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  • Why Pakistani Army surrendered in 1971?

    last night after having watched the capital talk by hamid mir Program related to the fall of dhaka.

    What was the major reason they surrendered?because of indian army?mukhti bahini?only 55k in numbers?naval blockade?or air support?no supply line?

    I have also this in my mind,why was Bangladesh or east Pakistan not made a seperate country from the beginning?considering the distance and the geography of Bangladesh to also be surrounded by India?why they didn't from the beginning made it to a seperate country?why with west Pakistan when the geography had made it inevitable for them to be seperated one day?

    I will also contribute to this thread with my point of view

  • #2
    Originally posted by barangai View Post
    last night after having watched the capital talk by hamid mir Program related to the fall of dhaka.

    What was the major reason they surrendered?because of indian army?mukhti bahini?only 55k in numbers?naval blockade?or air support?no supply line?

    I have also this in my mind,why was Bangladesh or east Pakistan not made a seperate country from the beginning?considering the distance and the geography of Bangladesh to also be surrounded by India?why they didn't from the beginning made it to a seperate country?why with west Pakistan when the geography had made it inevitable for them to be seperated one day?

    I will also contribute to this thread with my point of view
    Are you serious? Out-positioned, out-gunned, and out-maneuvered. It was surrender or die!
    Chimo

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
      Are you serious? Out-positioned, out-gunned, and out-maneuvered. It was surrender or die!
      Thank you for the contribution,Sir but i have watched and infact i have met veteran lt Gen Ali quli khan khattak in person in 2011,he instead of surrendering,escaped Bangladesh into Burma and later Pakistan but didn't surrendered,many followed him.

      Is it possible to put the blame on General Niazi only?

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      • #4
        Good God! Take a look at your terrain. You and India had one chance and one chance only. For India, an axis of advance to which there is no opposition. For you, guess the axis of advance that you can stop them cold. They guess right. You guess wrong.

        It is as simple as that.
        Chimo

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        • #5
          Originally posted by barangai View Post
          What was the major reason they surrendered?
          Safer to surrender to the IA, the mukhti bahini would have massacred them.

          They were already in contact with the IA as early as Dec 09, the surrender took place little over a week later.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by barangai View Post
            Thank you for the contribution,Sir but i have watched and infact i have met veteran lt Gen Ali quli khan khattak in person in 2011,he instead of surrendering,escaped Bangladesh into Burma and later Pakistan but didn't surrendered,many followed him.

            Is it possible to put the blame on General Niazi only?
            One man escaping the encirclement at Dhaka and into Burma is one thing, all 55,000 men is quite another. Even Burma would notice if 55,000 people crossed the border all at once.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by barangai View Post
              What was the major reason they surrendered?because of indian army?mukhti bahini?only 55k in numbers?naval blockade?or air support?no supply line?
              All of the above. Having played a significant role in the genocide in East Pakistan the Army found itself facing a domestic uprising, an invasion from without, a naval blockade & a populace that largely (though not entirely) wanted it gone. Any one of those might have been enough. In combination they were irresistible. Clearly India's intervention was the immediate cause of the surrender, though there is a good argument that East Pakistan would have become ungovernable eventually.

              I have also this in my mind,why was Bangladesh or east Pakistan not made a seperate country from the beginning?considering the distance and the geography of Bangladesh to also be surrounded by India?why they didn't from the beginning made it to a seperate country?why with west Pakistan when the geography had made it inevitable for them to be seperated one day?
              Broadly speaking the same reason the whole of the former British possessions didn't end up as a half dozen different nations - idealism & history.

              One of the impacts of colonial boundaries was to help create the potential for national entities where they might not otherwise have been. There would have been no 'Indonesia' without the Dutch and no 'Philippines' without Spain, no Malaysia without Britain. Those nations would have been collections of principalities & Sultanates. Some might have joined willingly or conquered one another, but that would have created different nations than those forged by the shared experience of rule by a colonial overlord.

              India was much the same. Whatever might have emerged on the subcontinent absent British rule, it would not have resembled what did emerge (and before the hysterical nationalists charge in, that isn't a value judgement, just an observation). The starting point for India & Pakistan was the idea of a single nation made up of all the former British possessions. In some respects this was an act of heroic idealism by a group of people who could only have existed as they did in response to an external colonial power. When the reality of religious division hit there was still enough idealism left to believe that a Pakistan divided by geography & ethnicity could survive on a shared religious identity & a shared history (and perhaps a shared sense of threat). Many former colonies became nations in just such a way & many experienced similar problems.

              Had West Pakistan been prepared to accept the East as an equal that unwieldy nation may have survived, though that seems unlikely. The optimist in me would like to think that had that unlikely survival been negotiated Pakistan would be a different & better place, but that is just the optimist in me.
              sigpic

              Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Cactus
                Can't say much about Indonesia, Philippines or Malaysia, but you seem to be confusing India with Pakistan. India would've periodically formed up in its approximate shape and size with or without the British, just as it did during the Mauryas, Guptas and Mughals. And it would've periodically fallen apart just like those empires. A united India is a simple factor of military and administrative logic.

                It is much easier and cheaper to defend in the mountains (i.e. the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush) and along the coast (of the Indian Ocean), than allowing the enemy to enter the plains (i.e. the Indo-Gangetic plains) or make landfall (i.e. the southern peninsula). Also India has historically more men (infantry) than horses (cavalry) or fossil fuel (mechanized forces).

                To illustrate the potential cost savings, consider that when the British Indian Army controlled the full northern mountain frontier (the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush) they needed ~40 cavalry regiments; but with the mountain frontier split between India and Pakistan, they need ~60 and ~40 armored regiments respectively to secure their respective sides of the split Indo-Gangetic plains boundaries.

                Once the sub-continent has been conquered, one has to work with local intermediaries to administer the empire. The local intermediaries - military contractors, bureaucrats, traders, etc - are already integrated across the regions, transcending the "boundaries" of the principalities by marriage and by practical necessities of trade and education.
                To Bigfella's point, the key concept that the British introduced into their Indian empire (unwittingly) was nationalism. It had to be the British that introduced it because it was a relatively recent European construct, that neither Indian nor foreign Muslim kings could bring. Without the idea of India as a nation, as espoused by leaders in the late 19th and early 20th Century, we might have had a Maratha confederacy or a Mughal empire that stretched from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, but it would have nothing to bind it together except the skill of the ruling emperor.

                ===

                Originally posted by Cactus
                Pakistan, on the other hand, is a historic mutation caused by the accidental introduction of two ideas by a foreign power: Democracy and Zionism. Up until the late 19th Century, the Indian Muslim elites saw the British only as a more successful version of their own Turkic and Persian ancestors who, also being a tiny militarized minority like the British, had conquered the lands and were the rulers. It was the Franco-American idea of democracy that scared them, the idea of potentially being subjected to the same rules as their former subjects (the hundreds of millions of Hindus and natively converted Muslims), and drove them towards seeking a separate electorate. And it was an Austro-Hungarian-Jewish idea of a separate homeland on basis of religion that inspired them to seek out a Pakistan from whatever districts and principalities they could muster a Muslim majority. It is not at all surprising that modern Pakistan has so much trouble with democracy and the state of Israel.
                This is pretty much the BEST summation of Pakistan I've read outside a book. Bravo.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Cactus
                  Pakistan, on the other hand, is a historic mutation caused by the accidental introduction of two ideas by a foreign power: Democracy and Zionism.
                  Nothing wrong with evolution ...
                  Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state to be ruled by priests with a divine mission - Jinnah
                  https://twitter.com/AgnosticMuslim

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Cactus
                    Can't say much about Indonesia, Philippines or Malaysia, but you seem to be confusing India with Pakistan. India would've periodically formed up in its approximate shape and size with or without the British, just as it did during the Mauryas, Guptas and Mughals. And it would've periodically fallen apart just like those empires. A united India is a simple factor of military and administrative logic.
                    Not confusing anything with anything else. You actually covered my point quite nicely in the highlighted bit.


                    Originally posted by cataphract View Post
                    To Bigfella's point, the key concept that the British introduced into their Indian empire (unwittingly) was nationalism. It had to be the British that introduced it because it was a relatively recent European construct, that neither Indian nor foreign Muslim kings could bring. Without the idea of India as a nation, as espoused by leaders in the late 19th and early 20th Century, we might have had a Maratha confederacy or a Mughal empire that stretched from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, but it would have nothing to bind it together except the skill of the ruling emperor.
                    Thank you for getting my point. This is the context in which the creation of India & Pakistan needs to be seen - a movement defined by the existence of British colonial rule. From that it follows that Pakistan comes about & is defined in relation to a majority Hindu India. The issue of Bangladesh - why it didn't exist from the start & later came into existence - ultimately flows from that point.
                    sigpic

                    Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Agnostic Muslim View Post
                      Nothing wrong with evolution ...
                      Indeed. However, do remember that for a mutation to become a true adaptation and a step in the evolutionary process, the mutated have to reproduce and continue spreading the mutation until they become a sustainable population. Maybe you should encourage the erstwhile rulers of China, the Manchus, to secede... and they can take their old-time supporters, the Uighurs and the Tibetans, with them

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Cactus
                        The European idea of a "nation" is ethnicity and language focused; India is an empire (for the lack of a better word) governed as a democratic republic.

                        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation..._diversity.jpg
                        This is drifting further from the OP.

                        India is a colonial construct governed as a republican democracy - like Indonesia, the Philippines etc. Just because the modern concept of 'nation' had European origins doesn't mean India or Indonesia didn't adopt & adapt the concept to their own circumstances. If you want a genuine Empire turned republican (sort of) democracy then Ethiopia is the best example.

                        European nations forged those identities from what had been Imperial and occasionally colonial constructs and European nations enforced languages before & during the transition to the modern nation state. Sometimes the ethno/linguistic groups that created these states were large majorities, sometimes small ones, sometimes minorities. Usually the 'national' language was that of the national capitol or governing group. There wasn't a 'one size fits all' model.
                        sigpic

                        Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Cactus
                          Yes, you are:



                          I am saying India would've existed even without the British, and Pakistan would probably not have existed without the British.
                          Something would have existed without the British, but it wouldn't have been India. it would have been something quite different. There would have been Muslim ruled states too. They might have been bigger or smaller then modern day Pakistan and Bangladesh. They wouldn't have been Pakistan or Bangladesh, however.

                          In both cases something would exist in the same geographic space with some of the same people, but it wouldn't be the same thing.
                          sigpic

                          Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
                            Something would have existed without the British, but it wouldn't have been India. it would have been something quite different. There would have been Muslim ruled states too. They might have been bigger or smaller then modern day Pakistan and Bangladesh. They wouldn't have been Pakistan or Bangladesh, however.

                            In both cases something would exist in the same geographic space with some of the same people, but it wouldn't be the same thing.
                            My personal view is that India would have ended up as a smaller version of Africa.
                            Several kingdoms and sultanates allying and invading each other with foreign countries and companies pushing and pulling to suit their own agendas.
                            For Gallifrey! For Victory! For the end of time itself!!

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Cactus View Post
                              Indeed. However, do remember that for a mutation to become a true adaptation and a step in the evolutionary process, the mutated have to reproduce and continue spreading the mutation until they become a sustainable population. Maybe you should encourage the erstwhile rulers of China, the Manchus, to secede... and they can take their old-time supporters, the Uighurs and the Tibetans, with them
                              Pakistan (and India) were themselves examples of the continued 'adaptation, reproduction and spread' of the 'evolution' in governance, namely Parliamentary democracy, and a sense of 'nationhood' based on Western models, with 'modifications' to the model based on their particular circumstances.

                              Pakistan did not 'secede' from the current nation-State of India, so I fail to see how 'encouraging the Manchus, Uighurs, Tibetan's etc.' to secede from their respective nation-States fits in with the Pakistani model - your 'suggestion' is a better fit for the Bangladesh model.
                              Last edited by Agnostic Muslim; 25 Dec 14,, 20:06.
                              Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state to be ruled by priests with a divine mission - Jinnah
                              https://twitter.com/AgnosticMuslim

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