Gen JFR Jacob: FFs fought valiantly in ’71 war

Former chief of the Indian army's eastern command Lt Gen (retd) JFR Jacob yesterday said it was the freedom fighters' gallantry that liberated Bangladesh from Pakistan occupation.

He said the full credit goes to them as they did the real job. Their acts of valour won the nation independence.

The man who is credited with making Gen Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi, the then commander of Pakistan army's eastern command, surrender in public on December 16, 1971, said the freedom fighters including the soldiers of the East Bengal Regiment had emerged as "terror for the Pakistani troops".

Now leading an 11-member delegation of Indian war veterans on a visit to Bangladesh at the invitation of Chief of Army Staff Gen Moeen U Ahmed, he was talking to newsmen at the Indian high commission in Dhaka. He expressed gratitude for inviting them to join the Independence Day celebrations.

Looking back to the days in the lead-up to December 16, 1971, he spoke about his negotiations with Niazi on the instrument of surrender and the Pakistani general's threat of revenge and submitting another person's revolver as his own.

He also related how his country became involved in Bangladesh's war of independence unofficially in early April, 1971.

Jack Jacob, who drafted the historic "instrument of surrender", enlisted in the Indian army in 1941 when it was under British command, and retired in 1978.

Recounting how Niazi insisted on holding the surrender ceremony in his office, he said: "This man really behaved badly with the people of Bangladesh. Their army did, you know it all….I don't want to mention all that."

He continued: "I wanted him to surrender in front of the people of Dhaka. He said, 'I won't surrender, I'd surrender in Dhaka office.' I said, 'No, you would surrender in the Racecourse Maidan [now Suhrawardy Udyan] in front of the people of Dhaka.' It's the only public surrender in history."

On views that it was risky to arrange the surrender ceremony in public with not much troops mobilised yet, he said, "I knew we had hardly any troops outside Dhaka and it was problematic for public surrender...But would it have been better to be in safety and make him surrender in his office? No. I wanted him to face the people."

Recollecting those historic moments, the architect of surrender ceremony said, "Niazi retorted, 'Dhaka would fall over my dead body.' But I did it the way I thought it should be. I didn't have any directives or instructions for it. Was it wrong, I ask you?"

In the morning of December 16, Jacob was asked to "go and get the surrender".

"What happened on December 13…there was an American resolution vetoed by the Soviet Union. The Russians said, 'You better hurry up, we can't be going.' Then on 14th December, we intercepted a message that there was a meeting in the government's house. With the governor and Niazi at the meeting, we arranged to have an air strike on the house. And the governor resigned.

"General Niazi, Farman Ali went to see the American Consul-General Spivack (Herbert Spivack) on the 14th (December 14) afternoon with the proposals for ceasefire under UN, withdrawal under UN, handover of government to UN, withdrawal of anybody including ethnic minorities under UN and no war crimes, and there were some other clauses."

But Bhutto, who was then at the UN office in New York, refused to accept the ceasefire, Jacob said, adding, "So, on the 15th (of December), the Americans gave it to us in Delhi and we accepted the ceasefire. On the 16th morning, I was told to go and get the surrender."

About Niazi's reaction to the proposal for surrender, he recalled: "He [Niazi] said, 'Who said I would surrender? You have come here only to [discuss] a ceasefire.' So, this argument went on.

The documents he gave to them for surrender said Pakistan forces would surrender to joint Indo-Bangladesh command. But Major Gen (retd) Rao Farman Ali, then an adviser to the governor of East Pakistan, said, "There is no question anything with Bangladesh army." They insisted it would have to be only the Indians.

"I'm not going to go through all those details; this was a very difficult negotiation," Jacob said.

Later, Niazi told the Pakistan's enquiry commission headed by Justice Hamudur Rahman that he [Jacob] had blackmailed him into surrender. "He said, 'I was forced to surrender because General Jacob blackmailed me.' I never blackmailed him."

Giving Niazi 30 minutes to make up his mind, Jacob walked out. "Going back, I put the paper on his table and asked him, 'Do you accept this document?' For three times he didn't answer and I picked it up and said [it's] taken as accepted," he went on.

During the negotiations, he also asked the Pakistani general to surrender his revolver. "He put a dirty little revolver. The lanyard was dirty and frayed in parts."

In his book "Surrender at Dacca: Birth of a Nation", Jacob said he realised only later that the pistol was not Niazi's. It was a normal army issue .38 revolver.

"The barrel was choked with muck and apparently had not been cleaned for some considerable time…More likely, Niazi had taken it from one of his military policemen and surrendered it as his personal weapon. I could not help feeling that in his own way, Niazi had got a little of his own back," he wrote.

On the absence of General MAG Osmani, then the commander in chief of the Bangladesh armed forces, in the surrender ceremony at Racecourse Maidan, Jacob said, "He was in Sylhet. He had a helicopter but he couldn't make it. It's not our fault. We wanted him there."

Queried exactly when India had engaged in the war, he chuckled and asked back, "Officially or unofficially?"

Going into details, he said India was monitoring the situation since the launch of Operation Searchlight, the crackdown on the civilians, on March 26 and was shocked at the events that unfolded across the border.

"We had Mujib's declaration…Zia's declaration on independence. When the refugees started coming in, I was standing on the border…... they were in a very shocking state. Soon we started getting more and more refugees and the government of India decided that we should help the Muktibahini, the freedom fighters."

The official orders certainly came later, he added.

"The help was extended, and more and more involvement took place. For instance, Tajuddin, Nazrul Islam, Osmani, and Khandker--they all came to the Theatre Road, and the Muktis were organised."

"The time…it was in April unofficially." Officially, India's involvement in the war began on December 3.

In conversation with New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg that day, Jacob said the eastern army was confident of liberating Bangladesh in a short time.

Asked yesterday what made him that confident, he said, "We were prepared for this. Anyone knew we were going to liberate Bangladesh. The Muktibahini were trained, equipped, the East Bengal Regiment was there, and the Indian army was waiting to go."

On December 3 evening, Pakistan bombed Indian airfields in the west, therefore it was taken as a war. "So, we moved in."

Asked about his interrogation of Niazi and some of the other generals after the surrender, Jacob said, "They denied the atrocities, they denied everything….and said they would never forget the humiliation and would take "badla" (revenge) for it."

Reminiscing his days with Bangladeshi politicians, Jacob described former prime minister Tajuddin Ahmad, who was instrumental in forming the first government of Bangladesh, as "one of the finest people I've ever met".

"I had great privilege of working with him. Nazrul Islam, Osmani--we worked together. I found them dedicated nationalists, great people."

Asked why India and Bangladesh failed to try the Pakistani prisoners of war, he said: "As far as I recollect, political agreement was that Pakistan government would try them when they would go back."

Talking on Bangladesh-India relations, Jacob said the ties have been "very good from the beginning and are getting stronger and stronger".

However, there should be much more interaction between the two countries in commerce, trade, investment and other areas of economy. They share common interests, border, and have Bangla-speaking people, he said.

"On the whole it is very, very good. We have common interest and we have to work together. We're both powers in the region; Bangladesh is a very powerful country."

Jacob said 1,400 Indian troops were killed and 4,000 wounded during the Liberation War.