Role of Sam Manekshaw in the 1971 war

Lieutenant General J F R Jacob, in his autobiography, “An Odyssey in War and Peace”, has heaped criticism on Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, the Army Chief during 1971 war,and the then Army Commander, Eastern Command Lieutenant General J S Arora for their role during the war in which India was instrumental in creation of Bangladesh.

Lieutenant General Jacob, then Chief of Staff, Eastern Command has unabashedly claimed that he had masterminded the 1971 campaign while both the Field Marshal and General JS Arora were actually incompetent figureheads who garnered the credit.

It is not surprising that Lieutenant General Jacob's Books 'Surrender at Dacca' and his recent autobiography are widely read and regurgitated. There are absolutely no authoritative books on the Field Marshal, which scrutinize the role played by Sam in the 1971 war. So there will be speculations and slander and mud slinging and eulogizing. but no attempt at an appraisal of the military achievements of the Field Marshal.

Imagine- India's first Field Marshal, who gave us such an important victory, which gave birth to a nation - but no objective history on the legend exists in the country today. All we have are the jokes that Manekshaw cracked and how he liked to dance.

That Indians have no sense of history is an understatement.

I had chanced upon Lieutenant General Jacob in Delhi a couple of years ago in Nov 2009 and got to chat a while with him. Seeing my interest in his earlier book, 'Surrender at Dacca', he kindly consented to email me Pakistan's assessment of the 1971 war,which corroborates General Jacobs version that he was the mastermind behind the victory in Bangladesh. Given below is a copy of his email to me sent in Dec 2009:

PAKISTANI ASSESSMENTS OF OPERATIONS IN EAST PAKISTAN

There has been much disinformation put out in India about the 1971 operations. My book 'Surrender at Dacca' was published in 1997. I personally gave copies to Manekshaw and Arora. There were no rejoinders.
Am forwarding an extract from Shuja Nawaz's book CROSSED SWORDS . [ He was the brother of a former Pak Army Chief ]

" In the words of a later Pakistan National Defence College study of the war, the Indians planned and executed their offensive against East Pakistan in a text book manner. It was a classic example of thorough planning,minute coordination, and bold execution. the credit clearly goes to General Jacob's meticulous preparations in the Indian Eastern Command.
[ page 301 ]
[note the only public surrender in history]


Niazi had sent a cease fire proposal that specified a withdrawal of armed forces, para military and ethnic minorities under the UN. The government was to be handed over to the UN . No war crimes trials were to be held. There was no mention of India in his proposals. Ihe cease fire proposals were rejected outright by Bhutto. A cease fire was announced by India on 15 Dec.
Jacob was asked by Manekshaw on the morning of 16 Dec to just go and get a surrender. Jacob negotiated the surrender with Niazi on his draft instrument of surrender that he had earlier sent to Delhi but remained unconfirmed from Delhi .
it is relevant to quote from the Hamood Ur Rehman commission of inquiry questioning Lt Gen Niazi--

' Gen Niazi, when you had 26,400 troops in Dacca and the Indians only a few thousand outside and you could have fought on for at least two more weeks , the UN was in session ,[ Polish resolution-Soviet bloc ] and had you fought on even for one more day the Indians would have had to go back, why then did you accept a shameful ,unconditional ,public surrender and provide a guard of honour commanded by your ADC. '

Niazi replied ' i was compelled to do so by Gen Jacob who blackmailed me into surrendering etc etc. this he has repeated in his book ' 'Betrayal of East Pakistan '.
Suppose Jacob had failed to convert Niazi's proposed cease fire under the UN into an unconditional public surrender, the only one in history? the UN would have ordered a withdrawal and taken over the administration.
Thus India became a regional super power.

The above Pakistani excerpts hopefully put events in their proper perspective."




Recently I had happened to meet Lieutenant General Depinder Singh,who was the MA to the Field Marshal in 1971 when Sam was the Chief of Army Staff. The General has also authored a book on the Field Marshal -'Soldiering with Dignity'

The General Officer had his own take on General Jacob's version of the events. He had prepared a small write up on it and had shared it with me. Given below is the article by General Depinder reproduced verbatim:

THE 1971 WAR REVISITED

1. Lt Gen JFR Jacob has written one more book about his experiences in war and peace. Such books, written by military leaders, are to be welcomed as coming generations can read and learn from experiences contained therein. I have not read the book but a few newspapers and atleast one periodical have published reviews and I have perused these. Some of the views expressed by the author are patently unfair and I write this both to try and correct distortions and, more importantly, to reply on behalf of more eminent military leaders who have since passed on to the great beyond. I was Military Assistant to the Chief of Army Staff during the period 1969-1973 and, therefore, while junior in rank to General Jacob, had a seat where the screen was wider. Later I was to serve under General Jacob; I found him to be kind, considerate, fair and courteous, always displaying impeccable integrity and character. Therefore it is all the more mystifying to find him levelling unfair and unwarranted criticism.

2. Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, who was Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) at the time of the 1971 war is accused of lacking strategic sense; not designating Dacca as the main objective; and being obsessively concerned that China would intervene in the war. Additionally, Lt Gen JS Aurora, who commanded Eastern Army during the 1971 war and to whom General Jacob was Chief of Staff in the rank of Major General , is accused of sycophancy; also that Sam Manekshaw did not like the Army Commander.

3. What is strategy? The Websters Dictionary defines strategy ‘as the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war’. In laymans language strategy means the creation of a favourable environment so that the achievement of the national aim is facilitated.
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4. On 25 March 1971 when Pakistan cracked down on its eastern wing, the Prime Minister (PM), Mrs Indira Gandhi, was briefed by the COAS late in the evening in the Army Headquarters Operations Room. On completion of the briefing she asked what we could do to ameliorate the suffering of the people of East Pakistan. The COAS replied that since he had not been permitted to enroll ‘badmashes’ and army formations were widely dispersed overseeing elections, there was nothing he could do at the moment. The PM smiled, thanked him and left. Therefore the claim that, around this time, the COAS ordered the Chief of Staff of Eastern Command, bypassing the Army Commander, to commence offensive action is preposterous. What must have happened is that some cautionary orders would have been issued from Army Headquarters and memories of these may have created a mistaken impression in General Jacob’s mind writing many years after the event. In any case, if an order was issued, how could it have been refused by any soldier let alone a staff officer? In the next few days the BSF was directed to examine the possibility of creating pinpricks along the Indo-East Pakistan border to divert the attention of the Pakistan Army from the genocide they were engaged in. Therefore, the assertion that Mr Rustomji, Director, BSF at the time was planning to ‘invade’ East Pakistan is equally absurd.

5. A few days later when the full cabinet met to consider the situation, the COAS was invited to attend. With almost every minister urging immediate armed intervention, the COAS was the lone voice counselling delay citing the following reasons :-

(a) The Army was widely dispersed at the time, overseeing elections in Assam and Bengal. Units and formations would need time to move back to parent cantonments, marry up with heavy equipment, re-equip and reorganize before they were ready for war.
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(b) The modernization process of the armed forces was way behind schedule (sounds familiar!).

(c) The northern passes were fast opening up and the chances of Chinese intervention was very real.

(d) The monsoons were due shortly, flooding the rivers and countryside in East Pakistan making offensive operations time consuming and more difficult.

(e) World public opinion needed to be moulded to see India as a victim rather than the matter being seen as an internal affair of Pakistan.

(f) Existing infrastructure would permit the opening of only one axis of attack from West Bengal. Time was needed to develop infrastructure for opening more axes from Tripura and Meghalaya.

6. The PM, farsighted and visionary as she was, saw merit in the recommendations of the COAS; closed the meeting and, a day or so later, gave the COAS permission to start operations at a time of his choosing. This was an extraordinary display of strategic sense on the part of Sam Manekshaw, not to mention an incredible show of character, and a rare display of statesmanship on the part of the PM. To diagress slightly, some years later, harsh criticism emanated from another writer of military history, Maj Gen DK Palit, who felt we should have intervened in April 1971 to save lives in East Pakistan. He conviently chose to forget the consequences of starting a war without proper preparation as happened in 1962 against the Chinese. He was Director Military Operations at the time. Some people will never learn. Sam Manekshaw stood firm and had his way to create the right circumstances that eventually resulted in a great victory.


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7. Criticism is also directed over Dacca not being designated as the main objective. When operational plans were being finalised, it was quite clear that speed would be of the essence as world public opinion notwithstanding, the US and China would mount pressure in the security council to stop operations. Therefore the aim was to capture maximum territory in the shortest possible time. Designating Dacca as the main objective would have negated the prime requirement of speed not to mention that it would give Eastern Command two contradictory aims, i.e, capture Dacca and occupy maximum territory in the shortest possible time. When operations commenced on 3 December 1971, the advances were so swift with Pakistan Army defences bypassed, that it became apparent that the apprehension about Dacca being defended in strength was no longer valid. In light of this, around 9 December 1971, Dacca was designated as the objective. This change of plan in the light of developing situations, showed flexibility, another essential quality of a military leader.

8. The next item on the criticism agenda concerns, what General Jacob terms, Sam’s obsession with China intervening. While General Jacob saw the War through the narrow prism of one sector, the COAS, with many more inputs, was seeing a much wider screen. Also, radio intercepts between East and West Pakistan, with the former clamouring for assistance from the ‘Yellow’ and ‘White’ brothers and the wests reassurances that they were ‘coming’ created the justifiable concern. So, rather than terming this as an ‘obsession’ it has to be viewed as prudence, more so as the white brothers did actually venture into the Indian Ocean. In any case, during the first week of December satellite pictures provided by the USSR confirmed that there were no abnormal Chinese moves. Hence the release of two brigades from the Indo-Tibet border sought by Eastern Command was really no secret from the COAS as claimed by the Author.
 
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9. Next we come to the amazing criticism leveled against the Army Commander, Lt Gen JS Aurora. To begin with Gen Aurora was no pushover as a small incident that occurred will confirm. The COAS wanted to speak to the Army Commander one day. He was not available and so also were the other senior officers, the Chief of Staff and Brigadier General Staff. When they finally did get to talk, the COAS mentioned the absence of all three to which the reply was, ‘now you are going to teach me how to run my Army’. How do I know this? I know, because I was listening to the conversation as, those days the MA’s telephone did not get disconnected when the COAS was on the line and the MA was expected to remain on listening watch. After the ceasefire the PM wanted the COAS to take the surrender. He graciously declined stating that it was General Aurora’s victory and he would take the surrender. Does this show dislike ?

10. Remaining with Gen Aurora an incident is referred to where, as host, he poured a drink for the COAS, and Mr DP Dhar a close friend of Sam and, at the time, Chairman of the Policy Planning Division in the External Affairs Ministry. Now I ask you, is it degrading for a host to do this ? It is very much part of hospitality, especially Indian hospitality, for a host to offer a drink to a guest. General Aurora was a great military leader and he discharged the heavy responsibilities that were entrusted to him with great competence and elan.

11. I will conclude with an old saying “Victory has many parents, defeat is an orphan.” Let there be no doubt in anyones mind, the military architect of the great victory in 1971 was Sam Manekshaw.