between the local commanders,” the war with India would continue. However, onthe very next day, realizing that his chances of surviving a fullscale war with Indiaon the western front without US or Chinese support were nil, he agreed to aceasefire. An exultant Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, and daughter of India’sfirst Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, declared that “we have avenged the Muslimcapture of Somnath and our history of a thousand years.”3 General Yahya hadboasted earlier in the year that if India choose to declare war on Pakistan “I willshoot my way out of it.” He had also boasted about how he had escaped from aprisoner of war camp in Italy during the Second World War, while Sam Manekshaw,now the Indian Chief of Staff, was one of many fellow prisoners who had beenunable to escape. Now, in vastly different circumstances, a chastened General Yahya sought to justify the ceasefire by stating that “I have always maintained thatwar solves no problem.” However, as Oxford historian Robert Jackson noted inSouth Asian Crisis, “the victors in Dacca knew otherwise.” East Pakistan had passedinto the history books, and with it some argued the “two nation theory” that had ledto Pakistan’s independence. How did things come to such a sorry pass for Pakistan?A nation as proud of its martial traditions as Pakistan has still not to come with thissad legacy. Heir to the glorious traditions of the Arab, Turkish and Moghul armies of Muslim history, the Pakistani army was expected to fight to the “last man, lastround” in East Pakistan, and to do anything but surrender itself to the Indian Army.Several years later, a Pakistani general officer summed up the nation’s feelingswhen he said that “Never before had a Muslim sword been turned over to a Hindu.In Islam, surrender is taboo; you either return with the land, or you bathe it in yourblood4.”
Commenting has been disabled.