India celebrates, where’s Indira?

Rahul: BJP govt ignored late PM’s role in 1971 victory.

Dehradun: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday accused the BJP government of ignoring the role of then prime minister Indira Gandhi in the 1971 War as India celebrates the 50th anniversary of the victory, which he said was achieved as the country was united then.

Referring to his grandmother and the former prime minister, he said she took “32 bullets for the country” but her name was not even mentioned at a government event in New Delhi on the anniversary of the victory over Pakistan. “However, it does not make any difference because I know what she did for the country by giving her blood,” the Congress leader said launching his party’s campaign for the Uttarakhand Assembly polls during a rally here.

He said the credit for the 1971 War victory, which came in just 13 days, does not go exclusively go to the Army, Navy or the political leadership of the day, it goes to the “united fight put up by Indians.” —(PTI)

One Mujib for 93000 Pak PoWs!

In 1990, Benazir Bhutto, ousted from power and still smarting from the manner in which the Pakistan army and then protégé Mian Nawaz Sharif manoeuvred her out of office, was bristling with anger at the Pakistan military when we met in the book lined library at her home in Clifton, Karachi.

But even in ’90, some 18 years after the 1972 Simla peace talks – where Benazir stole the show when she made her first public appearance alongside her father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto - and her anger against the army, undiminished, she still wouldn’t accept that India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had outmanouevred not just the Pakistan Army but her father two.

“It was a meeting of equals, neither surrendered an inch,” Benazir told me, firmly. In retrospect, she may have been right.

The Simla Agreement that was signed on August 2, 1972, eight months after the 13 day Bangladesh War, which ended with the surrender of 93,000 Pakistani Prisoners of War (POW), should have marked, many said, with Indira Gandhi using the POWs as a bargaining chip. Instead, the hard-nosed Indira Gandhi and her savvy foreign policy team – R.N. Kao, the R & AW chief, D.P. Dhar, T.N. Kaul and P.N. Haksar – seemed, quite inexplicably, to prefer seeking worldwide acclaim for freeing the POWs rather than extract an agreement on securing India’s western flank and a peace deal on Kashmir with a vastly weakened Pakistan.

Benazir claimed in that Karachi interview that her father made a grand gesture too – he promised Indira that he would free Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib-ur Rehman from jail and send him home. Looking back, that must have been the quid pro quo that insiders later revealed, was agreed on, when Mrs Gandhi reportedly sent an emissary to meet ZAB, months before Simla.

ZAB’s deal - “Free the POWs and I’ll free Mujib!”

-Neena Gopal