Midnight's Descendants by John Keay

Author:John Keay [John Keay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

7

An Ill-Starred Conjunction

The installation of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan and of Mujibur Rahman in Bangladesh signalled another sea-change in South Asia: for the first time ever, all of the subcontinent’s now three principal states were under directly elected civilian governments. All three were committed to socialist policies aimed at removing inequalities and boosting living standards. All three were led by outstanding figures. And of this revered triumvirate, all three commanded unassailable majorities and were committed to the democratic process.

The wounds of war were quickly staunched. When in March 1972 Mrs Gandhi paid her first visit to Bangladesh, crowds of 100,000 fêted her and Mujib, and applauded the inevitable treaty of Indo–Bangladeshi friendship. A year later, the last Indian troops left Bangladesh. A year after that – so just two years after being released from detention – Mujibur Rahman revisited Pakistan at Bhutto’s invitation. He came to attend the Lahore summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, following which the 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war taken in Bangladesh were repatriated.

Though most Pakistanis would always hold New Delhi responsible for the loss of Bangladesh, even Bhutto was now talking of ‘an entirely new relationship with India’. Meeting with Indira Gandhi at Simla in June 1972, he signed an agreement in which both parties renounced the use of force and agreed to settle their outstanding differences ‘by peaceful means’. Territory taken by India on the western front was evacuated and, with minor adjustments and a name-change, the old Kashmir ceasefire line was reinstated as the ‘Line of Control’. Notable, too, was the fact that the more contentious question of Kashmir’s status and the promised plebiscite, though discussed at Simla, did not figure in the final agreement. Instead, the now sixty-six-year-old Sheikh Abdullah was released from his latest detention and allowed to make a triumphant return to Kashmir. Following talks with Indira Gandhi, it was understood that though the Sheikh would again seek – and in 1975 secure – the chief ministership of J and K, he would do so without challenging the state’s incorporation into India. Everywhere, peace was being ‘given a chance’. The fortuity of three popularly elected governments happening to coincide was paying a dividend.

But this favourable conjuncture would last barely three years; and after that it would not come around again for a couple of decades. As if ‘predestined to commit the same follies’, the populist trio of Indira, Bhutto and Mujib followed parallel paths to a common nemesis.1 All would succumb to the delusions of power, all would fall from grace, and all would be brutally eliminated. Additionally, all would leave offspring to reclaim their prime ministerial mantles, perpetuate ‘the same follies’ and court a similar fate. The legacy of the people-powered 1970s would linger on. Pakistan and Bangladesh would continue to be convulsed by the fallout from the Bhutto and Mujib governments well into the twenty-first century. India too was scarred. The war had fostered a hegemonic mind-set that would dog future relations with its neighbours.

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