The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971

The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 was a military conflict between India and Pakistan. Indian and Bangladeshi sources consider the beginning of the war to be Operation Chengiz Khan, Pakistan's December 3, 1971 pre-emptive strike on 11 Indian airbases. However, Pakistan considers it to be a part of the overall Bangladesh Liberation War, in which India had been providing direct financial and military support for the Mukti Bahini Bengali rebels.

During the course of the war, Indian and Pakistani forces clashed on the eastern and western fronts. The war effectively came to an end after the Eastern Command of the Pakistan Military signed the Instrument of Surrender, following which East Pakistan seceded as the independent state of Bangladesh. Around 97,368 West Pakistanis who were in East Pakistan at the time of its independence, including some 79,700 Pakistan Army soldiers and paramilitary personnel[7] and 12,500 civilians[7], were taken as prisoners of war by India.

Background
Main article: Bangladesh Liberation War
Main article: 1971 Bangladesh atrocities
The Indo-Pakistani conflict was sparked by the Bangladesh Liberation war, a conflict between the traditionally dominant West Pakistanis and the majority East Pakistanis.[4] The Bangladesh Liberation war ignited after the 1970 Pakistani election, in which the East Pakistani Awami League won 167 of 169 seats in East Pakistan and secured a simple majority in the 313-seat lower house of the Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament of Pakistan). Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman presented the Six Points to the President of Pakistan and claimed the right to form the government. After the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, refused to yield the premiership of Pakistan to Mujibur, President Yahya Khan called the military, dominated by West Pakistanis to suppress dissent[8][9].

Mass arrests of dissidents began, and attempts were made to disarm East Pakistani soldiers and police. After several days of strikes and non-cooperation movements, the Pakistani military cracked down on Dhaka on the night of 25 March 1971. The Awami League was banished, and many members fled into exile in India. Mujib was arrested on the night of 25–26 March 1971 at about 1:30 a.m. (as per Radio Pakistan’s news on 29 March 1971) and taken to West Pakistan.

On 27 March 1971, Ziaur Rahman, a rebellious major in the Pakistani army, declared the independence of Bangladesh on behalf of Mujibur[10]. In April, exiled Awami League leaders formed a government-in-exile in Baidyanathtala of Meherpur. The East Pakistan Rifles, a paramilitary force, defected to the rebellion. A guerrilla troop of civilians, the Mukti Bahini, was formed to help the Bangladesh Army.

India's involvement in Bangladesh Liberation War
The Pakistan army conducted a widespread genocide against the Bengali population of East Pakistan,[11] aimed in particular at the minority Hindu population, [12][13] leading to approximately 10 million[12][14] people fleeing East Pakistan and taking refuge in the neighboring Indian states.[11][15] The East Pakistan-India border was opened to allow refugees safe shelter in India. The governments of West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura established refugee camps along the border. The resulting flood of impoverished East Pakistani refugees placed an intolerable strain on India's already overburdened economy.[13]

The national Indian government repeatedly appealed to the international community, but failing to elicit any response,[16] Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 27 March 1971 expressed full support of her government for the independence struggle of the people of East Pakistan. The Indian leadership under Prime Minister Gandhi quickly decided that it was more effective to end the genocide by taking armed action against Pakistan than to simply give refuge to those who made it across to refugee camps.[15] Exiled East Pakistan army officers and members of the Indian Intelligence immediately started using these camps for recruitment and training of Mukti Bahini guerrillas.[17]

India's official engagement with Pakistan
Objective

Illustration showing military units and troop movements during operations in the Eastern sector of the war.By November, war seemed inevitable; a massive buildup of Indian forces on the border with East Pakistan had begun. The Indian military waited for winter, when the drier ground would make for easier operations and Himalayan passes would be closed by snow, preventing any Chinese intervention. On 23 November, Yahya Khan declared a state of emergency in all of Pakistan and told his people to prepare for war.[18]

On the evening of 3 December Sunday, at about 5:40 PM,[19] the Pakistani air force launched a pre-emptive strike on eleven airfields in north-western India, including Agra which was 300 miles (480 km) from the border. During this attack the Taj Mahal was camouflaged with a forest of twigs and leaves and draped with burlap because its marble glowed like a white beacon in the moonlight.[20]

This preemptive strike known as Operation Chengiz Khan, was inspired by the success of Israeli Operation Focus in the Arab-Israeli Six Day War. But, unlike the Israeli attack on Arab airbases in 1967 which involved a large number of Israeli planes, Pakistan flew no more than 50 planes to India and failed inflict the intended damage.[21] As a result, Indian runways were cratered and rendered non-functional for several hours after the attack.[22]

In an address to the nation on radio that same evening, Prime Minister Gandhi held the air strikes as a declaration of war against India[23][24] and the Indian Air Force responded with initial air strikes that very night that were expanded to massive retaliatory airstrikes the next morning.[25]

This marked the official start of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Prime Minister Gandhi ordered the immediate mobilization of troops and launched the full-scale invasion. Indian forces responded with a massive coordinated air, sea, and land assault. Indian Air Force started flying sorties against Pakistan from midnight and quickly achieved air superiority.[4][20] The main Indian Objective on the Western front was to prevent Pakistan from entering Indian soil. There was no Indian intention of conducting any major offensive into West Pakistan.[19]

Naval hostilities

Pakistan's PNS Ghazi, was the only submarine operated by either of the warring nations in 1965. The Ghazi sank off the fairway buoy of Visakhapatnam near the eastern coast of India under unclear circumstances during the 1971 war, making it the first submarine casualty in the waters around the Indian subcontinent.In the western theatre of the war, the Indian Navy, under the command of Vice Admiral Kohli, achieved success by attacking Karachi's port in the code-named Operation Trident[4] on the night of 4-5 December[4], which resulted in the sinking of the Pakistani destroyer PNS Khyber and a minesweeper PNS Muhafiz; PNS Shajehan was badly damaged[4]. This resulted in tactical Indian success with Pakistan losing 720 sailors killed and wounded apart from losing reserve fuel and many commercial ships, thus crippling the Pakistan Navy's further involvement in the conflict. Operation Python[4] followed Operation Trident which was on the night of 8-9 December[4], in which Indian rocket-armed motor torpedo boats attacked the Karachi Roads that resulted in further destruction of reserve fuel tanks, as well as the sinking of three Pakistani commercial ships in Karachi Harbour.[4]

In the eastern theatre of the war, the Indian Eastern Naval Command, under Vice Admiral Krishnan, completely isolated East Pakistan by establishing a naval blockade in the Bay of Bengal, trapping the Eastern Pakistani Navy as well as eight foreign merchant ships in their ports. From 4 December onwards, the aircraft carrier INS Vikrant was deployed in which its Sea Hawk fighter-bombers attacked many coastal towns in East Pakistan including Chittagong and Cox's Bazaar. Pakistan responded by sending the submarine PNS Ghazi to negate the threat.[5] Though Indians claim to have laid a trap to sink the submarine[5], the Ghazi sank off Vishakapatnam's coast under unclear circumstances thus reducing Pakistan's control of Bangladeshi coastline[6] . But on 9 December, the Indian Navy suffered its biggest wartime loss when the Pakistani submarine PNS Hangor sank the frigate INS Khukri in the Arabian Sea resulting in a loss of 18 officers and 176 sailors.[26]

The damage inflicted on the PN stood at 7 gunboats, 1 minesweeper, 1 submarine, 2 destroyers, 3 patrol crafts belonging to the coast guard, 18 cargo, supply and communication vessels, and large scale damage inflicted on the naval base and docks in the coastal town of Karachi. Three merchant navy ships; Anwar Baksh, Pasni and Madhumathi; [27] and ten smaller vessels were captured.[28] Around 1900 personnel were lost, while 1413 servicemen were captured by Indian forces in Dhaka.[29] According to one Pakistan scholar, Tariq Ali, the Pakistan Navy lost a third of its force in the war.[30]

Air operations
Main article: East Pakistan Air Operations, 1971
After the initial preemptive strike, PAF adopted a defensive stance in response to the Indian retaliation. As the war progressed, the Indian Air Force continued to battle the PAF over conflict zones[31], but the number of sorties flown by the PAF gradually decreased day-by-day.[32] The Indian Air Force flew 4,000 sorties while its counterpart, the PAF offered little in retaliation, partly because of the paucity of non-Bengali technical personnel.[4] This lack of retaliation has also been attributed to the deliberate decision of the PAF High Command to cut its losses as it had already incurred huge losses in the conflict.[33] The PAF also did not intervene during the Indian Navy's raid on Karachi, a Pakistani naval port city.

In the east, the small air contingent of Pakistan Air Force No. 14 Sqn was destroyed, putting the Dhaka airfield out of commission and resulting in Indian air superiority in the east.[4]

Ground operations

An Indian newspaper cover (1971)Pakistan attacked at several places along India's western border with Pakistan, but the Indian army successfully held their positions.[citation needed] The Indian Army quickly responded to the Pakistan Army's movements in the west and made some initial gains, including capturing around 5,500 square miles (14,000 km2) of Pakistan territory (land gained by India in Pakistani Kashmir, Pakistani Punjab and Sindh sectors was later ceded in the Simla Agreement of 1972, as a gesture of goodwill).

On the Eastern front, the Indian Army joined forces with the Mukti Bahini to form the Mitro Bahini ("Allied Forces"); Unlike the 1965 war which had emphasized set-piece battles and slow advances, this time the strategy adopted was a swift, three-pronged assault of nine infantry divisions with attached armored units and close air support that rapidly converged on Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan.

Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, who commanded the eighth, twenty-third, and fifty-seventh divisions, led the Indian thrust into East Pakistan. As these forces attacked Pakistani formations, the Indian air force rapidly destroyed the small air contingent in East Pakistan and put the Dhaka airfield out of commission. In the meantime, the Indian navy effectively blockaded East Pakistan.

The Indian campaign employed "blitzkrieg" techniques, exploiting weakness in the enemy's positions and bypassing opposition, and resulted in a swift victory.[34] Faced with insurmountable losses, the Pakistani military capitulated in less than a fortnight. On 16 December, the Pakistani forces stationed in East Pakistan surrendered.

Surrender of Pakistani forces in East Pakistan

The instrument of surrenderMain article: Instrument of Surrender (1971)
The Instrument of Surrender of Pakistani forces stationed in East Pakistan was signed at Ramna Race Course in Dhaka at 16.31 IST on 16 December 1971, by Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, General Officer Commanding-in-chief of Eastern Command of the Indian Army and Lieutenant General A. A. K. Niazi, Commander of Pakistani forces in Bangladesh. As Aurora accepted the surrender, the surrounding crowds on the race course began shouting anti-Niazi and anti-Pakistan slogans.[35]

India took approximately 90,000 prisoners of war, including Pakistani soldiers and their East Pakistani civilian supporters. 79,676 prisoners were uniformed personnel, of which 55,692 were Army, 16,354 Paramilitary, 5,296 Police, 1000 Navy and 800 PAF.[36] The remaining prisoners were civilians - either family members of the military personnel or collaborators (razakars). The Hamoodur Rahman Commission report instituted by Pakistan lists the Pakistani POWs as follows:

Branch Number of captured Pakistani POWs
Army 54,154
Navy 1,381
Air Force 833
Paramilitary including police 22,000
Civilian personnel 12,000
Total: 90,368