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India's Secret War: BSF and Nine Months to the Birth of Bangladesh
Triggered by the US-backed Pakistani junta's brutal measures against the Bengalis Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proclaimed the independence of East Pakistan on 26 March 1971. They needed the world's support and was their first ally.The Border Security Force (BSF) an elite Indian force was only five years old at the time and became central to India's sustained military response in East Pakistan for nine months until the alliance of Indian and Bangladeshi forces won Dacca. The BSF's founding chief K.F. Rustamji and his men went beyond their charter of policing borders to respond to one of the world's worst humanitarian crises that was unfolding right next door to India. For nine months till the 1971 India-Pakistan war they covertly gave support to the forces of resistance through clandestine missions and black ops deep in East Pakistan while diplomats and politicians primed the world for the war. They welcomed democratically elected politicians and helped establish them as the government-in-exile installed a clandestine radio station triggered the defections of East Pakistani diplomats and foiled the Pakistan Army's tactical trump card to damage the Indian Air Force bases.With access to classified records and through exhaustive interviews with surviving veterans award-winning investigative reporter Ushinor Majumdar has crafted this first comprehensive historical account of the BSF's role in the Bangladesh liberation war which changed the course of South Asian history.
351 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 12, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 23, 2024
A very enlightening and thrilling read! It’s always fantastic to read about the silent heroes of our nation’s past. This book provides many such stories in a very enticing and yet simply written manner.
January 30, 2024
1971 was a watershed moment in the Indian subcontinent’s history. It negated the raison d’etre of one of the nations in it. Pakistan was formed in 1947 by dividing India on the basis of religion. The Muslim League claimed Muslims of India to be a separate nation and demanded a separate homeland for them. The fallacy of this logic was pointed out then itself by astute observers but Jinnah and his ilk were adamant in realizing their dream. However, problems arose the moment Pakistan was formed. It constituted two disjoined parts separated by 1000 km of Indian territory in between. 55 per cent of the new nation spoke Bengali as their mother tongue but they practically had no representation in the higher cadres of government and military. Urdu was forcefully imposed on the East, by replacing Bengali. People of East Pakistan resented the dominance of the Western territory which itself was dominated by Punjab. 23 years after independence, Pakistan cobbled together a constitution and elections were held to the National Assembly. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, a rising Bengali leader, swept East Pakistan and obtained majority in the federal assembly. West Pakistanis faced the unpalatable situation of swearing in Mujib as the prime minister. Subterfuges operated at all levels and Mujib found himself arrested and lodged in a Pakistani jail rather than administering the country. Bengalis erupted in rebellion and the province wanted to secede. Repressive measures were undertaken by the Pakistan army. Hundreds of thousands of men were tortured and killed while an equal number of women were raped or taken as sex slaves. Ten million people crossed over to India as refugees. India helped them fight against their oppressors by providing men and material for battles against the Pak army. It did this by cleverly employing the services of its young Border Security Force (BSF) which was constituted only in 1965. It also helped India disclaim any official army involvement. In December 1971, India and Pakistan went in for a war in which Pakistan was humiliated by the surrender of 91,000 of its elite troops and secession of the eastern appanage as Bangladesh. This book tells the story of the operations in 1971 orchestrated by BSF. Ushinor Majumdar is an investigative journalist with Outlook magazine since 2015. This is his second book.
The book also includes a brief narrative of the worsening of the relationship between the eastern and western parts of Pakistan. It appears as if the Muslim League had roped in Bengali Muslims only as a ballast to lend credence to their demand for a nation for all Muslims of India. Apart from religion, there was nothing to unite these Muslim provinces together. Linguistic and cultural differences rattled from the very word go. Jinnah visited East Pakistan only once and disdainfully rejected the proposal to make Bengali one of the national languages of Pakistan. This was awkward when the new nation was taken as a whole as 55 per cent of the population spoke Bengali while only 7 per cent spoke Urdu. Pakistan banned the broadcast of Rabindra Sangeet on radio as it was claimed to violate Pakistan’s cultural values. The Bengali Muslims hated Urdu to the core. When hostilities actually began in 1971, the Bengali resistance movement was initially called the Mukti Fauj (means liberation army in Urdu) but its name was soon changed to Mukti Bahini which meant the same but was Bengali in timbre. In 1962, Mujib secretly reached out to Jawaharlal Nehru with a plan to secede from Pakistan. Astonishingly, Nehru declined to back the initiative as he probably did not have the stomach to antagonize Pakistan. Perhaps this was as well in hindsight, because if a war had broken out then, it was likely that Nehru’s leadership would have ensured defeat of the Indian troops like he did against China! On a more serious note, it might have saved the lives and honour of thousands if he had taken the challenge up.
Bengalis constituted only a very minor share of Pakistan’s military which was totally dominated by Punjabis and Pathans. The army was mockingly called ‘Khan Sena’ in East Pakistan hinting at the typical surname of those soldiers. There was an ill-equipped East Pakistan regiment of the army and a border force called East Bengal Rifles which was fully Bengali in makeup. The liberation movement was formed around the nucleus of the defected military personnel of Bengali origin who joined Mujib. Pakistan used local allies called Razakars and mixed them with regular troops to carry out atrocities in Bangladesh and inside India’s borders. These people were Bengalis but their Islamist doctrinaire bound them to the yoke that enslaved their countrymen. The BSF was the nodal agency in coordinating with the rebels and refugees. They provided shelter to politicians and freedom fighters. Top leaders were flown in to meet Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The name of the new nation and a draft constitution was formed in meetings of rebels conducted inside India. A provisional government was set up in land liberated by the combined efforts of the BSF and Mukti Bahini. Full logistics of moving the people and the press across the border was undertaken by BSF. India’s actions were timely and apt for the dismemberment of her arch enemy. Pakistan was training and arming the separatist Mizo National Front of Mizoram in 1971. In fact, they fought on many occasions alongside the Pakistan army against the BSF and Mukti Bahini troops.
Majumdar is successful in presenting the details of the numerous skirmishes between the opponents in a manner interesting to general readers. It’s a bane of war histories written by veteran soldiers to stick to military lingo and infinite detail while explaining the happenings on the battlefield. This sometimes sounds like what is taught in soldier-training sessions. Majumdar is a journalist and it shows in his choice of narratives and simple language. Bengali rebels arranged sabotage of road and rail bridges after crossing the border, sometimes with BSF men supporting them in combat. The book is written from a BSF perspective and the main contributors of data are retired BSF officers and troops who had long retired from service but were eager to share their experiences with the author. The author also makes effective efforts to bring out the atrocities carried out by the Pakistan army on Bangladeshi civilians. On several occasions, he mention finding the gory bodily remains of women inside surrendered of evacuated military camps who were kidnapped from the surrounding areas and then raped inside the Pakistan military camps.
Even though India won the war in the end, the result was not a foregone conclusion. Indian military sorely lacked resources and modernization of weaponry. The Nehruvian socialist system had already taken its toll on Indian economy. The country languished in extreme poverty with practically no foreign currency reserves. When the BSF was formed in 1965, its director general asked for foreign exchange to procure wireless sets and weapons from abroad. This was denied. He then decided to build the radio sets internally and set up a technical wing. They were fruitful in their efforts but the situation was ironic. Here was a border police force assembling and testing radio sets instead of concentrating their attention on guarding the frontier! The 3-inch mortar used by the BSF was obsolete by 1971. The sad fact was that they were using it against a regular army having sophisticated American and European weapons. Pakistan’s advanced arsenal could not be effectively used on the battlefield because of its incompetent ground troops lacking the expertise to do so. Indian victory depended on soldiers’ valour in the face of poor resources. However, better investment on modernization of forces would have averted many unnecessary casualties and many Indian women could have been saved from the unenviable fate of widowhood.
The book is easy to read and effortlessly takes the readers along with the narrative. It essentially covers the eight-month period from end-March 1971 when Mujib was arrested and the pogrom started to early-December 1971 when full-scale war began. A chapter is earmarked for activity on the western front in the war even though that is not directly relevant to the efforts on the eastern front. On the other hand, the actual war for the liberation of Bangladesh and capture of Dacca is condensed to an unsatisfactory few pages. This may be because the whole of the action was taken up by the Indian army and the BSF had had only a minor role to play. The book also provides some glimpses on the religiosity of Indian soldiers and how soldiers of all religions took part in the festivities of the others as a team.
The book is highly recommended.
The book also includes a brief narrative of the worsening of the relationship between the eastern and western parts of Pakistan. It appears as if the Muslim League had roped in Bengali Muslims only as a ballast to lend credence to their demand for a nation for all Muslims of India. Apart from religion, there was nothing to unite these Muslim provinces together. Linguistic and cultural differences rattled from the very word go. Jinnah visited East Pakistan only once and disdainfully rejected the proposal to make Bengali one of the national languages of Pakistan. This was awkward when the new nation was taken as a whole as 55 per cent of the population spoke Bengali while only 7 per cent spoke Urdu. Pakistan banned the broadcast of Rabindra Sangeet on radio as it was claimed to violate Pakistan’s cultural values. The Bengali Muslims hated Urdu to the core. When hostilities actually began in 1971, the Bengali resistance movement was initially called the Mukti Fauj (means liberation army in Urdu) but its name was soon changed to Mukti Bahini which meant the same but was Bengali in timbre. In 1962, Mujib secretly reached out to Jawaharlal Nehru with a plan to secede from Pakistan. Astonishingly, Nehru declined to back the initiative as he probably did not have the stomach to antagonize Pakistan. Perhaps this was as well in hindsight, because if a war had broken out then, it was likely that Nehru’s leadership would have ensured defeat of the Indian troops like he did against China! On a more serious note, it might have saved the lives and honour of thousands if he had taken the challenge up.
Bengalis constituted only a very minor share of Pakistan’s military which was totally dominated by Punjabis and Pathans. The army was mockingly called ‘Khan Sena’ in East Pakistan hinting at the typical surname of those soldiers. There was an ill-equipped East Pakistan regiment of the army and a border force called East Bengal Rifles which was fully Bengali in makeup. The liberation movement was formed around the nucleus of the defected military personnel of Bengali origin who joined Mujib. Pakistan used local allies called Razakars and mixed them with regular troops to carry out atrocities in Bangladesh and inside India’s borders. These people were Bengalis but their Islamist doctrinaire bound them to the yoke that enslaved their countrymen. The BSF was the nodal agency in coordinating with the rebels and refugees. They provided shelter to politicians and freedom fighters. Top leaders were flown in to meet Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The name of the new nation and a draft constitution was formed in meetings of rebels conducted inside India. A provisional government was set up in land liberated by the combined efforts of the BSF and Mukti Bahini. Full logistics of moving the people and the press across the border was undertaken by BSF. India’s actions were timely and apt for the dismemberment of her arch enemy. Pakistan was training and arming the separatist Mizo National Front of Mizoram in 1971. In fact, they fought on many occasions alongside the Pakistan army against the BSF and Mukti Bahini troops.
Majumdar is successful in presenting the details of the numerous skirmishes between the opponents in a manner interesting to general readers. It’s a bane of war histories written by veteran soldiers to stick to military lingo and infinite detail while explaining the happenings on the battlefield. This sometimes sounds like what is taught in soldier-training sessions. Majumdar is a journalist and it shows in his choice of narratives and simple language. Bengali rebels arranged sabotage of road and rail bridges after crossing the border, sometimes with BSF men supporting them in combat. The book is written from a BSF perspective and the main contributors of data are retired BSF officers and troops who had long retired from service but were eager to share their experiences with the author. The author also makes effective efforts to bring out the atrocities carried out by the Pakistan army on Bangladeshi civilians. On several occasions, he mention finding the gory bodily remains of women inside surrendered of evacuated military camps who were kidnapped from the surrounding areas and then raped inside the Pakistan military camps.
Even though India won the war in the end, the result was not a foregone conclusion. Indian military sorely lacked resources and modernization of weaponry. The Nehruvian socialist system had already taken its toll on Indian economy. The country languished in extreme poverty with practically no foreign currency reserves. When the BSF was formed in 1965, its director general asked for foreign exchange to procure wireless sets and weapons from abroad. This was denied. He then decided to build the radio sets internally and set up a technical wing. They were fruitful in their efforts but the situation was ironic. Here was a border police force assembling and testing radio sets instead of concentrating their attention on guarding the frontier! The 3-inch mortar used by the BSF was obsolete by 1971. The sad fact was that they were using it against a regular army having sophisticated American and European weapons. Pakistan’s advanced arsenal could not be effectively used on the battlefield because of its incompetent ground troops lacking the expertise to do so. Indian victory depended on soldiers’ valour in the face of poor resources. However, better investment on modernization of forces would have averted many unnecessary casualties and many Indian women could have been saved from the unenviable fate of widowhood.
The book is easy to read and effortlessly takes the readers along with the narrative. It essentially covers the eight-month period from end-March 1971 when Mujib was arrested and the pogrom started to early-December 1971 when full-scale war began. A chapter is earmarked for activity on the western front in the war even though that is not directly relevant to the efforts on the eastern front. On the other hand, the actual war for the liberation of Bangladesh and capture of Dacca is condensed to an unsatisfactory few pages. This may be because the whole of the action was taken up by the Indian army and the BSF had had only a minor role to play. The book also provides some glimpses on the religiosity of Indian soldiers and how soldiers of all religions took part in the festivities of the others as a team.
The book is highly recommended.
December 21, 2023
I read Gary Bass and I wanted to read more and I found this book. I didn't know anything about what India is capable of through covert missions till I read India's Secret War.
And I am tired of history writers whose books are such tedious reads. This is a fresh and beautiful style. It felt like I was reading a limited series. I have been researching on South Asia for a long time and haven't found so much detailed information in most books. I found that this write is an investigative reporter and that probably makes is the differentiator. They really give you information for your money's worth. It's not crafty lines and armchair opinions. It's facts and you are free to make what you want of it.
I now want to know more about Bangladesh and the history of its making. And I am going to look for more gritty books on Asian covert forces. Tired of reading about overrated Navy Seals!!
I found Ushinor has another book and I have just downloaded the audio book. My Xmas gift to myself.
And I am tired of history writers whose books are such tedious reads. This is a fresh and beautiful style. It felt like I was reading a limited series. I have been researching on South Asia for a long time and haven't found so much detailed information in most books. I found that this write is an investigative reporter and that probably makes is the differentiator. They really give you information for your money's worth. It's not crafty lines and armchair opinions. It's facts and you are free to make what you want of it.
I now want to know more about Bangladesh and the history of its making. And I am going to look for more gritty books on Asian covert forces. Tired of reading about overrated Navy Seals!!
I found Ushinor has another book and I have just downloaded the audio book. My Xmas gift to myself.
November 1, 2024
India's Secret War by Ushinor Majumdar is a powerful and insightful book that sheds light on the early days of the BSF, an often-overlooked part of India’s history. As the son of a BSF Artillery Regiment officer, I found the detailed accounts and unseen photos particularly moving. This book filled gaps I had been searching for and made history come alive in a meaningful way. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in India’s military past—an impressive work by Ushinor Majumdar.
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January 11, 2024Really intriguing book especially loved the BSF operations mentioned here and the thrill of it
May 12, 2025
An excellent read on BSF's contribution to the 1971 war!!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews