War Lost on Table

 1971 A war INDIA won on the battlefield but Indira Gandhi lost on the table. 

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto came to Simla as the head of a defeated nation with nothing to bargain. 93,000 Pakistani prisoners were in India and the tehsil of Shakargarh as well as large tracts of desert were under Indian occupation.

The Pakistani State itself was tottering and the only card Bhutto had was to play on the Indian need to have a viable Pakistan survive. Using his weakness dexterously, Bhutto made sure that India could never drive a hard bargain.

All that Pakistan conceded at Simla was that it would not use force to solve the Kashmir problem and it would deal with the issue bilaterally. It is indeed astonishing that a militarily weak and defeated nation promising 'non use of force' against another country ten times its size, being seen as a concession.

This naivete was to cause immense difficulties in the future. The acceptance of the disputed status of Kashmir was a major diplomatic blunder and India continue.

The Simla Agreement was honored by Pakistan till such time as the Indian troops did not vacate captured territory and the Pakistani prisoners did not return. Once these two short-term objectives were achieved, Pakistan found no reason to go on to implement the next step -- normalization of relations.

Improvement in relations and people-to-people contacts were never permitted by Pakistan and the hoped-for atmosphere to tackle the Kashmir issue never built up.

Today after violating all the other clauses of the Simla Agreement, Pakistan now harps on Article 6 that had provided for Indo-Pak talks at the head of the government level to solve the Kashmir issue.

But the greatest blunder was to let the Pakistani army get away with its 'genocide' in Bangladesh.

There is massive evidence of Pakistani army brutality in Bangladesh. The evidence is from Pakistani sources itself, the Justice Hamidur Rehman Commission Report. Some of the testimony in that report makes a very chilling reading, even 40 years after the event.

There is a mountain of evidence about Pakistani army atrocities. What did the Government of India do? We banned the short film made by S Sukhdeo, Nine Months to Freedom at Bhutto's request. The Pakistani army selectively targeted Hindus, members of the Awami League, and Bangladesh intellectuals. It was a well-known secret that the bulk of the refugees (close to 70 percent) were Hindus.

The playing down of the Pakistani genocide let a Rogue Army escape the consequences of its misbehavior.

India only stored trouble for the future. 

The Nazis were tried for massacring the Jews, the Khmer Rouge, Saddam Hussein, Serbian militants, all faced international courts -- only the Pakistani army got away with murder, rape and loot.