests.2B. Raman, The Kao Boys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane (New Delhi: Lancer, 2007), p. 9. The book not only offers an insider’s view of covert operations in Bangladesh but also an overview of the growth of an organization that has led the development of covert operations in Indian statecraft. After influencing sections of the East Bengali intelligentsia to rise against the dominating West Pakistani leadership, Mujib’s electoral success and Yahya’s crackdown provided the much needed fillip for expansion of these operations. Much before the Indian Army took over the role of training the Mukti Bahini, R&AW had already commenced training small groups of volunteers and pushing them inside East Pakistan. When large elements of the East Bengal Rifles revolted and crossed over to India, the Indian Army took over the mandate of converting this guerrilla force into one, which was capable of supporting it during full-fledged operations.

Contrary to rather far-fetched claims by Niazi that the total strength of the Mukti Bahini was over 2,50,000 trained and armed fighters,3Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998), p. 69. The book is an interesting and detailed ‘personal defence’ of his stint as commander of the Eastern garrison in 1971, and it must be read thus, and not as an authentic history of a Pakistani perspective of the birth of Bangladesh. a more realistic figure pointed at a little over a two-division-sized force of regulars comprising remnants of the East Pakistan Rifles, East Bengal Regiment, civil police and around 50,000 irregulars and guerrillas trained by India to wage war on Niazi’s formations.4S.N. Prasad and U.P. Thapliyal, ed., The India-Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 2014), p. 47–51. Split into battalion groups along the three-sided border with India with specific sectors and sub-sectors assigned to each group,5The Mukti Bahini was divided into eleven sectors under three major formations called Z, S and K forces under the command of Majors Zia-ur-Rahman, Shafiullah and Khalid Musharraf respectively. the Mukti Bahini initially operated through the Border Security Force (BSF) sectors; they later merged effortlessly into the various Indian Army formations when they massed along the border in preparation for the final assault into East Pakistan.6Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998), p. 72. Significant credit for raising the war-fighting potential of this force must go to Indian field commanders like Brigadier Shahbeg Singh Paul and Brigadier Sant Singh, who worked tirelessly with Mukti Bahini commanders like Major Zia-ur-Rahman to create brigade-sized forces which had the confidence of taking on fortresses at places like Kamalpur and Jessore.7General V.K. Singh, Courage and Conviction: An Autobiography (New Delhi: Aleph, 2013), p. 54–57. The book has an extremely well-written chapter on his experiences of the Bangladesh campaign as a young lieutenant. His unit was deployed in a sector in Meghalaya where there was intense Mukti Bahini activity. Shahbeg would later gain notoriety for his role as the principal military commander of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Sikh terrorist leader who fought the Indian Army in the early 1980s before being killed inside the Golden Temple during Operation Bluestar in 1984.

Most accounts of the growth of the Mukti Bahini do not do justice to its naval and air wings. Mukti Bahini frogmen operated with freedom in the riverine areas of Chittagong, Chalna and Khulna and played an important role in interdicting supplies coming in from the sea to support the occupation forces in the eastern part of Bangladesh. Led by Bengali sailors and submariners who defected from the Pakistan Navy, particularly from the Daphne class submarine PNS Mangro,8S.N. Prasad and U.P. Thapliyal, ed., The India-Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 2014), p. 57. they specialized in mining water channels and placing limpet mines, causing incalculable damage to Pakistan’s trade and shipping.9Vice Admiral Mihir Roy, War in the Indian Ocean (New Delhi: Lancer Publishers, 1995), p. 148–150. Lloyds of London hiked its insurance rates for the area after the frogmen sunk over 1,00,000 tons of merchant shipping from July to November 1971, and damaged another 50,000 tons.10Ibid., p. 170–171. The naval element of the Mukti Bahini was later called Force Alpha as it integrated with the Indian Navy as the war progressed.

Many Bengali officers and men from the Pakistan Air Force and Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) joined the Mukti Bahini and quickly made the transition to being ‘land warriors’. Many of them, like Wing Commander Bashar, were sector commanders and participated in raids. However, the aspiration to form an air wing remained – it only needed some support from India in the form of an airfield and a few aircraft to fructify into a reality. It was not long before Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal, himself a Bengali, realized the potential of such a force and gifted a few aircraft and assigned a base to ‘Kilo Force’, as the fledgling Bangladesh Air Force came to be known in late September 1971.11P.V.S. Jagan Mohan and Samir Chopra, Eagles over Bangladesh (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2013), p. 45–49. Operating out of Dimapur, a small airstrip in Nagaland, Kilo Force was commanded by Group Captain Khandokar, who later became the first chief of the Bangladesh Air Force. It had on its inventory a Dakota freighter aircraft, an Otter light transport aircraft and an Alouette helicopter. The Otter and Alouette were suitably modified to fire rockets and guns: they would extensively take part in ground support operations during the conflict. Group Captain Chandan Singh, a highly accomplished transport pilot of the IAF and station commander of the air force station at Jorhat in Assam, mentored the fleet with an ace IAF helicopter pilot, Flight Lieutenant Singla, attached as an instructor.12Ibid. With his eye for talent, Lal picked Chandan Singh as his key interface man with the Indian Army’s IV Corps, which would go on to blaze new trails of joint operations during the ensuing conflict.

To suggest that all was well between the Mukti Bahini and their Indian trainers would be unrealistic considering that by September 1971, the Mukti Bahini was getting restless and straining at the leash imposed by the Indian Army. There were reports of the Mukti Bahini complaining to Indira Gandhi through the R&AW about the conservative approach of the commander of the Eastern Army Command, Lieutenant General Aurora, in prosecuting the covert war. Indian Army trainers, on the other hand, were deeply sceptical about the sustained fighting ability of the Mukti Bahini when faced with regular troops of the Pakistan Army in entrenched defences. However, these remained minor pinpricks and, to their credit, the Mukti Bahini and the Indian Army leadership never lost sight of the final objective.

A story that must be told is that of the role of the Special Frontier Force (SFF) in covert operations in the marshy hill tracts of Chittagong during November 1971. A force mainly comprising Tibetan commandos raised in the aftermath of the 1962 conflict with China to conduct covert operations in Tibet, the SFF was tasked to interdict the Pakistani brigade in the Chittagong region and ensure that Pakistani forces did not open an escape route into Burma. A secondary mission was to ensure that insurgents from India’s north-east were prevented from exploiting the situation and operating from camps in East Pakistan. Operating in eight teams under the leadership of Major General S. S. Uban with IAF helicopter support for insertion of troops, the force caused havoc amongst the Pakistani ranks and had degraded their fighting ability significantly by the time regular Indian forces moved into the area. The exploits of the force have not been declassified but they have been obliquely referred to in a book written by the force commander.13The exploits of the Tibetan commandos of the SFF in the run-up to the 1971 war have been covered in the book Phantoms of Chittagong by Major General S.S. Uban. The website [www.bharatrakshak.com](http://www.bharatrakshak.com) also covers it briefly. Taken from [www.rediff.com/news/2003/jan/08spec.htm?zcc=rl](http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jan/08spec.htm?zcc=rl) (accessed 29 January 2014).

THE PLAYERS

The larger-than-life personalities of Indira Gandhi and General Manekshaw (later Field Marshal) have dominated the strategic discourse of the 1971 war. Not having commanded forces in battle in the 1947–48 conflict with Pakistan as many of his contemporaries did, and missing the action in 1962 because of falling out of favour with the defence minister and the army chief, Manekshaw had a point to prove. With his flagging career having been resuscitated after the 1962 debacle, he was given command of Eastern Army Command in 1964 to repair the damage done after the Chinese stormed into NEFA. Little did he realize that fate would keep him out of action in the 1965 war too as India did not open a second front in the east except for brief battles in the air. It is in such circumstances that when presented with an opportunity to do battle, he was determined to make it count!

Sharing centre stage with them, however, were about a dozen other key players. Among them was the earthy Jagjivan Ram, a shrewd political associate of Indira Gandhi who replaced Y.B. Chavan as the defence minister in 1970. With his predecessor having done all the hard work in rebuilding India’s armed forces and somewhat restoring its pride and elan, Jagjivan Ram delegated complete responsibility to the service chiefs and established a close personal relationship with each one of them. By doing so, he won their respect for his astute and ‘hands off style of functioning’. Even the Indian Army’s field commanders like Major General W.A.G. Pinto were impressed with the manner in which he connected with the men, visited troops on the front line with his wife, gamely agreeing to be driven around rough terrain in the commander’s jeep.14Interview with Lieutenant General W.A.G. Pinto (retd). He was the quiet orchestrator of 1971.

Like Manekshaw, Pratap Chunder Lal had gone through a rocky decade prior to being appointed as the air chief. A victim of Defence Minister Krishna Menon’s high-handedness, Lal’s services were terminated in September 1962 over a disagreement with Menon on replacements for the ageing Dakota aircraft while on deputation to the Indian Airlines Corporation. Luckily for Lal, he was reinstated in December 1962 after Krishna Menon fell from grace in the wake of the 1962 debacle. After highly successful stints as air officer maintenance, vice chief of air staff during the 1965 war, and chairman of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, he took over as chief of air staff in July 1969. By then this intellectual and ‘thinking airman’ had acquired a comprehensive view of what needed to be done to ensure that the IAF emerged as an equally important element of joint operations. His focus was on building of new airfields, erecting concrete shelters for aircraft and improving the air defence network. He was the transformational leader the IAF was looking for.

The Indian Navy was seething after it was kept out of action during the 1965 war for no fault of its own, and like many senior naval officers, Admiral Nanda, the chief of naval staff, was determined to make amends for the ‘no show’ in 1965. Baptized into the navy during WW II and having seen the famous ‘revolt’ of 1946 as a young officer, he gained vital operational experience on India’s first warship, INS Delhi. Nanda’s major contribution was in convincing the political establishment that maritime power would have a major role to play if India wanted to establish clear military supremacy over Pakistan. He, more than anyone else, infused self-belief in the Indian Navy and propagated an offensive mindset amongst his operational planners.15From a book review of Admiral S.M. Nanda’s book The Man Who Bombed Karachi, by Ashok Mehta, (accessed 10 February 2014). His insistence on creating a reasonably potent eastern fleet and unleashing INS Vikrant on Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar and Khulna ports despite the submarine threat from the Pakistan Navy was one of the defining moments of the war.

Though intelligence gathering in the western sector remained as scanty as it was in 1965, particularly when it came to tracking the deployment of Pakistan’s 1 and 6 Armoured Divisions, significant credit for the success of covert operations in Bangladesh must go to R.N. Kao, the chief of R&AW, the hush-hush outfit that was hived out of the Intelligence Bureau in 1968 specifically for the conduct of covert operations. A close confidant of Indira Gandhi, the flamboyant Kao came into his own during the period April–December 1971 as he orchestrated a psychological warfare campaign in East Pakistan and set the ball rolling for the training of the Mukti Bahini in camps which were set up secretly in the eastern parts of India. His role has to be seen in the light of Indira Gandhi’s desire to commence the Bangladesh campaign in April 1971. When Manekshaw was candid enough to indicate that he was not ready, Kao stepped in to keep the East Pakistan pot boiling till the army chief was fully prepared.16For a detailed review of R&AW operations in Bangladesh and the legacy left behind by its founding director, see B. Raman, The Kao Boys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane (New Delhi: Lancer, 2007), p. 9–14.

Two distinguished civil servants merit special attention for their enabling role as effective and approachable interfaces between the military and the political establishment. They were P.N. Haksar, the principal private secretary to the PM and D.P. Dhar, who headed the Foreign Policy Planning Committee during the run-up to the conflict. These two kept the service chiefs continuously updated on diplomatic parleys and political discussions through the chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. It was teamwork of the highest order and very rarely was it to be repeated during future contingencies.17Haksar Papers, NMML.

The Indian Army’s strategy was to exploit the inroads made by the Mukti Bahini and other covert operators, and overwhelm East Pakistan with a multidirectional offensive which would result in the capitulation of all the fortress defences put together by Niazi. Dacca was never the initial objective and it was only the spectacular advance of the Indian Army in the IV Corps sector and the success of the Tangail airdrop that resulted in Dacca emerging as a possible objective.18While Lieutenant General J.F.R. Jacob, the chief of staff of the Indian Army’s Eastern Command, takes credit for the initial focus on Dacca as the final objective of the Indian Army’s offensive, the COAS, General Manekshaw, overruled him from Army HQ by laying down more conservative military objectives. These included the capture of key towns like Jessore, Khulna and Chittagong. See J.F.R. Jacob, Surrender at Dacca: The Birth of a Nation (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997), p. 126–27. Both these operations are discussed in subsequent chapters. Concurrently, the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy were to exert overwhelming pressure from the air and sea, which would result in a psychological capitulation of the enemy.

Much to the displeasure of Lieutenant General K.P. Candeth, the GOC-in-C, Western Army Command, his formations were to adopt a ‘holding strategy’ in the west considering that there was near parity of forces19Lieutenant General K.P. Candeth, The Western Front: The India Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: The English Book Depot, 1997), p. 18. and because both sides had created linear defences that would have required overwhelming force superiority to ensure a decisive victory. ‘Hold, probe, advance and hold’ was the mantra in the west as part of what later came to be known as the ‘Offensive Defensive Strategy’ of Manekshaw. Aggressive field commanders like Major Generals Zorawar Chand Bakshi and W.A.G. Pinto were hampered by this strategy and the latter called it ‘a neither here nor there strategy’.20Interview with Lieutenant General W.A.G. Pinto.

The IAF had concentrated its forces in the east with four main objectives. First was to achieve air superiority over the East Pakistan skies by overwhelming the single Sabre squadron, either in aerial combat, or destroying them on ground. This, the IAF argued, would enable the Indian Army to progress its operations unhampered by aerial interference. Surprisingly, cratering of Tezgaon airfield at Dacca, the home base of the Sabre squadron, was not initially considered a means to achieve the first objective. This would result in a lot of unnecessary air effort being wasted on the first two days of the war before the IAF struck on the right weapon to render Dacca airfield unusable. Second was to preserve its own air assets against aerial attack with robust all-round air defence. Third was to support ground operations with responsive close air support, effective interdiction of rear echelons and supply lines that connected the various East Pakistani fortresses and enclaves. The last objective was to aid in vertical envelopment of enemy positions by special helicopter-borne (SHBO) and airborne operations. In the western sector, the strategy was a little different with air defence occupying primacy; interdiction and close air support came next; and offensive strikes against Pakistani airfields and other strategic targets came last in order of priority.21Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer, 1986), p. 174. Lal has particularly emphasized in his book that India’s air strategy was different from the one prosecuted in 1965. It was discussed extensively at the annual Air Force Commanders Conference in 1969 and highlights his participative decision-making style.

The Indian Navy’s objectives were equally offensive and reflected its impatience to be counted. The strategy in the east was to completely dominate the Bay of Bengal and choke the coastal approaches to East Pakistan. Other naval objectives were to cripple the Pakistan Navy in Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar, Chalna and Khulna with a combination of surface and air actions from the aircraft carrier; and a last-minute plan to carry out an amphibious assault operation towards the closing stages of the conflict.22Vice Admiral Mihir Roy, War in the Indian Ocean (New Delhi: Lancer Publishers, 1995), p. 214–15. The defensive tasks were primarily directed towards protecting the aircraft carrier from submarine attack. On the western seaboard the role of the Western Naval Command was to dominate the Arabian Sea and attempt an economic blockade of Pakistan by attacking Karachi. Offensive forays towards the Makaran coast were planned with a combination of surface attacks and stealthy submarine patrols.23Admiral S.N. Kohli, We Dared: Maritime Operations in the 1971 Indo-Pak War (New Delhi: Lancer, 1989), p. 36. Defensive tasks included protecting the ports of Kandla, Okha, Dwarka and Bombay.

While ‘Sam’ Manekshaw dominated the formulation of joint plans, the air and naval chiefs were assertive enough. There was some strain alright, but both Lal and Nanda were low key and mature commanders who managed their relationship with ‘Sam’ without allowing it to affect preparations for the conflict. An interesting anecdote in July or August reveals this, albeit with a tinge of humour. Manekshaw had called for a final presentation of plans and after the air force and naval plans had been presented, he announced, ‘That’s it, gentleman – we seem to have everything in place.’ While his fellow chiefs, Lal and Nanda, got up to leave, a hand shot up from amongst the motley bunch of senior staff officers present at the briefing. It was Air Marshal Malse, the feisty Maratha who was the Air Officer-in-charge Maintenance (AOM) at Air HQ, and one of Lal’s key advisors during the 1971 war. A fighter pilot who had converted to transport aircraft midway through his career, Malse had been the vice chief before being asked by Lal to take over as AOM to streamline the maintenance branch in the IAF and prepare it for war. ‘Sir, what about the army plans?’ There was a stunned silence in the room and, to Manekshaw’s credit, he recovered quickly and said, ‘Ah, how did we forget, we will have it tomorrow at the same time.’24From an interview with Brigadier Palsokar (retd) in January 2013. The event was narrated by Air Marshal Malse to Brig Palsaokar.

SHAPING THE EASTERN BATTLEFRONT

By October 1971, the Mukti Bahini was ready to test Niazi’s defences along the border. Divided into eleven sectors,25S.N. Prasad and U.P. Thapliyal, ed., The India-Pakistan War of 1971 (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 2014), p. 49–50. it made regular incursions into East Pakistan, conducting harassment raids and intelligence- gathering forays. However, whenever it attempted to hold territory or frontally attack the well-entrenched Pakistan Army positions, it suffered attrition and had to fall back into Indian territory.

Early November 1971 saw an escalation in violence and military action at multiple points along the India–East Pakistan border with the Indian Army complementing the Mukti Bahini at a number of places with troops and firepower. It was as though Indira Gandhi had told her commanders to step up the military pressure during her absence from the country. Though she was on a whirlwind tour of the West seemingly to try and prevent war and occupy the moral high ground, in actuality she was shrewd enough to realize that war was inevitable and that her visits were merely to legitimize the military action that was to follow.26Indira Gandhi’s international forays to explain India’s case are vividly described in the following books: Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi, p. 457; Gary Bass, The Blood Telegram, p. xvii and p. 243–45; D.R. Mankekar, Pakistan Cut to Size, p. 32–34.

Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, the soft-spoken commander of the Eastern Army Command, had divided the eastern war zone into four sectors. The north-west sector comprised the Siliguri corridor and the Cooch Behar district on the Indian side, and the towns of Rangpur, Rajshahi and Bogra in East Pakistan. The area of operation was boxed between the Ganga, Teesta and Jamuna rivers and had numerous tributaries of the rivers criss-crossing the countryside. Operations in the area were assigned to XXXIII Corps of the Indian Army led by Lieutenant General M.L. Thapan, a seasoned WW II veteran and commander of 26 Division – a division that saw extensive action during the Sialkot offensive in the 1965 war with Pakistan. Comprising two homogeneous mountain divisions, one of which was undermanned, and a third division of mixed forces, it was opposed by a regular division of the Pakistan Army (16 Division), which was stretched across a frontage of almost 350 km.

The western sector was psychologically an important sector with the bustling Indian metropolis, Calcutta, barely 100 km away from the border, while Jessore and Khulna were important garrisons for the Pakistan Army. This sector was dominated by the mighty River Padma27As the Ganga enters Bangladesh, it is known as the Padma. The mighty Brahmaputra becomes the Jamuna. The combined flow known as the Meghna drains into the Bay of Bengal at the eastern flank of the huge Ganga delta which extends almost 400 km from Calcutta in the west to Chittagong in the east. and its tributaries as it rushed towards the Bay of Bengal. Offensive operations in this sector were assigned to the Indian Army’s II Corps led by Lt General T. N. Raina. It was Raina’s brigade that put up a stout display against the Chinese in the Chushul battle of 1962. He had two well-oiled infantry divisions (4 Mountain Division of Assal Uttar fame and 9 Infantry Division) with a regiment of tanks to take on the lone Pakistan Army division (9 Division) ranged against him.

Covering the largest area and varied terrain ranging from the mountains of the Chittagong hills, to the coastal regions of Cox’s Bazar and the plains of Sylhet and Comilla, the main punch of the Indian Army rested with IV Corps with its HQ at Agartala. With three full divisions, three squadrons of armour and the entire complement of approximately eight battalions of the East Bengal Regiment, Lieutenant General Sagat Singh, the whiskey-drinking, tough and battle-tested corps commander in the Patton mould, was supremely confident of dominating the eastern approaches to Dacca and taking control of the Chittagong, Ashuganj and Sylhet sectors. His innovative combat leadership would prove to be decisive in the final result of the Bangladesh campaign. Facing him was one regular division (14 Division) and elements of two ad hoc and hastily assembled divisions of little consequence (36 and 39 Divisions). Of these, 36 Division was virtually static around Dacca and its neighbourhood fortress of Nawabganj.

The northern flank of advance was looked after by 101 Communication Zone, which was essentially an administrative formation, but innovatively reinforced with fighting units to create an undersized divisional force. Initially commanded by Major General Gurbux Singh Gill, an unfortunate accident on 6 December put him out of action. He was replaced by Major General Nagra, who commanded the formation with distinction for the rest of the war. The formation was a brainchild of Manekshaw, who himself had spent many years as the commander of the Eastern Army Command and knew the area like the back of his hand. After a couple of bruising early battles, the formation would surprisingly deliver the coup de grâce at Dacca as one of its brigades would link up with an airborne force to race past a lone and helpless Pakistani brigade at Mymensingh. Manekshaw had rightly assessed that to overwhelm the Pakistani defences he needed to have a northern hook to his offensive. It was through this zone that he launched a psychologically decisive airborne operation that would go on to influence the final battle for Dacca.28The force comparison has been extracted from a plethora of Indian and Pakistani sources, and a lone but highly accurate Western monograph. See Major General Sukhwant Singh (retd), India’s Wars since Independence (New Delhi: Lancer, 2009); Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998); John. H. Gill, An Atlas of the 1971 India-Pakistan War: The Creation of Bangladesh (Washington: NDU Press, 2003).

Lieutenant General A.A.K. (Tiger) Niazi, a veteran of the Burma campaign and the 1965 war with India,29For a detailed profile of his early career, see Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998), p. 1–32. was in command of all field forces in East Pakistan as commander, Eastern Command. An accomplished field commander with gallantry awards in all the conflicts he had participated in, he was the ‘fall guy’ chosen by Ayub Khan to try and orchestrate a battle he knew was already lost. Though on paper Niazi had three divisions and had hastily formed two more for the defence of the Sylhet and Comilla sectors, he committed the cardinal mistake of ‘spreading his forces too thin’ and adopting a ‘fortress strategy’ without having the firepower to cause sufficient attrition when these fortresses were attacked. His strategy was based on thinly spread forward defences, which would fall back to fortresses like Khulna, Rangpur, Mymensingh, Sylhet and Comilla. This left his defences vulnerable to being bypassed as he hardly had any armour and offensive air assets to block these bypassing manoeuvres.30Ibid., p. 106–08. Also see John. H. Gill, An Atlas of the 1971 India-Pakistan War: The Creation of Bangladesh (Washington: NDU Press, 2003), p. 17–20.

In the air, too, the IAF had built up its forces methodically and the only PAF air defence radar at Dacca was kept on its toes by the sheer volume of operational flying done by the IAF in the months leading up to the war. Reflecting the improved synergy between the three services, most airfields in the eastern sector had adequate offensive punch and were carefully chosen to support the ground offensive.31See map depicting ‘Airfields and IAF units in the eastern sector’ in P.V.S. Jagan Mohan and Samir Chopra, Eagles over Bangladesh (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2013), p. v. While the fighter squadrons at the airfields of Panagarh, Dum Dum and Kalaikunda were allocated forces to support II Corps operations, the north Bengal airfields of Bagdogra and Hashimara had a good mix of air defence and ground attack capability in the form of Gnats and Hunters to support XXXIII Corps and 101 Communication Zone operations. Similarly, air assets at Gauhati, Kumbhigram and Agartala in the form of fighter squadrons and helicopter units were to prove invaluable in providing support to Sagat Singh’s IV Corps and operations by 101 Communication Zone. Though the forces allocated during the actual conflict were not specifically meant for a particular corps, keeping in mind the flexibility of air power and its ability to influence far-flung battles in multiple corps zones, great thought was given to basing forces to remain synchronous with the ground battle.32Air Chief Marshal P.C. Lal, My Years with the IAF (New Delhi: Lancer, 1986), p. 187–88.

The Indian Navy too revealed its aggressive hand early enough by complementing the meagre resources of Eastern Naval Command by transferring its sole aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, along with two potent frigates, INS Brahmaputra and INS Beas, from the western fleet to its eastern fleet, much to the disappointment of the commander of the Western Naval Command, Vice Admiral S.N. Kohli.33Admiral S.N. Kohli, We Dared: Maritime Operations in the 1971 Indo-Pak War (New Delhi: Lancer, 1989), p. 32. The newly formed eastern fleet with its aircraft carrier, two frigates, a destroyer, a submarine, eight patrol crafts and three landing ships34Vice Admiral Mihir Roy, War in the Indian Ocean (New Delhi: Lancer Publishers, 1995), p. 199. would prove decisive in keeping the pressure on Pakistan’s sea lines of communications to the vital ports of Chittagong, Khulna and Chalna. For the first time after Independence, carrier-borne fighters were also tasked to add on to the overall air effort in tandem with the IAF. Alizes and Sea Hawks from the INS Vikrant were dovetailed into India’s aerial offensives to render the airfields of Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar unusable, as well as to provide close air support whenever called upon to do so. Interdiction of coastal fortifications and shipping were also important tasks assigned to Captain Swaraj Prakash, the captain of INS Vikrant.

SKIRMISHES OR WAR

Pakistan has always maintained that India commenced the 1971 war as early as November 1971, and this accusation has not been without good reason. However, India’s post-war media blitz, marked as it was by triumphalism after a long-awaited victory, all but completely blanked many of the actual facts. All accounts of the war from Pakistan, prominent among them being the ones written by Niazi35Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998), p. 118. and Shuja Nawaz,36Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 292. clearly mark the beginning of the conflict with the deep forays by the Indian Army into East Pakistan in the Boyra and Belonia bulges on the western and eastern borders of East Pakistan. In what is probably the most objective and academically well-researched work on the Indo-Pak war of 1971, R. Sisson and L.E. Rose write:

The scope of Indian military involvement increased substantially in the first three weeks of November 1971 but in most cases the Indian units would hit their objectives in East Pakistan and withdraw to Indian territory. After the night of 21 November, however, the tactics changed in one significant way. Indian forces did not withdraw. From 21 November several Indian army divisions divided into small tactical units launched simultaneous military actions on all key border regions of East Pakistan from all directions with both armour and air support…37R. Sisson and L.E. Rose, War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 213.

As early as September 1971, specialist counter-insurgency troops from an Indian Army Jat battalion (31 Jat) made deep forays into the Chittagong sector and ambushed a large convoy of Pakistan Army boats, inflicting heavy casualties and then melted away into the jungle and returned to their home base in Tripura.38Mandeep Singh Bajwa, ‘A Young Officer’s First Taste of War,’ Hindustan Times, Chandigarh, 20 July 2014, available at (accessed 17 October 2014).

While much of this is corroborated by a number of Indian authors, the most detailed analyses are by Major General Randhir Singh in his biography of Sagat Singh, the commander of IV Corps during the Bangladesh campaign, and by Jagan and Chopra in their comprehensive account of the air war over East Pakistan.39P.V.S. Jagan Mohan and Samir Chopra, Eagles over Bangladesh (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2013), p. 81–83. General V.K. Singh also confirms in his autobiography that he actively participated in offensive forays into East Pakistan in November 1971. See General V.K. Singh, Courage and Conviction: An Autobiography (New Delhi: Aleph, 2013), p. 58–60. Sisson and Rose, though, are wrong when it comes to their assessment of air support to the Indian ground operations. Prior to 3 December and much to the frustration of some of the Indian field commanders, the IAF first provided air cover to them on 22 November in the battle of Boyra, where three PAF Sabre jets on a close air support mission were shot down by IAF Gnats. There were also a few intrusive reconnaissance missions carried out by IAF Hunters of 37 Squadron in October and early November to collect information about deployment of PAF assets in Dacca and army deployments in the Jamalpur, Sherpur and Comilla areas.40P.V.S. Jagan Mohan and Samir Chopra, Eagles over Bangladesh (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2013), p. 70, 94. Also see Forever Fearless, Vol. 25 of Squadrons of the IAF, Historical and Air Warrior Studies Cell, College of Air Warfare, Secunderabad, 2013. This is a limited series and unclassified booklet for internal circulation within the IAF. In the only cartographically well-depicted account of the 1971 war, John H. Gill, a US Army colonel and faculty member at the National Defense University, has clearly marked out a number of areas in East Pakistan which were captured by the Indian Army prior to the opening of the western front by Pakistan on the evening of 3 December.41John. H. Gill, An Atlas of the 1971 India-Pakistan War: The Creation of Bangladesh (Washington: NDU Press, 2003), p. 16. One of the fiercest early encounters took place in late October in Sagat Singh’s IV Corps sector around the picturesque tea estate of Dhalai. Located right on the border between the Indian state of Tripura and East Pakistan and about 35 km south-east of the important town of Maulvi Bazaar, the verdant gardens saw a pitched battle for over three days between 61 Brigade of the Indian Army and 12 Frontier Force, a Pakistan Army battalion from 14 Division. After suffering a fair number of casualties following some stout resistance from the Pakistan Army battalion, the tea estate was captured by the Indian Army and used as one of the many launch pads for the subsequent offensive. ‘Shaping the battlefield’ was not just a term that Indian field commanders had talked about at their war colleges; they went about translating it into capture of vital ground that would allow them to send in large forces when operations would start a few days later.