The Blood Telegram Page 27
In all its border states, not just West Bengal, the Indian government increasingly feared political explosions. The fragile local economies were collapsing, with sudden inflation and unemployment, rising crime, and spikes in food prices—a devastating burden for the poor. There was simmering tension between Indian citizens and the refugees. When Bengali exiles tried to find jobs, many in the local Indian population resented it. The Indian foreign ministry accused Pakistan of intentionally “fomenting tensions between Hindus and Muslims in West Bengal, between Bengali refugees and Assamese in Assam, between tribals (mostly Christians) and Bengali refugees in Meghalaya and creating a situation of near suffocation in Tripura where the number of refugees (over 1 million) is more than two thirds of the original population of 1.5 million.” In Tripura in particular, this upset a delicate balance between tribal and nontribal peoples. India’s government complained that leftist radicals were hard at work “spreading their gospel in areas where the refugees have come in.” And as a result of the Pakistan army’s onslaught against Hindus, seven million out of over eight million refugees were Hindus.40
So the idea of trying to seal the borders was compelling. The Indian foreign ministry secretly wrote that if the United States would not stop the exodus of refugees, then it could not fairly “oppose any action by India to push them back across the same frontier.” In private, the governor of Gujarat repeatedly urged Gandhi to close the border. “I still feel strongly that we should take effective steps to check the inflow of evacuees from East Bengal,” he wrote. “I think it is high time we sealed our borders, without announcing it in so many words.” He emphasized the same point to her in person.41
But this would be a terrible task, almost certainly requiring shooting at some of the refugees, and apprehending and tracking down many others. Indian diplomats knew their country was unlikely to push out the refugees. Gandhi rebuffed the governor’s suggestion, although more on practical than moral grounds. The border was some twenty-seven hundred miles long, without much in the way of natural barriers. “I told him how difficult it is for us to seal such a long border,” the prime minister noted, and pointed out that even the “Americans could not seal” off the “territory through which the Viet Cong used to come.”42
Gandhi’s government kept its frontier open, hosting refugees and sheltering rebels. “India did not prevent East Bengal refugees coming in,” the Indian foreign ministry noted. Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times recalls, “The Indians weren’t going to push them out, because they were Bengalis, and they were now in West Bengal.” As so many of Gandhi’s decisions, this one mixed humanitarianism with a tough stance against Pakistan. “The Government of India did not stop the refugees from East Bengal from coming into India,” said a top foreign ministry official, “neither do they have any intention of stopping these refugees from returning to their country to fight for their liberty.”43
“BUT, IS GOD ON OUR SIDE?”
As India staggered under an international problem, it might seem natural to turn to the United Nations. But the Indian government was profoundly distrustful of the UN—its bureaucracy, its refugee relief operations, the General Assembly, and above all the Security Council. “I am fully convinced about the total ineffectiveness of the UN Organisation,” Swaran Singh, the Indian foreign minister, privately told a meeting of his diplomats. “They talk and talk and do nothing.”44
Gandhi’s government had long seen the United Nations as hopelessly biased against India. “The ‘United Nations Organisation’ reflects the ‘Establishment’ of this World,” the Indian ambassador in Paris fatalistically wrote:
India is regarded warily in the West because she is against the concept of Imperialism and because she “invented” the “Third World.” India is looked on with suspicion in the “Third World” because of her (subversive) sentiments for democracy, human rights etc; the Muslim world is wrathful because of our secularism. The Communist countries regard India as insolent and potentially dangerous because we have rejected Communism as the Prime Condition for Progress. We are, of course, on the side of God. But, is God on our side?45
India dreaded the Security Council, where it would soon face two hostile permanent members: the United States and mainland China, which was about to displace Taiwan there. While China monotonously inveighed that “no other country has a right to interfere under any pretext” in East Pakistan, the Indian foreign ministry was busy trying to ward off any UN actions that would “interfere with the successful operations of the Mukti Bahini.” After all, the Indian ambassador to France wrote with jaundiced tiers-mondisme, those permanent members were all guilty of “massacres of adequate dimensions. The records of Russia and America are sufficiently impressive. Besides, America, under her greatest President, fought a bloody civil war to prevent secession of the southern States. France did not do too well in Algeria but, of course, her scope was limited. She did very much better under Napoleon in Spain. The point is that there is nothing great about the Great Powers except for their capacity for destruction.”46
Nor did India have any confidence in the General Assembly, where it found few friends. The Indian ambassador in Paris caviled that the “august body” was dominated by countries “suspicious of democracy, human rights, etc. They have had long practice at suppressing them at home.” Sure enough, Pakistan did well by arguing that the UN Charter guaranteed noninterference in member states. With unconcealed contempt for the General Assembly’s verbosity and pomposity, Swaran Singh irately said that “the snuffing-out of all human rights, and the reign of terror, which still continues, have shocked the conscience of mankind”—which, if true, was not in evidence in the chamber.47
“Once an issue is taken to the United Nations,” wrote the Indian ambassador in Paris, “debates and propaganda become interminable—the object being to prevent the settlement of the issue. If action is our aim, then the United Nations is to be avoided.” Still, India squirmed when U Thant, the secretary-general, floated bringing the crisis to the Security Council.48
India was even more horrified when Thant proposed that observers from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees keep an eye on both sides of India’s border with East Pakistan. The Indian foreign ministry did not see how a few observers could help stop the genocide of a whole ethnic group. Haksar wrote that refugees could not be expected to return to East Pakistan to be “butchered,” hoping instead for a political settlement reflecting the wishes of the people in Bangladesh.49
Nor did India trust the UN’s officials to oversee this observer mission. While appreciating the assistance of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, India’s government could not stand its chief, Prince Sadruddin Agha Khan, who was seen as a U.S. and Pakistani stooge. He sympathized with Yahya, and privately lashed out at India for aggression, as well as the “continuous squalor” of India’s refugee camps. When Sadruddin was quoted saying that things in East Pakistan had returned to normal, Gandhi’s government had to fight off a parliamentary call to chastise the United Nations in its entirety, with Haksar soberly pointing out that India could not condemn all its 132 member states.50
Most important, these observers could expose or interfere with India’s covert support of the Mukti Bahini. That was certainly the White House’s hope when it supported this UN proposal. A senior Indian diplomat scornfully called this plan “only a polite, surface cover for British-American scheme, to which SADRUDDIN seems to be privy,” meant to win the Pakistan army time to crush East Bengal. Haksar alerted Gandhi that “some of the big Powers, specially the United States, are very keen that U.N. should be so involved largely to prevent activities of Bangla Desh freedom fighters. We are resisting these attempts.” As Haksar frankly told the prime minister, “All our diplomatic efforts are directed towards ensuring that neither the Security Council nor the U.N. High Commission for Refugees become a brake on the struggle of the people of East Bengal for their democratic rights and liberties. I am saying all this to show that the so-call
ed ‘inactivity’ of the U.N. as an organisation is, in many ways, not so harmful.”51
So India turned to the Soviet Union—its only friend on the Security Council—to scuttle these proposed UN observers. Thanks to Soviet clout, the proposal for observers quietly expired.52
Until the outbreak of war, the Indian government would remain deeply frustrated with the United Nations. The institution dealt primarily with crises between its member states, not inside them. So India, which argued the real cause of trouble was “the continued denial of fun[d]amental human rights,” could find no satisfaction there. Singh said dismissively that “everybody will say this is the usual Indo-Pakistan controversy. People get bored.”53
DEMOCRACY IN INDIA
It might have improved Nixon’s and Kissinger’s view of India if they had known just how little their counterparts in Delhi were enjoying their own democratic politics. Gandhi and Haksar were exasperated at feckless partisan politicians, uppity journalists, and obstructionist bureaucrats. They sought to entrench loyalists in key positions; they harangued rivals; they were thin-skinned about public criticism. This all might have sounded vaguely familiar in the Nixon White House.
Gandhi’s government was galled by caustic editorializing from India’s free press, which prompted her to think of ways to undercut the media. The prime minister wearily told reporters that “there is nothing that we want to hide or we can hide in the sort of society which we have in India.” Gandhi, who disliked “the Jewish press” in the West, was terribly sensitive to foreign press criticism. Sydney Schanberg, who interviewed her once for the New York Times, remembers, “It wasn’t much of an interview. She was always wary of how she was going to be quoted.” His accurate Times coverage of India’s support for the insurgents discomfited the government, with a senior Indian diplomat wondering darkly how “well-meaning correspondents like SCHANBERG could be tackled, if at all.” Schanberg says, “The interesting thing about embarrassing India is that they didn’t throw you out. Unlike Pakistan. But they thought about it at times.”54
Indian reporters recounted the insurgents’ fight with vivid imme-diacy, but also revealed India’s covert support for the guerrillas. Although D. P. Dhar was scandalized that the “prying eye” of the press had uncovered these secret operations, the foreign ministry reluctantly admitted that international reporters had also dug up plenty of similar stories, making official denials sound ridiculous.55
To a great many Indians, their government appeared adrift, without any sense of how to respond to the catastrophe next door. Gandhi’s government seemed simply punch-drunk from press criticism. After fresh disparagement from a prominent journalist, Haksar exploded that “he should not really assume that Government of India consists of cretins who do not know what is going on.”56
In Parliament, the brickbats came from all sides. As Haksar told Gandhi, “Parliament, public opinion, Congress Party itself, C.P.I. [Communist Party of India], C.P.M. [Communist Party (Marxist)], Jan Sang—all emotionally aroused. All demanding recognition of the Bangla Desh.” In both chambers, almost all parties were explosively angry about the revelations that U.S. arms shipments were still finding their way to Pakistan.57
On the left, the Communist Party of India was fervently for Bangladesh. Gandhi’s government looked with sour suspicion at the Communist Party (Marxist), powerful in West Bengal, which, like the CPI, wanted a swift recognition of Bangladesh. As one senior official in Gandhi’s office noted, these Indian communists might link up with their comrades in East Pakistan, and help China. More extreme leftists, this official thought, wanted to use the crisis to catalyze revolution in India itself. Meanwhile on the right, the Jana Sangh, the Hindu nationalist party, pressed for a Hindu war against Pakistan’s Muslims. These cries became so vehement that Haksar urged Gandhi to rebuke the hawkish party for its emotional rhetoric.58
The Indian public asked tough questions. Why had Gandhi’s government not foiled Yahya’s military buildup in East Pakistan before the start of the slaughter? Why had India not struck soon after to rescue the Bengalis? Would Bengali leftists sweep aside the pro-Indian leadership of the Awami League? Why rely so heavily on the Mukti Bahini, since guerrilla warfare alone could neither break the back of the Pakistan army nor get the refugees back home? Why not attack Pakistan right now, while its troops were still bogged down in the fight against the Mukti Bahini and while the Pakistani economy was weak?59
Dhar, when he wound up his tour in Moscow and returned to wield considerable power in Delhi, was astonished to hear “open talks of war being mentioned from various forums and platforms—the lobbies of the Parliament, newspaper offices, the gossipy parlours of the idle rich, the coffee houses and the tea corners. The original faith in the wisdom and competence of the policies of the Government is slowly wearing thin and except a fatalistic belief of the common man that the Prime Minister may pull out a miracle from the magic bag, early signs of despondency are broadly visible.” In Parliament, he grumbled that “they suffer from discontent which has a touch of divinity about it.” Some Indians thought that Gandhi had missed her best opportunity back in March, by not attacking Pakistan immediately. The government had not explained its foreign policy properly, Dhar thought, with the result that public opinion was beginning to show panic at the prospect of as many as ten million refugees staying permanently in India, while Pakistan managed to “eliminate the remanents of the inconvenient Hindu.”60
Outside Parliament’s confines, Jayaprakash Narayan demanded action: “the Prime Minister has done nothing to stop it.” She had won the nationwide vote, but was facing important elections in thirteen states, which would be called for March 1972—and she did not like to lose.61
Gandhi still had a large majority in the Lok Sabha and a resilient personal approval rating, and could rely on the relative powerlessness of elites and an undereducated mass public that had far more urgent concerns than foreign policy. While her electoral mandate allowed her to bide her time—following General Sam Manekshaw’s advice to wait for cooler weather—she still had to respond. As Gandhi had learned in two national elections, Indian politicians lived by the ballot box, and constantly had to worry about the next vote. While public expectations were high, her popularity was always preyed on by a host of domestic problems: her antipoverty pledges, unemployment, rising prices, strikes, corruption. More than half of Indians wanted to recognize Bangladesh, which would likely mean war, while just a quarter opposed doing so—the government’s stated position. Arundhati Ghose, Haksar’s protégée at the foreign ministry, remembers, “Haksar-sahib would have been against going to war except for the refugees and public opinion.”62
To make matters worse, India’s fractious bureaucracy was thoroughly overwhelmed by the crisis. Haksar had many of the same complaints about his subordinate officials as Kissinger did. He preferred to rely on trustworthy cronies, installing Dhar as the principal liaison with the Bangladesh exile government.63
Exasperated with Indian public opinion, Dhar proposed thwarting it in the most radical way. “Can we promulgate a state of Emergency?” he asked. While admitting that Indians would recoil at the “suspension” of their “Fundamental Rights,” he suggested “declaring the Emergency without, for the time being, suspending the operation of Fundamental Rights.” This chillingly presaged Indira Gandhi’s eventual declaration of her own Emergency in 1975—the worst rupture in India’s democratic tradition.64
Chapter 13
“The Hell with the Damn Congress”
On March 29, days after the start of Yahya’s onslaught, a U.S. court-martial found William Calley Jr., a U.S. Army first lieutenant, guilty of the premeditated murder of twenty-two Vietnamese civilians at the village of My Lai. For Richard Nixon, who would free Calley from the stockade to his apartment and reduce his sentence, the firestorm over the My Lai massacre was not really about morality, but an opportunity for his critics to score political points against the Vietnam War.1
The My Lai trial was only the
latest unbearable news from Vietnam. So the massacres in East Pakistan came at a moment when many Americans had already despaired of their government’s foreign policy in Asia, above all in Vietnam. The war there was the most important problem weighing on the minds of Americans, even ahead of the economy, crowding out almost all public interest in other foreign issues.2
Vietnam preyed constantly on Nixon’s and Kissinger’s thoughts. The administration was trying to withdraw troops from Vietnam without destroying U.S. credibility abroad, while still propping up a faltering government and army in South Vietnam. Despite Nixon’s talk of winding down the war, the fighting seemed not just endless, but endlessly escalating: the bombing and invasion of Cambodia in 1970, and more recently U.S. military support for the South Vietnamese army’s botched offensive into Laos. At home, the spring of 1971 was a time of massive demonstrations against the Vietnam War, now drawing in sizable numbers of veterans and even some active-duty soldiers. Public support for Nixon sank to some of its lowest depths, and the White House faced a rush of congressional legislation trying to stop the war.3
By early 1971, Nixon had begun to fear that he might not be reelected. In January, almost three-quarters of Americans wanted Congress to bring all U.S. troops home from Vietnam. And in March—as Yahya began his atrocities—more Americans disapproved of Nixon’s handling of Vietnam than approved of it, while two-thirds thought that the Nixon administration was not telling the public all that it should know about the Vietnam War.4
The White House’s critics drew a straight line from Vietnam to Bangladesh, blasting the Nixon administration for supporting brutal dictatorships in Saigon and Islamabad alike. Democratic politicians seized on the Bengali massacres as a fresh example of Nixon’s amoral foreign policy, and urged the president to exercise his substantial influence on Pakistan. Of course, unlike in more recent debates about Bosnia and Darfur, no U.S. leaders were contemplating using force to save the Bengalis. Even Edward Kennedy did not float that option. With the United States painfully trying to extricate itself from Vietnam, nobody wanted more military involvement in Asia, and certainly not anything that might drag the United States into another war. As John Kenneth Galbraith donnishly put it in an appeal for the Bengalis, “Those of us who have urged a less ambitious policy in Indochina are in a poor position to ask for American remedial action elsewhere in Asia.” In an anguished letter home, a U.S. official based in Dacca wrote, “It is easy to understand why, far away, tired by Vietnam, a day at the office, hassled kids, and with very little to gain, [t]he United States, the government and its citizen, would rather prevaricate, hover, postpone, abey. It is not unreasonable, irrational, or even particularly selfish; it is only tragic.”5