Nov 30, 2023, 02:19 PM IST
April 1971. In the erstwhile East Pakistan, it was the reign of 'Butcher of Bangladesh', Pakistan Army's General Tikka Khan. Tikka Khan's ferocious killing spree forced millions of refugees into India. New Delhi was alarmed. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called a cabinet meeting. Army chief General Sam Manekshaw was the invitee in top focus.
Manekshaw disapproved the idea of immediate attack in April 1971. "I have only 30 tanks and two armoured divisions with me. The Himalayan passes will be opening anytime. What if the Chinese give an ultimatum? The rains will start now in East Pakistan. When it rains there the rivers become oceans. I guarantee 100 per cent defeat," Manekshaw told Indira Gandhi, according to Andrew S. Grove's 'Only The Paranoid Survive'.
Given that Manekshaw had single-handedly disapproved the proposition of war that had come from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi herself, he offered to resign. But pragmatism prevailed. Indira Gandhi gave her army chief the time to plan India's victory over Pakistan, eight months later, in December 1971.
Pakistani ruler during 1971 war, General Yahya Khan, and India's General Sam Manekshaw were colleagues at military operations directorate of British Indian Army before partition. On August 13, 1947, General Yahya Khan who became Pakistan's ruler during 1971 war had promised to pay ₹1000 for Manekshaw's James Motorcycle. "I never received the ₹1000, but he gave me the whole of East Pakistan," Manekshaw recalled after war. The anecdote particularly charmed Indira Gandhi about Manekshaw, her biographer Pupul Jayakar wrote later.
General Manekshaw remembered Indira Gandhi for her fits of anger. Without focusing on her characteristic paranoia that came to define her peak of power, he often recalled Gandhi for her pragmatism during 1971 war while cleverly diverting political questions such as her decision to return 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war.