Part II: The Blood Telegram: India’s secret war in East Pakistan by Gary J. Bass

‘A selective genocide’ of Hindus in East Pakistan

The Preamble. Subsequent to the election held on 7^th December, 1970, the inaugural session of the National Assembly of Pakistan was proposed to be held on 3^rd March 1971. Yahya, Bhutto, and the West Pakistani political elite baulked at the idea of handing over power to a party from East Pakistan, and postponed the inaugural session indefinitely. After unprecedented protests in East Pakistan, a new date was announced, 25^th March 1971. Yahya flew into Dacca on 15^th March for negotiations, with Bhutto joining them on 22^nd March. There was really nothing much to negotiate. Mujib had won the election and he was not going to throw away his victory. Seeing that the ‘negotiations’ were at a dead end, Yahya suddenly flew back to West Pakistan on 25^th March 1971, leaving behind certain crucial instructions to the army. The instructions were to be followed starting from the time his flight would be landing in Rawalpindi. The command of the Pakistani army in the East was in the hands of Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan.

What were these instructions and how were they carried out?

On the night of 25^th March, 1971,

“The Pakistani military had launched a devastating assault on the Bengalis. Truckloads of Pakistani troops drove through the city [Dacca] --- U.S.- supplied M-24 tanks led some of the troop columns. Throughout Dacca, people could hear the firing of rifles and machine guns. Windows rattled from the powerful explosions from mortars or heavy weapons. The night turned red from burning cars and buildings. It was only near daybreak that the gunfire slowed” (page 50).

In other words Yahya had ordered ‘a night of the long knives’ to purge East Pakistan of the Awami League and its supporters.

This much is unsurprising. Even the most sanitized histories of the period record these atrocities carried out by the Pakistani army against the unarmed citizens of East Pakistan. This was but the partial truth. The whole truth? It remained hidden for thirty years.

What was the whole truth?

It is a cliché that the world is a connected place. It indeed was, even before the era of the internet.

American embassies are expected to implement their Government’s policy in the host nation. American government response to the crisis brewing in Pakistan, was a bland restatement of the UN charter that does not permit any country to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. The US considered Pakistan’s war with the citizenry of East Pakistan as Pakistan’s internal matter. However, the American government had made a special provision for the embassies and consulates to communicate directly to the State Department in case the local situation in the host country required a realignment of US foreign policy. This was a provision that was seldom invoked by the professional diplomats, who were trained to be automatons of the US State Department.

Archer Kent Blood was the Consul General at the American consulate in Dacca. He was a dispassionate observer of the events taking place around him, and a fearless reporter. He communicated the developments in East Pakistan starting 25^th December 1971 to his superior in the American Embassy at Islamabad (Pakistan’s capital). This gentleman, Joseph S. Farland, was pro-West Pakistan, and aligned with Yahya. He did not forward any of these blood curdling communications to the US State Department.

Blood, then invoked the special provision to communicate news of what he called the ‘selective genocide’ of the Hindus by means of a telegram to the State Department- what has since become famous as The Blood Telegram, from which this book derives its title. These communications remained confidential, until they were declassified in 2001, after thirty years, in keeping with the American rules governing such matters. A vast amount of correspondence between the different arms of the US Government, the White House (President Richard Nixon), and the National Security Advisor (Henry Kissinger) saw the light of day.

The author Gary J. Bass has studied these documents in a detail that defies imagination (see the 150 pages of citations printed in closely spaced lines in a small font size). Collating the contents, with the Indian documents of the period obtained from the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), chiefly the P.N. Haksar (Advisor to the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi) papers and D. P. Dhar (India’s envoy to the Soviet Union) papers, the Author puts out a coherent and exhaustive history of the events. The true story, suppressed by all the players, Indian Government included, is revealed for the first time. The result is stunning.

(1)   The West Pakistani political elite ‘scorned Bengalis- even the Muslim majority- as weak and debased by too much exposure to Hindus among them” (Page 81). “The West Pakistani army seems bent on eliminating them [Hindus]; their rationale, by eliminating Hindus, Pakistan purifies itself, rids itself of ---anti-Islam elements” (page 82).

(2)   By removing the Hindus “Pakistan will have ridded itself of ten million undesirables --- and East Pakistan’s total population will have been reduced enough to return it once again to minority position, thereby allowing continued domination by the West” (page 82).

(3)   India would be forced to accept the fleeing Hindus into its fold, and such a population drive would disrupt normal life in India to Pakistan’s advantage.

These objectives drove an unprecedented assault on the Hindu population in East Pakistan. In old Dacca, an area comprising two dozen blocks, mainly Hindu residences, were razed. The Pakistani soldiers entered the Dacca University and fired at students and teachers residing there. “Some of the worst killings of civilians, according to students, took place at Jagannath Hall, the Hindu dormitory” (page 54). The Hindu faculty were selected and shot dead. In short, what was being perpetrated was a ‘selective genocide’.

 “There was, Archer Blood thought, no logic to this campaign of killings and expulsions of the Hindus, who numbered about ten million- about 13 percent of East Pakistan’s population. Later he would call it ‘criminally insane’. There was no military need for it. The Hindus were not the nucleus of any armed resistance. They were unarmed and dispersed around East Pakistan. – and were outliers in a Pakistani nation defined in Muslim terms” (page 82).

The response of the US Government? Blood was removed from his post in Dacca at April end, and transferred to an insignificant desk job in the State Department. However reports of the persecution of Hindus were continuously dispatched from Dacca even after Blood’s removal. And the exodus of refugees to India fleeing persecution had reached ‘biblical’ proportions (page 119).

“The first wave of refugees was made up of a great many Bengali Muslims, but as early as mid-April ---by official reckoning, as many as 90 percent of the refugees were Hindus. --- India secretly recorded that by middle of June, there were some 5,330,000 Hindus, as against 443,000 Muslims and 150,000 from other groups. Many Indian diplomats believed that the Hindus would be too afraid ever to go back” (page 121). The Indian Government kept these statistics secret, fearing that the truth would incense its citizenry and the parliament; the latter was already pressing the Government to go to war with Pakistan. 

Finally, “On May 22, after almost two months of targeted slaughter of the Hindus of East Pakistan, Farland [American ambassador in Islamabad, and a Yahya acolyte] finally gingerly raised these killings with Yahya, in a tense meeting at the President’s house in Karachi” (page 149). Farland had begun to feel qualms of his conscience. Yahya’s response? He replaced the fearsome Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan with Lt. Gen. A. A. K. Niazi.

By late June, an estimated 200,000, most of them Hindu Bengalis had been killed according to the information received by the US Government. Reference to the ‘selective genocide of the Hindus’ and “Hindus leaving because of specific persecution”, can be found in multiple citations throughout this book, from independent, and uninterested sources (see pages 152, 154, 202, 203, 208, 235, 236, 260).

The most incisive of these citations was from the CIA, which operated based on its own independent sources.

 “The CIA had a blunt explanation for this “incredible” migration: “many if not most of the Hindus fled for fear of their lives”. --- The Pakistan army, the CIA noted, seemed to have singled out Hindus as targets.

Although the CIA refrained from crying genocide, it did insist this was an ethnic campaign, with 80 percent- or possible even 90 percent- of the refugees being Hindus. So far, out of eight million refugees, over six million were Hindus, and many more might follow- ending perhaps only when East Pakistan had no more Hindus left” (page 236). 

By end June, everyone in the State Department, the Nixon administration including his Advisor Henry Kissinger were aware of this information (page 148).

But President Richard Nixon remained unmoved, although the genocide was being carried out American arms and American supplied ammunition, the supplies remained on-going even during the genocide.