Critically examine the factors which forces India to participate in the Bangladesh Liberation War 1971? (200 words)
Refer – The Hindu
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 7 years
KEY POINTS
Factors compelled India
· Influx of refugees – The plight of the ten million refugees did have an impact on the Indian government.
· India could not indefinitely bear the economic burden of such a huge refugee population without severe damage to its own economy.
· Humanitarian aspect - Bangladesh genocide had killed an estimate of 3,00,000 to 30,00,000 Bengalis.
· Breach of trust – If Bangladesh became independent without Indian help, it would bear a serious grudge against the latter.
· India had strongly encouraged the Bengali movement for autonomy through its propaganda and clandestine financial support.
· To allow the Pakistani military to decimate the Bengali elite would have been viewed as a serious breach of trust by the Awami League leadership, potentially turning it into India’s bitter enemy.
· Pro–china shift – New Delhi recognised that a drawn-out civil war in East Pakistan would radicalise the Bengali population.
· This could lead to the side-lining of the pro-India Awami League and shift the leadership of the movement to left-wing pro-China parties such as the Bhashani-led National Awami Party and the Communist Party.
· Naxalism – If India allowed the shift of leadership to the pro-China parties by hardly making any intervention, the Guerrilla warfare, inspired by Maoist ideology, would then become a likely prospect.
· This was anathema to New Delhi especially in the context of the Naxalite movement which was then raging in eastern India.
· A Maoist-inspired guerrilla movement in East Pakistan would have provided the Naxalites with aid and succour and seriously destabilised West Bengal and the surrounding region.
· Threats posed by Pakistan – The Bengali uprising provided India with the opportunity of eliminating the threat of a two-front war in any future confrontation.
· Although the eastern front remained largely inactive in 1965, it tied down substantial military resources that could have been deployed to greater effect in the western theatre.
· Indian decision-makers concluded that even if the new country in the east would not be an “eternal ally”, it could never pose the kind of threat that ‘East Pakistan’ posed to Indian security.
