Some commentriat and writers, wittingly or unwittingly, state that uprising in former East Pakistan was indigenous, and that Mukti Bahini was created out of the Bengali officers and soldiers of Pakistan army. Some of them imbued with Bengali nationalism or having been brainwashed by Awami League leadership, must have joined the ‘resistance’, but a very large part came from East Pakistani refugees in India that crossed the border after the military operation in the then East Pakistan. A retired RAW chief R.K. Yadav, in his book Mission “R&AW” (Research and Analysis Wing) published in April 2014, gave explicit details on classified matters. RAW was formed on 21st September 1968 under the guidance of its first Director, Rameshwar Nath Kao with a view to disintegrate Pakistan. He was also the brain behind the so-called war of liberation in 1971, as the scheme was approved by Indira Gandhi herself.
R.N. Kao created the Mukti Bahini guerrilla force from 1 lakh Bangladeshi refugees in India and engineered the series of events that led to the breakup of Pakistan. Of course, advantage was taken from the political crisis brewing between East and West Pakistan. K.S. Nair, RAW chief in 1977, admitted that all those involved in the Agartala conspiracy were Indian agents. Nair was working under the cover of Col. Menon and had succeeded in buying some Bangladeshi Navy employees as well as activists of the Awami League. These agents tried to raid the Pakistan Army armory in haste even though Nair had promised them arms. They were arrested and sedition case was named the Agartala conspiracy was registered. One would not need to prove through other sources or the writings of independent writers that India was behind the breakup of Pakistan, when Modi’s confession to that effect was there.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Bangladesh had recalled his participation in the Jana Sangh campaign backing the rebels in former East Pakistan as he accepted a ‘liberation war’ honor on behalf of former premier Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Admitting that there had been a conspiracy to divide Pakistan, he said the establishment of Bangladesh was a desire of every Indian and that’s why India’s forces fought along with the Mukti Bahini, thus created a new country. Modi said he was one of the young volunteers who came to Delhi in 1971 to participate in the Satyagraha Movement launched by Jana Sangh as a volunteer to garner support for the Mukti Bahini members. Commandos of Special Frontier Force, paramilitary branch of RAW, trained the Mukti Bahini, a technical network was prepared and East Pakistan was encircled at all strategically important vantage points.
The author wrote: “Kao was asked by Indira Gandhi to prepare ground work for the army before the final assault and use R&AW to its optimum. In this operation, Kao with his colleagues build up a guerrilla force (Mukti Bahini) of more than one lakh Bangladeshi refugees which created havoc for Pakistani army in East Pakistan.…we routinely went with the Mukti Bahinis to register targets. Usually we would have a sprinkling of our boys mixed with freedom fighters and on one occasion I found myself on a reconnaissance of a bridge with the Mukti Bahnis.” After getting the plan of formation of Bangladesh complete, Yadav mentions that Mujib was assassinated by the RAW as India wanted to see a weak government in Bangladesh, easy to dictate terms to, but Hasina Wajid continues to appease India to seek support to her unpopular government.
Dr.Sarmila Bose in her book ‘Dead Reckoning’ had already illustrated what Modi announced was an Indian operation after it could not win the 1965 war. She wrote: “The Bengali nationalist movement turned into xenophobic violence against non-Bengalis specially West Pakistanis and mainly Urdu-speaking people who migrated to East Pakistan from India and are also known as Biharis. In the ethnic violence unleashed in the name of Bengali nationalism, non-Bengali men, women and children were slaughtered.” She wrote that vile atrocities took place in the towns of Chittagong, Khulna, Santahar and Jessore during and after the 10-month war. “Non-Bengali victims of ethnic killings by Bengalis numbered hundreds or even thousands per incident… Men, women and children were massacred on the basis of ethnicity and the killings were executed with shocking bestiality.” Some of the worst brutalities were among Bengalis themselves, between those patriots defending the unity of Pakistan and those seditionists who were fighting for the liberation of Bangladesh.
She wrote there was evidence of the violence suffered by “non-Bengali victims of Bengali ethnic hatred…Of the corpses reported littering the land and clogging up the rivers, many would have been Biharis, as Bengali mobs appear to have killed non-Bengalis indiscriminately. Dr. Bose also rejected the suggestion that three million Bengalis were killed by the Pakistani army. She calls it a “gigantic rumour”, and it was “not based on any accounting or survey on the ground”. As investigated by independent observers, the Mukti Bahini had killed anywhere from 100,000 Biharis (according to the ‘Chronology for Biharis in Bangladesh’) to 150,000 Biharis (according to the ‘Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict; page 64). Qutubuddin Aziz, in ‘Blood and Tears’, has documented 170 eye-witness accounts of the atrocities committed on Biharis and other non-Bengalis’ across 55 towns, covering 110 places where the slaughter of the innocents took place.
He wrote: “According to witnesses from Khulna, the non-Bengali death toll in the savage attack on the People’s Jute Mill and the Crescent Jute Mill by a huge mob of armed Bengalis on March 28, 1971, exceeded 5,000, including women and children. In the pogrom in the Railway Colony in Khulna, most of its 6,000 non-Bengali residents were butchered by the Bengali rebels. Hundreds of non-Bengali young women were marched by their captors to neighboring villages where they were assaulted and raped in cordoned off huts.” Mujib-ur-Rehman son of Mishratulla Mondol who organized a group of Santahar Awami League terrorists had raped women and paraded them in the streets. 15000 dead bodies were found in the streets. M.A. Ghaffar son of Janab Ali from Khulna had led the mob to attack Crescent Jute Mills and Star Jute Mills where more than 5000 residents were killed.
