Violence against civilians as a strategy in counter- campaigns The Case of the Pakistani of 1971

Syed Muhammad Saad/11790709 MA Political Science (International Relations) Supervisor: Seiki Tanaka Second Reader: Mike Medeiros

June 2018

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Contents Abstract ...... 2 Introduction ...... 3 Literature Review ...... 9 The link between strategy and violence ...... 9 The case of the Pakistani Civil War ...... 12 Empirical observations and analysis ...... 19 Research Design...... 19 The systematic extermination and expulsion of Hindus ...... 21 Causal mechanisms behind Hindu targeting ...... 26 Other arguments ...... 29 Conclusion ...... 33 Appendix A ...... 37 Appendix B ...... 38 Appendix C ...... 39 Bibliography ...... 40

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Abstract This study attempts to link theories on strategic violence against civilians during counter- insurgency campaigns and civil wars with the case of the Pakistani Civil War of 1971. It seeks to look specifically at the role the demographic weight of the sub-groups of rebelling ethnicities plays in the wider confrontation between the state and the ethnic group. By arguing that the demographic weight of the Hindu population caused it to be at the receiving end of brutal targeting during the Pakistani Civil War, it tries to establish that the strategic causal mechanism that links a state’s strategic interests with its violence against the sub- group of a rebelling actor may lie in the significance of the sub-group’s demographic weight in the broader politics of the region.

Key words: Counter-insurgency, Civil War, Violence, Ethnic cleansing, Ethnic expulsion

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Introduction

“In April the second phase [of the 1971 military campaign in East Pakistan], the concentrated persecution of the Hindus, began. By the beginning of May it was obvious to observers that it was the Government’s avowed intention to kill or drive out of the country all of the eight to ten million Hindus in East Pakistan. Throughout the country, the Army was searching out Hindu villages and deliberately destroying them and murdering the people. The Army would come into a new area, enquire where the Hindus lived, and proceed to wipe them out…They [Hindus] were simply marked for extermination.” (The Secretariat of the International Commission of Jurists, 1972)

The above is an excerpt from A Legal Study by the Secretariat of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, published a year after the civil war in Pakistan in 1971 that led to the breakaway of East Pakistan from West Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. The above passage is one among many that describe the Pakistani state's brutality against the Hindu population in East Pakistan. These acts were committed while the state was engaged in a campaign to counter the secessionist Bengali rebellion in the province of East Pakistan. Reading such passages, one wonders why the military was deliberately and so brutally targeting the civilian members of the Hindu population, who were a minority in the ethnic group whose movement for independence the state was trying to suppress. For the Pakistani state engaged in a counter-insurgency campaign against armed insurgents of the Bengali nationalist movement, it would make more sense to allocate all its resources to combating the secessionist Bengali insurgents. Why then was the state engaged in a policy of deliberate targeting of the minority Hindus?

Though it is not uncommon to see civilian populations in insurgent strongholds to be at the receiving end of the wrath of state militaries, targeting of Hindu civilians in the case of the Pakistani Civil War is puzzling indeed. This is because the secessionist movement was supported wholly by the Bengali ethnicity, i.e. by both the religious sub-groups. If both the sub-groups of the rebelling ethnicity were in support of the secessionist movement, the question of the deliberate targeting of Hindus begs an explanation.

The aforementioned report, along with works of authors such as Bass (2013) and Beachler (2007) suggests that the targeting of Hindus was a policy separate from countering the secessionist movement, with Beachler (2007) arguing that the state aimed to eliminate 4

Hindus by death or expulsion. Moreover, authors like Bose (2011) and Akmam (2002) have argued that if the violence against Muslim and Hindu Bengalis were to be compared, the violence against the latter as a group was more intense and can even be considered genocidal. Thus, in light of the fact that there existed this variation in the nature and intensity of violence towards the Hindu and Muslim Bengalis, this thesis raises the following question: What explains the variation in the violence against civilians of the religious sub-groups of the rebelling Bengali ethnicity during the Pakistani Civil War?

In the scholarship on the 1971 Civil War in East Pakistan, the targeting of the minority Hindu Bengalis has not received much attention. Authors like Akmam (2002), Bose (2005), Reza (2013), Saikia (2004), Alamgir and D’costa (2011), Beachler (2007) have mainly focused on violence against the general civilian populace of East Pakistan, but not specifically on Hindu targeting. The explanations that do come for Hindu targeting, like those from Payne (1973), Akmam (2002), Beachler (2007), Debnath (2011) have also always been part of studies on the targeting of the Bengali population as a whole, and these authors do not delve deeply into the matter. The targeting of Hindus is thus an aspect of the civil war that has failed to attract much attention and this thesis is an attempt to research and analyse this intriguing aspect of the war in detail, focusing on the causal mechanisms behind the targeting of the Hindu ethnicity during the counter-insurgency campaign to suppress the secessionist Bengali movement.

In the already existing literature, we see two main explanations regarding Hindu targeting. The first line of argument is based broadly on ideas of religious prejudice, which has been taken by Akmam (2002) and Beachler (2007) who have attributed the violence against the Hindu minority to their religious identity being considered a negative influence on Muslim Bengalis. Moreover, Payne (1973) has argued that the violence was the result of the actions of the fanatical Muslims in the Pakistan army. The second line is based on the broader relations between Pakistan and its neighbour India, which is predominantly Hindu. This line has of argument can be been taken by Debnath (2011), who has argued that the Hindus were targeted because they were considered ‘enemy agents’ of India.

But these views, do not explain why the state would partially deviate its resources from suppressing a rebellion, and spend its resources to target the Hindu Bengalis. Was it simply the case that religious prejudice caused the Pakistani state or its soldiers to divert some of its focus away from eliminating the insurgency and expending its resources on 5 killing a group that it hated? If these arguments are to be accepted, then why did the state not carry out acts of mass violence against the Hindu minority before and why did the violence occur when the state was fighting a secessionist rebellion? Moreover, why did such incidences of violence against Hindus only occur in East Pakistan and not in West Pakistan? From the point of view of a counter-insurgency policy maker, targeting Hindus during the Bengali liberation movement would be considered detrimental to the campaign as it would divert the military’s resources away from suppressing the rebellion. After all, exterminating large numbers of people also requires ammunition, time and energy, which should have been solely focused on suppressing the secessionist insurgents. Considering the fact that violence on such a large scale against Hindus specifically occurred during the state’s counter-insurgency campaign against Bengali secessionists, there is a possibility that there exists an explanation that has more to do with the counter-insurgency campaign and the Bengali nationalist movement rather than religious prejudice. Such a possibility suggests that there was a strategic element to the targeting of Hindus. It is the possibility of there being a strategic aspect to the targeting of Hindus in East Pakistan during the Pakistani Civil War that this thesis aims to examine in order to put forth an alternative argument to the ones already posed.

As this thesis aims to look at the possibility of a strategic aspect to the violence against Hindus, an analysis of the works of scholars who have taken a strategic approach to mass violence is necessary. Scholars like Valentino (2014), Fjelde and Hultman (2013), Valentino et al. 2004) have argued along the lines that violence against civilians is strategic in nature. Their works suggest that mass violence generally occurs due to a civilian population’s association with insurgents, particularly if the civilian population forms the support base of the insurgency. However, when looking at the rationale behind why states may target civilian populations associated with insurgents, these authors tend to look at civilian populations as a whole. The question of how state behaviour might change if the civilian population that supports the insurgency is divided into sub-groups is not dealt with. This thesis builds on these works and advances the analysis of mass violence against civilians by taking a case where there exist sub-groups within the civilian group that is rebelling. These sub-groups can be due to intra-ethnic differences of religion, dialect, or other cultural markers within an ethnicity. Do such differences make a difference in how the state behaves toward civilian populations supporting rebellions? The answer to these questions can potentially be found in the case under scrutiny for the purpose of this thesis. Thus, finding an explanation for the 6 variation in targeting between the Hindu and Muslim sub-groups of the Bengali ethnicity will help to answer the abovementioned questions and will also advance the analysis of the link between state strategy and violence against civilians.

The thesis takes a strategic approach to its analysis of the violence against the Hindu minority. It argues that Hindus were deliberately targeted in East Pakistan during the war because there were strategic gains to be made through their targeting. The civil war in 1971 between the Bengali ethnic group and the state had broken out because a Bengali regionalist party, the Awami League, had gained a majority in the elections of 1970, had upset the existing political dynamics, and had subsequently been prevented from forming a government. Before, the elections, the state apparatus had been dominated by a bureaucratic- military oligarchy consisting mostly of members from West Pakistan and the victory of the Bengali party in the general elections had threatened the hegemony of the west wing over the east wing of Pakistan (Williams 1972). This was despite the fact that the population of East Pakistan, predominantly Bengali, was demographically superior to West Pakistan (Debnath 2011). However, this demographic superiority was only possible if the populations of both the minority Hindu and majority Muslim Bengalis were combined (Akanda 1970). Hence, without the Hindus, East Pakistan could not have the demographic majority which would give them an electoral majority in Pakistan and allow them to challenge the hegemony of the west through democratic means. Considering this, the thesis argues that the reason why the Pakistani state, (which can be considered synonymous with ‘West Pakistan’ considering the status quo), had an intention to kill or drive out the Hindus from East Pakistan was that without the demographic weight of the Hindu minority, Bengalis as one single group would not be demographically superior to the west wing. From the point of view of the state (or the West Pakistani elite), such a strategy would mean that after the war would end and elections are held again, a party from East Pakistan, which could potentially be secessionist, could never gain a political majority. Hence, my main argument is that the violence against Hindus in East Pakistan was meted out with a strategic aim on part of the West Pakistani establishment, that of changing East Pakistan from a majority to a minority in relation to West Pakistan.

I substantiate my argument by carrying out interviewing and archival research. I conduct interviews with an ex-military official, and access archives of three newspapers. Moreover, I study declassified documents published by the National Security Archive and the 7

US State Department. Moreover, I use documents from the Bangladesh Archive and Centre for Bangladesh Genocide Research.

Through my research, i found out that some of the data indicated a slight plausibility of there being a strategic aspect to the violence against Hindus. I find that there existed a systematic campaign of extermination and expulsion against the Hindu population. Regarding the strategic aspect of targeting, the fact that Hindus were vital supporters of the secessionist party and were perceived of having a major role in the secessionist movement, explains why the state would consider their demographic weight a threat and seek to remove them from the region to reduce not only the support base of the secessionist movement, but also the support of the political party that was leading the movement. Such an action would hypothetically also prevent a future party with similar ambitions from coming to power, as civilian targeting during the civil war had reduced East Pakistan numerically from a majority to a minority.

Regarding the strategic aspect of targeting, I find that Hindus were vital supporters of the movement or were perceived to be, and that this might explain why the state would seek to remove them from the region to reduce the support base of the secessionist movement and the party that was leading the movement. This, along with the fact that the population of East Pakistan reduced by more than 10 million, which, in a hypothetical scenario where the state had prevailed in the war would mean that East Pakistan’s majority had been reduced, adds to the plausibility of our argument that there was a strategic aspect to Hindu targeting.

The study is an addition to the causal mechanisms that look at the link between strategic interests and large-scale violence. We see that the existence of sub-groups within a rebelling ethnic group can make the post-war demographic configuration of the state a strategic interest of the state. Moreover, the findings suggest that ethnic cleansing and ethnic expulsion can be used to maintain the status quo in states attempting to democratize or where a democratic procedure has the potential to bring the existing power relations in disequilibrium.

This study makes sub-groups of actors fighting against the state an integral part of the strategic approach to mass violence. It can help identify sub-groups in regions of civil conflict that are at risk of being ignored amidst the background of the wider conflict between the state and the main rebellious actor. Studies like these can make the identification of such sub-groups possible which can help international actors seeking to prevent violence against civilians. 8

The next chapter will go over the literature that studies the link between strategy and violence against civilians. It will further discuss the literature on the Pakistani Civil War and the already existing arguments that explain Hindu targeting. The 3rd chapter will discuss and analyse the data acquired for the purposes of this thesis. The 4th chapter will discuss the conclusions that can be derived from our analysis and how our research what academic and practical implications this study can have.

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Literature Review

The link between strategy and violence

The case of Hindu targeting during the Pakistani civil war necessitates the discussion of the literature pertaining to the strategic approach to large-scale violence against civilians during civil wars and counter-insurgency campaigns. This discussion of the already existing literature would allow the case under scrutiny to be placed in the wider discussion on this topic. This would facilitate the identification of the contributions this case can make to the broader study of violence against civilians and its link with strategic interests.

The scholarship of violence against civilians consists of varying views as to the of civilians. Scholars like Valentino (2014) have argued that mass killing of civilians often occurs in the context of armed conflict. When it comes to explanations for violence against civilians occurring during conflict, earlier scholars attributed it to either collateral damage, ancient hatreds, or the senseless acts of sadists (Valentino 2014). A similar line of argument is held by scholars trying to explain genocide. Early theorists of genocide in their attempt to explain the foundations of genocide emphasised intergroup prejudice and divisions, concentration of power in authoritarian regimes, and scapegoating via prejudice in periods of hardship (Strauss 2012). Summing up, under this earlier line of argument, violence against civilians is arbitrary, unintended, or the result of prejudice and scapegoating.

Now, according to Valentino (2014), a dominant understanding of violence against civilians is that it is not arbitrary or unintended. Recent focus on genocide and related forms of violence has led to the development of a strategic and rationalist approach to violence (Strauss 2012). The idea of civilians being killed as some part of a broader strategy that is meant to produce gains for the perpetrator is what is referred to as ‘war by other means’ (Valentino 2014). Under the idea of violence being strategic, scholars have argued for a link between the military strategy of insurgency/counterinsurgency and violence against civilians (Valentino 2014). This view holds that civilians may be at the receiving end of intentional targeting during by counter-insurgent actors because civilians may be a source of support for insurgent organizations in the form of supplies, intelligence, shelter and recruits (Valentino 2014). Valentino et al. (2004) compare insurgents and their civilian support base to fish in a sea, the fish being the insurgents and the sea being the ‘nurturing civilians’ (Valentino et al. 2004). Hence, counter-insurgency campaigns revolve around 10 draining the sea to catch the fish, i.e., countering the civilian support base to weaken the insurgency. It is during this act of ‘draining the sea’ or fighting an insurgency, governments tend to perpetrate mass killing (Ulfelder and Valentino 2008).

Furthermore, mass killings of civilians may occur because those who are carrying out counterinsurgency campaigns are aware of the fact that emerging victorious in an insurgency depends on winning control of the civilian population which may be a source of supplies and recruits for the insurgents (Valentino 2014). Fjelde and Hultman (2013) argue that a state’s efforts to control civilian populations range from low-level targeting of rebels, to indiscriminate mass killing against entire villages or ethnic groups (Fjelde and Hultman 2013). The latter strategy may more likely be adopted if the insurgency builds on a large base of civilian supporters (Valentino et al. 2004).

Moreover, Strauss and Schwartz (2018), whose work on violence against civilians during the Guatemalan civil war can be considered the most recent in the literature that adopts a strategic approach to violence against civilians, argue that there exists a correlation between strategic interests and large-scale violence against civilians. However, the causal mechanisms that link strategy to large-scale violence are underdeveloped (Strauss and Schwartz 2018). In their work, they build on the existing literature and identify four causal mechanisms that explain why perpetrators of violence would use large-scale violence against civilians to advance their strategic interests (Strauss and Schwartz 2018). They then test these causal mechanisms against data available on Operation Sofia, a military operation carried out during the civil war against the Mayan population supporting the insurgency, based in the Ixil Highlands of .

The four causal mechanisms they discuss prior to their analysis of the Guatemalan case explain the logic behind violence against civilians and why state militaries fighting against insurgents may target non-combatant civilians for the purpose of fulfilling their strategic interests. Firstly counter-insurgents may target civilians if they consider them to be loyal to insurgents. Second, violence is used as a deterrent to prevent collaboration. Third, civilians may be targeted if counter-insurgents lack information and are unable to differentiate them from insurgents. Lastly, violence may be a result of a perception on part of counter-insurgents of a full civilian commitment to insurgents (Strauss and Schwartz 2018).

One notices in the abovementioned works and the causal mechanisms summarised by Strauss and Schwartz (2018), when looking at the rationale behind why states may target 11 civilian populations associated with insurgents, these authors tend to look at civilian populations as a whole. The idea of looking at state behaviour toward the sub-groups of a rebellious civilian populace has received insufficient focus. The abovementioned authors do not attempt to analyse the breakdown of an ethnic group, whether it has sub-groups and if that may result in an intra-group variation in the violence perpetrated toward the group. For example, a civilian group, that could be an ethnicity or simply the people populating the area of the insurgency, can be divided into sub-groups based on religion, dialects, or other social markers of identification. In this case, will the existence of such sub-divisions lead to an intra-group variation in violence perpetrated toward the group? Will the state take the group breakdown into account when dealing with the civilian support base of the insurgency? An answer to these questions can supplement the strategic approach to mass violence against civilians.

This thesis builds on these works and advances this analysis of mass violence against civilians by taking a case where there exist sub-groups within the civilian group that the rebellious movement is built on. How does the counter insurgency strategy of the state change when the support base of the secessionist movement is divided into sub-groups? How will the state behave toward the sub-group if it wants to weaken the movement? In case of a sub-group, the state may either co-opt the sub-group or threaten and target it in order to take away a considerable chunk of supporters from the movement. In the case of the Pakistani civil war, the state did target civilians from both sub-groups but when it came to target the Hindu sub-group, it was done at a greater rate and under a policy of ‘death and expulsion’ (Beachler 2007).

The case of the Pakistani Civil War of 1971 thus seems suitable, as it involves a state (Pakistani state), engaged in a counterinsurgency campaign against an ethnonationalist insurgency (Bengali liberation movement) with a sub-group of the Bengali ethnicity (Hindu Bengalis) being targeted to a greater extent than the Bengalis. Because this study will be guided by a strategic approach to violence, the thesis will look at the reasons why Hindu Bengalis were targeted with different motivations and at a different rate by the Pakistani state with the aim to identify a causal mechanism that connects the violence against the Hindu minority to a strategy on part of the Pakistani state. Identification of such a strategic causal mechanism through the study of the Pakistani Civil War will not only explain the variation in a state’s violence toward an ethnicity’s sub-groups, but I believe the mechanism will also be a valuable addition to the works of the above mentioned authors who have worked on the link 12 between strategic interests of the state and the large-scale violence against the civilian support base of the insurgency.

The case of the Pakistani Civil War

The Pakistan Civil War or the Bangladesh Liberation War took place in 1971 resulting in the secession of East Pakistan from Pakistan (Raghavan 2013). The war pitted the Bengali ethnic group predominantly present in East Pakistan against the Pakistani state (see map in appendix A). At the onset of the war, the state apparatus was dominated by a bureaucratic- military oligarchy consisting mainly of members from West Pakistan (Williams 1972). The events of 1971 have been unanimously attributed to the massive social, economic and political discrimination of the East Pakistani region (populated mostly by Bengalis), by West Pakistan, populated by four major ethnic groups but politically, militarily and economically dominated by the Punjabi ethnic group, and to some extent by the Muhajirs and Sindhis (Bose 2005; Ludden 2011; Waseem 1996; Alavi 1991; Waseem and Hayat 1997; Meher 2015; Wright 1991; Choudhury 1972). Because the Pakistani state apparatus was only dominated by ethnic groups from West Pakistan, the movement of the Bengali ethnic group can also be seen as an attempt to free East Pakistan from the hegemony of West Pakistan, and in turn create Bangladesh, a separate homeland for Bengalis. Scholars have thus used the terms ‘West Pakistani’ and ‘Pakistani’ interchangeably when referring to troops engaged in the counter insurgency campaign in East Pakistan. Moreover, according to Payne (1973), when the war began, Bengali troops from the Pakistani military defected to the rebelling side. Thus, with absolutely no representation in the state apparatus, in the context of the war, the term ‘Pakistani state’ can be taken to mean the same thing as ‘West Pakistan’.

The war can be divided into two periods. According to Pai (2008), the first is the duration of Operation Searchlight from March to April/May 1971, the operation to clamp down on secessionist elements like , students, and members of the Awami League, the political party leading the movement. This period featured one-sided violence as the resistance from the Bengali side was not developed much at this point. From May onwards till the independence of Bangladesh on 16th December 1971 is the period of conflict between the Bengali insurgent group, the Mukti Bahini, and the Pakistani state for control of East Pakistan (Payne 1973; Raghavan 2013; Pai 2008). The war witnessed mass atrocities on both sides, with both Pakistani military troops and Mukti Bahini insurgents engaging in violence against civilians (Williams 1972; Bose 2011). However, historians agree that 13 majority of the deaths resulted from the actions of West Pakistani troops, with the casualties numbering around half a million even according to conservative estimates (Bose 2005; Debnath 2011; Choudhury 1972). Some scholars consider the violence not just a result of collateral damage but deem it a systematic killing of ethnic Bengalis by West Pakistani troops (Beachler 2007; Bose 2011).

However, it is interesting to note that there is an intragroup variation in the violence perpetrated by the Pakistani state. The Bengali ethnic group, which identified itself on the basis of the Bengali language, consisted of two religious groups, Hindus and Muslims, with Hindus numbering roughly 10-12 million out of the total Bengali population of roughly 73-75 million (Akmam 2002; Meher 2015; Akanda 1970). According to Akmam (2002), the Hindus of Bengal did not constitute a separate nation in East Pakistan as they shared a common identity, language and history with the Bengali Muslims; they were Bengalis but could be considered a separate sub-group, or a minority among Bengalis keeping in mind their religious identity. Both Hindu and Muslim Bengalis had commonalities when it came to their way of life, social customs, behaviour-patterns (Choudhury 1972). Moreover, both the sub- groups did not let their religious differences define themselves but both groups identified more with the greater Bengali identity than their religious identities, and economic interdependence between the two groups was a normal feature in addition to their cultural and social relationships (Meher 2015). According to Debnath (2011), though unequal relations and economic rivalry did exist between them, it was impossible to distinguish the two groups when it came to their customs, and their economic rivalry “did not overshadow the extensive links emanating from sustained interaction in a common space” (Debnath 2011, p.52). In the existing literature, there is no indication that there existed a difference between the two sub- groups when it came to support for the secessionist movement; the literature suggests that both Hindu and Muslim Bengalis were part of the movement.

However, from the writings on violence against civilians during the war, one comes across an interesting variation. If one were to compare the violence meted out against the Bengalis, Hindus still were at the receiving end of a greater amount of violence than the Bengalis at the hands of the Pakistani military (Bose 2011). Some authors even maintain that the Hindus were targeted deliberately for their religious identity (Debnath 2011, Bass 2013). Moreover, the main policy of the military in East Pakistan was to suppress the movement for autonomy by eliminating secessionist elements within the Bengali population, but also involved the deliberate targeting of Hindus regardless of their part in the movement (Debnath 14

2011). Bass (2013) and Beachler (2007) are also of the view that Hindus formed a separate ‘target group’ along with secessionist Bengalis, i.e. from the point of view of the Pakistani state, targeting of Hindus was a policy separate from targeting of secessionist elements within the Bengali population in general. Furthermore, according to Beachler (2007), this government policy included the “eliminate the Hindus by death or expulsion from East Pakistan” (Beachler 2007, p.476). Bose (2011) and Akmam (2002) even argue that the general violence during the war can be referred to as ‘war crimes’ such as massacres, and extra-judicial killings, and not genocide, but violence against Hindus as a sub-group can be termed ‘genocide’ as they were targeted for their religion with the intent to destroy them, which according to the definition of genocide by the , can be termed as genocide.

These statements show that Hindus were at the receiving end of a greater amount of violence than Muslim Bengalis, though none of the abovementioned authors have backed this with numbers. However, authors do maintain that among the refugees fleeing across the border of East Pakistan into India, majority were Hindus (Pilkington 2011; Payne 1973). Raghavan (2013) puts the number of Hindus within the refugees at 82.3 percent. This does give substance to the statements of the authors as it suggests that Hindu Bengalis may have been in a much more miserable condition than Muslim Bengalis in East Pakistan which is why they were the majority among those fleeing the violence in East Pakistan. However, from the works of these authors, one thing that we can say for certain is that from the point of view of the Pakistani state, they formed a separate ‘target group’ from secessionist Bengalis, the policy for which was ‘death and expulsion’. They were resultantly targeted to a greater extent than the Muslim Bengali population.

Scholars who have dealt with the targeting of Hindus in East Pakistan during the 1971 civil war have proposed two main arguments. One argument is based broadly on the idea of religious prejudice. This line of argument has been taken by Akmam (2002), Beachler (2007), and Payne (1973). According to Akmam (2002), the Hindus were deliberately targeted because the state wanted to purify Bengalis of the Hindu traits that had seeped into the culture and language of Bengali Muslims. The general perception of the Bengali liberation movement was that they had moved away from Islam due to these Hindu influences and hence were rebelling against Pakistan (Akmam 2002; Beachler 2007). According to this view, Hindus were seen as a threat to the Pakistani identity, as Islam had formed the basis of Pakistani nationalism and was considered as the reason why the country existed in the first 15 place. Hindu influences were perceived as a threat to the ideological narrative upholding Pakistani nationalism. For the West Pakistani elite, calls for liberation in Bengal could only be explained through the idea of Bengalis having moved away from Islam and the Pakistani identity due to Hindu influences. Thus, from this perspective, Hindus were targeted because they were seen as responsible for the secessionist rebellion. This view has more to do with safeguarding the ideological integrity of Pakistan than blatant hatred for the Hindu population, but it still has an element of religious prejudice to it.

Payne (1973), arguing along similar lines, posits that the violence against Hindus was simply the result of pure hatred. Payne attributes Hindu targeting to hatred on part of the fanatical Muslims within the Pakistan Army.

Moreover, Debnath (2011) has argued that “successive Pakistani governments had collectively branded the [Hindu] minority as fifth columnist agents of India, the ultimate enemy” (Debnath 2011, p.427). According to Debnath’s views, Hindus were perceived to be working on behalf of the India to provoke Bengali nationalist sentiments in East Pakistan.

Summing up, the above arguments suggest that the violence perpetrated against Hindus was due to religious prejudice or was the result of Hindus being considered enemy agents. However, some important questions remain. If the Hindus were perceived as a threat to the identity of Pakistan, or were considered agents of India, why did the state not engage in violence against the group before the war? If religious prejudice explains the killing, why do we not see previous instances of hate-based mass killings against the Hindu population. Moreover, if these arguments are accepted, why then did the state not take similar actions during the war against the small number of Hindus present in West Pakistan? The fact that the violence occurred at such a large scale at the specific point when the state was fighting a secessionist rebellion underscores the need to look at the violence against Hindus more deeply. It is possible that there is an explanation for Hindu targeting that has more to do with the counter-insurgency campaign and the Bengali nationalist movement rather than religious prejudice. Such a possibility indicates the existence of a strategic element to the targeting of Hindus.

The thesis thus aims to look at a causal mechanism that links violence against the Hindu minority to a strategic interest on part of the state. It proposes an argument based on the views of Akanda (1970), who talks about the strategic role of Hindus in East Pakistan. He argues that Hindus, during the first two decades after the independence of Pakistan, played a 16 strategic role in the politics of East Pakistan because their demographic weight was enough to make East Pakistanis a majority. According to Akanda (1970), in 1961, Hindus formed 18.4 percent of the population of East Pakistan or 10.7 percent of the total population of Pakistan. The population of West Pakistan was 45.8 percent (42.8 million) while the population of East Pakistan was 54.2 percent (50.8 million). Without the Hindus (9.8 million), the population of East Pakistan would constitute less than 50 percent of the total population of Pakistan, even lesser than the population of West Pakistan (roughly 41 million). In Pakistan, the political system is such that greater the number of people in an area, the higher the number of seats in the National Assembly (lower house of parliament) from that area. Without the support of the Hindu minority, a political party from East Pakistan could never have a majority in the National Assembly (NA). Thus, though the Hindus were a minority in East Pakistan, when it came to national politics, they played a vital role as their demographic weight allowed East Pakistan to be numerically superior to West Pakistan (Akanda 1970).

Akanda made this argument before the civil war of 1971. Through this argument, he simply highlighted the strategic role that Hindus had in East Pakistan, a role which made it possible for East Pakistan to have a majority over West Pakistan. However, his argument does not advocate that the demographic weight of Hindus was resulting in hostility from the Pakistani state or was in some way seen as a threat by the Pakistani establishment.

The thesis will take Akanda’s views and apply them in the context of the 1971 civil war. One must question the possibility of the violence against the Hindus minority being the result of the role they played in the politics of East Pakistan. If one is to look at this possibility, this would mean that the Pakistani state was trying to eliminate the Hindu minority to achieve strategic gains, which would allow them to reduce East Pakistan from a majority to a minority.

To understand this, one must look at the immediate causes of the civil war. The war had primarily been a result of the refusal of the West Pakistani establishment to allow the Awami League to form a government, a party formed by the Bengalis of East Pakistan and which was later to lead the revolt (Payne 1973; Raghavan 2013). In the first general elections of Pakistan, held in 1970, East Pakistan's Awami League won 288 of the 300 seats in the provincial assembly and 160 of the 300 seats in the National Assembly (Marwah 1979; Raghavan 2013). The party’s victory in East Pakistan was massive; it won 160 of the 162 seats reserved for the province (Raghavan 2013). In the west wing, Pakistan People's Party 17 secured majority representation in the Assembly, coming in second with 88 seats. The Awami League had secured enough seats to form a government on their own in the National Assembly. “The singular fact was that the population differential between the two wings had provided Sheikh Mujibur Rehman's Awami League with more than fifty percent of the elected representatives to the National Assembly-presaging an overwhelming role for the latter in the drafting of the Constitution (Marwah 1979, pp.558). This was unacceptable to both the political and military elite of West Pakistan, and the consequent boycotting of the National Assembly by PPP and its postponement by the military ruler of Pakistan resulted in mass agitation from the Awami League. This agitation continued until the military authorities clamped down on the Awami League through Operation Searchlight in March 1971 (Raghavan 2013).

The population differential that Marwah is referring to is similar to what Akanda described for the year 1961. In 1971 too, there existed a similar breakdown of population. East Pakistan constituted 53 percent of the population of Pakistan, with 98 percent of the population of the province being Bengalis (Bose 2011). The population of East Pakistan was 75 million at the time of the war, with 10-12 million of them Hindus (Akmam 2002; Debnath 2011; Islam 1985). On the other hand, according to a census carried out after the war when East Pakistan had seceded, the population of Pakistan was 65 million (Pbs.gov.pk, 2018). Considering what was Pakistan after the war was West Pakistan before it, the figure of roughly 65 million can be taken to be the population of West Pakistan at the time of the crisis of 1971. Thus, the breakdown was as follows, the population of West Pakistan was 65 million, East Pakistan was 75 million with 10-12 million Hindus. If the number of the Hindu population is subtracted from the population of East Pakistan, East Pakistan becomes less than or roughly equal to West Pakistan. This showed that the 10-12 million Hindu population did in fact play a crucial role in giving East Pakistan a demographic majority. This population deferential gave the Awami League more than 50 percent of the seats in the National Assembly (Marwah 1979). And this majority was only possible if both Hindu and Muslim Bengalis were numerically combined (Akanda 1970).

Hence, we see what Akanda (1970) had highlighted turned out to be true in the 1970 elections. The East Pakistani population managed to elect a single party to the national assembly, the Awami League, which later called for the secession of East Pakistan. It could be possible that the establishment of West Pakistan realised that in a democratic setup, it would be impossible for them to gain a majority in the National Assembly, and the only 18 possible way to prevent this was if the population of East Pakistan was reduced. Hence, we can take the idea of Hindus’ demographic weight having a strategic value in the politics of East Pakistan and try to use it as an explanation for why the military targeted them after the victory of a political party from East Pakistan in the elections of 1970.

Keeping the aforementioned in mind, the thesis argues that the targeting of Hindus during Operation Searchlight and the period of civil war following it was a result of their demographic weight in East Pakistan. The Hindus in East Pakistan were to be eliminated so that after the insurgency ends and the situation turns to normalcy, it becomes impossible for East Pakistanis or Bengalis to gain a majority in the National Assembly of Pakistan. It makes sense to say this as the reason for the break out of violence between the state and Bengalis in the first place was the Awami League’s (representing the East Wing) victory in the elections which gave them a majority in the assembly. One can argue that a state, engaged in a counterinsurgency campaign against secessionist insurgents would be wary of what will happen when the campaign has succeeded. When the insurgency is over and the state prevails, the aspiring nationalists will then move back to the political arena to fulfil their demands. However, if a considerable demographic weight has been removed from among them, they would not be able to succeed democratically. Thus, one can say that the violence perpetrated by a state against secessionist groups is not only shaped by the desire to end the insurgency but is also carried out keeping in mind what is to occur after the insurgency has successfully ended.

The thesis will thus argue that the Hindus were at the receiving end of a deliberate policy of death and expulsion because their demographic weight was significant enough to make Bengalis a majority. Hence, a campaign of violence was initiated against them to prevent Bengalis from having a majority in the NA after the counterinsurgency campaign has ended.

19

Empirical observations and analysis Research Design

To substantiate the argument, I will employ the use of interviewing and archival research to collect data. The primary sources that I will use are interviews with ex-military officials, news reports of the newspapers , The Guardian, and Times, documents published by the National Security Archive and US State Department, and documents available online on the Bangladesh Genocide Archive and Centre for Bangladesh Genocide Research. With regard to interviewing, ex-military officials rather than villagers or rebels have been chosen as only people in the military could possibly have the required information on strategic targeting during the war. Moreover, it is not feasible to get in touch with villagers and rebels given the time and resource constraints. I will however interview the former Pakistani Chief of Army Staff, General (Retired) Aslam Beg, who served in the district of Comilla in former east Pakistan from March till June 1971. The interview will be carried out online through email. It will be semi-structured with open ended questions. The questionnaire is attached in the Appendix B.

Moreover, online archives of the newspapers The Times, The New York Times, and the Guardian will be accessed for news reports from the period January 1971 to March 1972. This period consists of the period of Operation Searchlight (Mar 1971-May 1971), the duration of the fighting between Pakistani forces and rebels (June 1971-December 1971), and three months prior to and after this whole period. By purchasing their online subscriptions, I will gain access to their software that will facilitate my search. The search will be filtered by using the dates of the aforementioned period and the keywords ‘Pakistan’ and ‘Hindu’. The idea behind using the keyword ‘Hindu’ along with ‘Pakistan’ is that it brings up all the reports related to Pakistan which also mention ‘Hindu’ or ‘Hindus’. A preliminary search shows that, for The New York Times, 1225 such reports exist, for the Guardian, 51 reports, and for The Times 77 reports can be found. The number for NYT is so large because the only keyword available for search is ‘Pakistan’ and the reports cannot be further filtered down.

Finally, I will also study documents declassified by the National Security Archive. These documents, 45 in number, are declassified US government documents and were published on the 31st anniversary of the creation of Bangladesh. These documents are concerned with the US policy toward India and Pakistan during the 1971 war, and mostly consist of US diplomatic cables from East Pakistan and conversation records of US 20 government officials, which can be a valuable source of information on what was occurring in the region. These are available online on ‘The National Security Archive’ maintained by the George Washington University. Declassified documents of a similar nature, 100 in number, are available on the online archive of the US Department of State under the category ‘Foreign Relations, 1969-1976, Volume XI, South Asia Crisis, 1971’. Further sources of information are the Center for Bangladesh Genocide Research, an American institution that has documented the history of the 1971 crisis, and the Bangladesh Genocide Archive, a personal effort by Bangladeshi online bloggers and activists. The two ‘genocide archives’ will be used because they are a valuable source of information such as letters, speeches, and personal accounts by victims of the violence that news reports might have missed.

To lend substance to my argument I will, through the interviews I carry out and the archival research I conduct, look specifically for sentences or statements that might indicate a strategic element to the violence against Hindus. Such information may simply be stated in the documents that I come across during the archival research. For example, a news report or declassified document may contain a statement by a military official, or report on a leaked military communique, or may simply narrate incidents that may support the idea of strategic targeting during the military campaign. Moreover, such information may also be given to me by people aware of the policy of the military establishment of Pakistan during the war, i.e. the ex-military official I interview.

If, through my research, I come across information which indicates that the targeting of Hindus in East Pakistan, from the counter-insurgency point of view of the Pakistani state, had a strategic aspect to it, i.e., it was deliberately carried out to change the demographics of East Pakistan to prevent Bengalis from having a majority in the Pakistani assembly, I will consider my argument to be true.

However, in case I do not find any information that may supplement my argument, or I find information that clearly rejects the idea of a policy of strategic targeting of Hindus, my argument will stand invalidated. However, depending on the information available, even though the researched information might not directly substantiate my argument, I could still possibly argue as to the plausibility of my argument.

21

The next section will try to analyse the data acquired during the research for an answer to the question of why there existed a variation in violence toward the sub-groups of the Bengali nationality during the Pakistani state’s counterinsurgency campaign against Bengali secessionists. In this section, it is necessary first to establish that there did exist a systematic campaign of extermination and expulsion against the Hindu minority during the war. Although we have authors like Debnath (2011), Bass (2013), Beachler (2007) who argue that Hindus formed a separate target group along with secessionists, with Beachler arguing that the state policy against Hindus was ‘death and expulsion’, we still cannot establish these arguments as facts. First, Beachler’s idea that Hindus were targeted with a policy of death and expulsion is based on the works of only one journalist, Anthony Mascarenhas. On the other hand, we have documents like the Pakistani government’s White Paper on the crisis in East Pakistan that attribute the violence against the Bengali population (both groups) to only the violent mobs supporting the secessionist Awami League. Moreover, the White Paper totally denies any campaign of violence on part of the state military, systematic or indiscriminate, against the civilian populace of East Pakistan (White Paper in the crisis on East Pakistan, 1971). This is not to say that the work of these authors is weak, and not very well substantiated, but in light of such official opposing narratives, it is better to reinforce these arguments put forth by these authors with data from a variety of newspapers and government sources, and statements from ambassadors, government officials, and members of international institutions like the World Bank. Before the paper supports its arguments, we must first clearly establish that not only did there exist mass violence against the Hindu population, but it was systematic, it was aimed at their extermination and expulsion from East Pakistan, and that it was a conscious state policy as part of its campaign against the Bengali rebellion. I will then further use the data acquired to support the main argument of this thesis that this targeting was strategic in nature and was meted out to remove the Hindu population in order to reduce the population of East Pakistan from a majority to a minority in relation to West Pakistan.

The systematic extermination and expulsion of Hindus Though the main aim of the army was suppressing the Bengali movement for independence, news reports from the time period show that the systematic targeting of Hindus occurred simultaneously with army action against separatist elements within the Bengali population. 22

The military operation against the the Bengali liberation movement began in March of 1971. By the end of April, the number of refugees that had crossed the border to seek refuge in India had reached half a million, with the majority of them being Hindus (‘Refugees worry Indian officials’ 1971). By October, four out of every five refugee in India from East Pakistan was Hindu (‘Mrs Indira Gandhi states her case’ 1971). Later news reports indicated that the reason for Hindus forming a major portion of the refugee population was the fact that they were being heavily targeted. This view is supplemented by a classified telegram of the US Department of State published online in the National Security Archive. The telegram (titled Document 16), describing Indian Ambassador Jha’s conversation with US Under Secretary Irwin in July of 1971, reported Jha as saying that though there existed guerrilla activity in East Pakistan, the scale of the fighting was not enough to create such a continued refugee flow of the present magnitude (45-60000 per day). The ambassador added that the cause of refugee flow was not fighting but the fact that the Hindus were being driven out selectively by Pakistan Army from East Pakistan (The National Security Archive, 2002). , the US Consul General in Dacca, in a telegram dated ‘March 1971’, said there is a reign of terror by the Pak military in East Pakistan and that Awami League supporters and Hindus were being systematically targeted by military authorities (‘Document 1’, 2002). Similar reports of the military focusing on targeting of Hindus exist in documents 6 and document 13 (‘Document 6’, 2002; ‘Document 13’ 2002). In an eyewitness account by an economist and member of World Bank’s mission in Pakistan, Hendrik Van der Heiden, he wrote, “Generally, the army terrorizes the population, particularly aiming at the Hindus and suspected members of the Awami League” ('Excerpts from World Bank group's report on East Pakistan' 1971, p.8). These reports and documents do indicate to some extent that apart from eliminating secessionists, there existed a systematic campaign against the Hindu population.

Furthermore, Peggy Dubbin, a teacher and writer working in East Pakistan at that time, wrote in her description of the crisis that in the crackdown by Pakistani military forces against the secessionist movement, Hindu areas in East Pakistan’s capital, Dacca, were heavily attacked (Dubbin 1971). In early April, an official of the diplomatic post in Dacca told the Guardian that the focal points of army attack when the operation started included the Bengali language press, the headquarters of the East Pakistan rifles (a Bengali regiment of the Pakistan Army), while the third focal point was the Hindu community of Dacca, with the military being particularly unmerciful to the Hindus. He added 23

Hindu villages and areas where Hindus were concentrated were surrounded and set fire to while the fleeing civilians were machine gunned and bayoneted ('Britons 'saved from Dacca firing squad' by diplomat' 1971). It is understandable that the military would attack the press to cut channels of communication and prevent separatist ideology from separating, and it makes sense that it would attack a Bengali military regiment, who could potentially support the insurgency. What is confusing is their attack against the Hindus, and the fact that the Hindu population was one of the focal points of targeting shows that the campaign against Hindus was in some manner deliberate and part of the military policy. A similar scenario was also reported in The Times, where a news report about the early stages of the operation stated that after the initial violence following the start of Operation Searchlight, one could observe a systematic pattern of physical and psychological destruction, which was aimed at Awami League leaders, students, professors, and any “Hindu who could be found” (Heren 1971, p.1). Another source of a deliberate policy of Hindu targeting were letters written by a British citizen present in East Pakistan to a Labour MP Bruce Douglas Mann. A news report on these letters quoted the Briton as saying that Hindus are being rounded up and slaughtered wherever they are found and the fact that someone was a Hindu warranted their execution by troops (Hatfield 1971). There are also reports that clearly indicate that the military was differentiating as to its response when dealing with captured villagers. A refugee interviewed in an Indian border hospital, Haripada Rai, told the The Times correspondent that when he heard that the army was approaching his village, he joined a party of Hindu men and boys fleeing to India. He narrated how they were caught by the soldiers, asked to strip, and checked for circumcision. All the uncircumcised Hindus were lined up and machinegunned while the soldiers jokingly called them ‘Kafirs’ (infidels) (‘Refugee stories oppose MP’s view’ 1971). The mark of circumcision was used to separate Muslim from Hindus from among captured groups as circumcision is a mandatory part of the Islamic culture (Alamgir and D’costa 2011). The fact that soldiers were using such markers to distinguish among those they captured, and were killing only those that they identified as Hindus, shows not only that Hindus were under greater threat, but this act of identifying Hindus from groups in such a way shows a deliberate attempt on part of soldiers to seek and exterminate Hindus. It was also reported that there existed evidence which suggested that the plan to exterminate and drive out the Hindu minority had been formulated in Islamabad (the Pakistani capital). The same report mentioned Dr A.R Mullick, Vice Chancellor of the University of Chittagong, citing excerpts from The Pakistan Times, to show that the newspaper, which according to him was the state’s mouthpiece had begun a “campaign to justify the government’s plan to drive 24 the Hindus out of the province” (‘Refugee stories oppose MP’s view’ 1971, p.6). Though the news report did not cite the exact report from The Pakistan Times, the fact that the ‘state’ newspaper was justifying the government campaign to drive out the Hindus showed that there was such a campaign in the first place, and that this campaign was ordained by the state.

Moreover, another interesting fact is that the Hindus were not simply being marked for extinction but were being forcefully driven out of the country. In an interview with The Times correspondent at a refugee camp in India, where victims of violence were fleeing to from East Pakistan, a Hindu refugee narrated how the army had swept through their villages, asking local non-Bengali Muslims to identify Hindu houses, and then burnt the houses identified to them. Few refugees also claimed that military troops had given them a week to leave the country (Hazelhurst 1971). The fact that Hindus were being asked to leave the country also suggests a policy of expulsion against them.

By June, the army had secured the major roads and towns, and was now on a virtual house-to-house hunt for Hindus. The targeting was such that American officials had started expressing concern that there might be reprisals against Muslims in neighbouring India in response to Pakistani military’s actions against Hindus in East Pakistan (Szulc 1971). Hindus had also started converting in order to save themselves from the military’s wrath (‘Hindus Are Targets of Army Terror in an East Pakistani Town’ 1971). These accounts make it evident that Hindus were being targeted for being Hindus. Observers of the conflict, commenting on the refugee crisis the war had created, said in June 1971 that majority (90 percent) of those fleeing East Pakistan were from the minority 10 million Hindus, and it was unlikely that they would return as the accounts of many of the refugees of their refugees of their treatment inside East Pakistan seemed to indicate that they were targeted by the army solely because of their religion (Lescaze 1971).

In another report, the NYT correspondent to East Pakistan, described of the army’s systematic campaign against Hindus in the district of Faridpur. He described how the army had painted yellow coloured “H’s” on the shops belonging to Hindus in order to identify the property of members of the minority. Schanberg wrote:

“An undetermined number of Faridpur's 10,000 Hindus have been killed and others have fled across the border to pre dominantly Hindu India….The campaign against the Hindus was — and in some cases still is—systematic. Soldiers fanned through virtually every village asking where the Hindus lived. Hindu property has been confiscated and either sold or 25 given to “loyal” citizens.” (‘Hindus are targets of Army Terror in an East Pakistani Town’ 1971, p.4).

A news report by The Guardian reported a similar scenario in Jessore, which stated that many of the Hindu dwellings in the city had been razed as part of the military operation while the remaining Hindu houses had black hands painted on their entrances, while elsewhere in East Pakistan, Hindu houses were designated with yellow Hs (Stern 1971).

A Hindu resident of the town of Rangpur in EP, Prabhu Dayal Agarwala, in an article published in NYT in August 1971, described how 150 of his family members being killed by the army. After the army came to his town following the beginning of Operation Searchlight, he describes:

"Soon after it was announced that not a single Hindu would be allowed to leave Saidpur. We were subjected to forced labour from April 3rd onwards, on the construction of the Garodangi bridge from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. under the supervision of Havaldar [sergeant] Fateh Khan. Fateh Khan carried a scourge in his hand and whipped us cruelly. He also used very abusive language such as ‘Kafiron Ki Aulad’ [children of infidels], ‘Gaddaro’ [Traitors] etc.” (Agarwal 1971).

Later, all the male Hindu members of the community above the age of 80 were arrested and kept in confined cells. Agarwal further narrates that a week after his initial detention with other Hindu members of his community, they were put on a train with 400 Hindus from various Bengali communities. The train was stopped at a station near an infamous graveyard, where military hired thugs were waiting. According to Agarwal, soldiers who were acting as their armed escort, got off the train, and under the supervision of these soldiers, the thugs at the station started executing the members of the train. Many were killed but a considerable number jumped and escaped (Agarwal 1971).

Having discussed all this evidence, we must also shed light on opposing views from other witnesses. This view came from the interview with an ex-military official, the former Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General (retired) Aslam Beg, who served as the General Staff Officer-1 as part of the 9th Division of the Pakistan Army in the Comilla District of East Pakistan. General Beg said that the army’s main job was to clear and regain control of regions under control of rebels. He described how from April to July, the army engaged in “grim battles, fighting with poor logistics support, against the Mukti Bahini, supported by India” (Beg 2018). With regards to the atrocities perpetrated by the army, particularly the 26

Hindus, the general said that there was no truth in it, and that the “Indian propaganda machine was spinning out stories about violence against West Pakistanis, Biharis, Hindus and Bengalis” (Beg 2018). Beg’s statement are similar to the view generally put forth by official state sources on the 1971 crisis such as the White Paper, that there was no truth to the violence and that India played a role in not only fomenting the unrest, but also by carrying out propaganda against Pakistan by creating stories about violence occurring in East Pakistan.

However, the evidence from three different newspapers and declassified government documents is too overwhelming to ignore. It does show that the state, in its counter insurgency operation against secessionist elements within the Bengali population, was engaged in the brutal targeting of Hindus. The fact that the majority of refugees fleeing to India were Hindus, along with the incidents described above that show the military seeking to identify Hindus during their operations, marking Hindus houses with symbols of identification, only executing Hindus from crowds of captured people, burning whole Hindu villages, and giving Hindus an ultimatum to leave the country, shows that there existed a systematic and deliberate campaign of extermination and expulsion against the Hindus of East Pakistan during the war.

Causal mechanisms behind Hindu targeting The thesis now analyses the data for information that is consistent with our main argument that the targeting of Hindus was a result of the political significance of their demographic weight in East Pakistan.

First, we see evidence that Hindus of East Pakistan were a part of the supporters of the Awami League, and that the military was targeting them for this reason. There are reports that indicate that the targeting could be due to Hindu support for the Awami League, the party leading the secessionist movement. A report published two months into the conflict said that the Hindus gave “overwhelming support” to the Awami League in the elections preceding the crisis (‘Three million links in a chain of misery’ 1971). Another report said that they were among the staunchest supporters (‘Bengali refugees in squalor in India’ 1971), that they voted strongly for the Awami League (‘India seeks halt in refugee flow’ 1971). Furthermore, a report on areas where anti-rebel operations had been carried out said that the army’s anger had been displaced on to the Hindu community and said that Pakistani officers were insisting that Hindus were secretly prominent in the council of the Awami League 27

(‘Brahmanbaria: a tale of two armies’ 1971). These reports indicate that the Hindus did play a role in the success of the Awami League, and that they were being targeted for it.

Further evidence suggests that Hindus were also perceived by the state of playing a major role in the liberation movement. The fact that the military viewed them in such a way can be supported from a report by Peter Cargill, the then director of World Bank’s South Asia Department. The report stated that for the military, any Hindu or Awami League member falls under the category of ‘secessionists’ (Nossiter 1971). Moreover, while the military would be carrying out operations against communities possibly harbouring miscreants, the mentality of Pakistani military officers was such that Hindu communities were automatically suspect (Woollacott 1971). These reports indicate that Hindu targeting was a result of their support for the League and a perception on part of the state of them having a major role in the secession movement.

The above evidence does not exactly indicate that it was the state’s official policy to target Hindus for their demographic weight, but it is somewhat consistent with our argument. For one, evidence does show that the Hindus did support the Awami League, which means that their demographic weight was significant for the party’s victory. Moreover, they were also targeted for their support for the league. Further, the fact that they were automatically suspected of being secessionists shows that they were perceived as having a major role in the secession movement. This could possibly mean that for the state, the Hindus were responsible for giving the League a majority in the National Assembly, for the party could not have had a majority without the demographic weight of the Hindus backing it. If the state saw the Hindus as a vital part of the support for Awami League and the secessionist movement, it is possible that it embarked on a campaign to remove this part of the party’s support base from East Pakistan, so that if elections are held again, the League, or a party making similar bids for autonomy and secession cannot come to power.

The abovementioned cannot be considered the exact same thing as Hindus being targeted for their demographic weight, but it is consistent with our argument. This is because for the argument that the demographic weight of Hindus was considered a threat by the state, it was important that they formed the support base of the political party that was leading the secession movement. We see from evidence that this was true; Hindus did back the party. For a population to be considered a threat, it is necessary that it supports a secessionist party in the first place. Hence, due to Hindu support for the League, there demographic weight came 28 to be perceived as a threat, and the military thought it necessary to remove them from East Pakistan in order to make it impossible for a party like the League coming to power.

Furthermore, there is also evidence that is partially consistent with our argument, i.e. that the targeting of civilians was an attempt to reduce the population of East Pakistan to a minority. In an open letter written during the war from the Bangla Desh (Bengal Nation) Student Action Committee in Great Britain to the American Bar Association, the writers of the letter deplored the atrocities occurring in East Pakistan. They said that since 25th March, the Pakistani regime had unleased a reign of terror against the virtually unarmed people of Bangladesh. They further lamented the outlawing of their political party which had won a majority in the national election and the imprisonment of its leader, and narrated how the army murdered many professors, intellectuals, students, and inflicted sexual torture on women, along with burning villages, massacring thousands of peasants and hunting “our Hindu brothers like rabbits” (‘An open letter to the delegates of the American Bar Association from the people of Bangla Desh’, 1971, p.5). In the same letter, referring to the killings, the letter said, “This is clearly a systematic attempt to reduce the number of people inside Bangla Desh to a number ‘manageable’ by the West Pakistan ‘authorities’. Already over 7 million people have fled this terror: a few millions more and West Pakistan will have their majority” (Ibid, p.5). The writers further implied that this was genocide and appealed to the bar association to approach US president Nixon to intervene.

In this letter, we see that the student association hinted on the possibility of a systematic attempt to reduce the population of East Pakistan in order to give West Pakistan a majority. The letter gives the personal views of the writers but considering that this was written by people who witnessed what was occurring around them first-hand, it seems that there could be some truth to their claim. However, the letter does not specifically say that ‘Hindus were being targeted’ as part of this systematic attempt. But if one considers the systematic way the Hindus were being killed and expelled, one can argue that this claim by Bengal Students Association did not refer to the extermination and driving out of the general civilian populace but was true mostly for Hindus. Another fact that lends credence to the claim that this policy was mainly aimed at Hindus is that after the war, 8 million out of the 10 million refugees who had fled from East Pakistan to India were Hindus (Michener 1972; Raghavan 2013). Not only were the refugees in India 80 percent Hindu, but the Hindus expelled from East Pakistan were 80 percent of the Hindu population present inside East Pakistan, for the number of Hindus in East Pakistan at the time of the crisis were 10-12 29 million (Akmam 2002; Meher 2015; Akanda 1970). By juxtaposing the contents of the letter with other news reports and government documents, especially the fact that 8 million of the 10 million people driven out of East Pakistan were Hindus, and that they were executed and driven out in a systematic fashion as established above, one could argue that ‘the systematic attempt to reduce the majority of East Pakistan’ mentioned in letter applied to Hindus more than their Muslim co-ethnics.

We can argue that the fact that Hindus supported the Awami League and were perceived by the state as playing a major part in the secession movement, along with the fact that it was state policy to exterminate and expel them in a systematic manner, together with the fact that eight million of them were driven out of the country is consistent with our main argument. Saying this is not to declare the absolute veracity of our argument, but with 10 million driven out, 0.3-3 million killed (Beachler 2011), East Pakistan’s population at the end of the war was less than West Pakistan’s 65 million, for its 75 million had been reduced by more than 10 million even by conservative estimates, including both killed and expelled. In a hypothetical scenario where the state had managed to subdue the rebellion, and elections had been held again, a party from East Pakistan could not have possibly emerged victorious because the region did not have the numbers to get a majority in the National Assembly of the country.

Thus, considering the aforementioned discussion, we can lay claim to the plausibility of our argument that the causal mechanism linking targeting of Hindus with strategic interests of the state was the significance of their demographic weight in the politics of East Pakistan

Other arguments Apart from data that is consistent with our main argument, there is also data that supports previously established arguments in the literature, especially the idea of religious prejudice. We see from two of the reports already discussed above, that indicate an element of prejudice on part of the soldiers. For example, Haripada Rai, narrated how him and other captured villagers were called infidels by soldiers while they were executing them (‘Refugee stories oppose MP’s view’ 1971). Moreover, another refugee, Prabhu Agarwal narrated how soldiers captured his group of fleeing Hindus and referred to them as ‘children of infidels’ and ‘traitors’. Moreover, we also see evidence of temples being destroyed and the heads of Hindu gods being decapitated (‘Horrors of East Pakistan turning hope into despair’’1971; ‘Dacca is still gripped by fear 3 months after the onslaught’ 1971; ‘Brahmanbaria: a tale of 30 two armies’ 1971). These incidents are consistent with the argument of Payne (1973) that Hindus were targeted because of religious prejudice. However, we do not observe widespread occurrence of such incidents in the reports studied for this thesis to make a claim as to whether this was due to the personal feelings of soldiers or whether state officials endorsed a policy against Hindus because of their personal prejudice.

Apart from our main argument and the arguments discussed in the literature review, we also come across data that suggests two other arguments. One argument is that Hindus were possibly targeted because they were thought of as infiltrators who had crossed the border to support the secessionist movement. The second argument is that Hindus were deliberately targeted so that they would flee across the border into India and place strains on the Indian economy.

The first argument needs to be understood in the context of relations between India and Pakistan. Due to perpetual hostility between the two countries, unrest in one country often leads to that country accusing the other of interference in its affairs. Such was the case during the 1971 war too. During the duration of the war, Pakistan repeatedly charged India of fomenting the civil unrest in Pakistan.

By early April, Pakistan charged India of interfering in East Pakistan by using ‘armed infiltrators in plain clothes’ (‘India accused in UN’ 1971). This charge was repeated frequently in the following months and there are numerous news reports in both The New York Times and The Guardian, in which the Pakistani military claimed of having engaged with ‘Indian infiltrators’ near the border (‘Pakistan reports a rout of Indians’ 1971; ‘Pakistan claims victory at key railhead’ 1971; ‘Pakistan accuses India of attack in East’ 1971; ‘Keating report stirs Pakistanis’ 1971; Adeney 1971). In one such news, the military, in response to an allegation that it had targeted Hindus in a certain town, claimed that the allegations were put forth by an Indian journalist to “cover up the large‐scale infiltration into East Pakistan of Indian Hindus who were being dealt with as any other miscreants” (‘Pakistan claims victory at key railhead’ 1971, p.3). In a similar report, the administration of Dacca released a statement saying that the military had captured two Indians on an infiltration mission and urged citizens to stand against anti-national forces and armed Indian infiltrators (‘Pakistan reports a rout of Indians’ 1971). In yet another report, Pakistan Radio in a statement said that the military had reportedly ambushed an Indian supply column in Pakistani territory, killing the infiltrators and seizing ammunition which bore markings of the Kirkee ordnance factories 31 in India (‘Keating report stirs Pakistanis’ 1971). India, however, claimed these allegations by the Pakistani authorities were not true, with the Indian Foreign Office spokesman denying these charges in April (Adeney 1971). Moreover, NYT also reported that Pakistani military communiques use the term ‘Indian agents’ to describe insurgents (Browne 1971).

There is a possibility that these claims by the military were false and the Pakistani authorities were deliberately making allegations of infiltration and purposefully terming them ‘Indian agents’ in order to hide the fact that this was an indigenous secession movement and not a creation of the country’s enemies. The idea that these claims were false is lent credence by the fact that Bengali sources reported in that a message had been sent from the governor of East Pakistan, General Tikka Khan to army headquarters in Rawalpindi, West Pakistan, asking for Indian arms captured in the 1965 Indo-Pak war to be flown to Dacca. The sources further said that the Pakistan government expected to invite foreign journalists to Dacca and would be shown these arms (captured in a war seven years before) as evidence of Indian infiltration (‘Government forces near victory in western Bengal’ 1971). This indicates that the military authorities were making claims that were false in order to twist the narrative of the rebellion. Whether these claims are true or not is open to debate. But even if these claims were false, the knowledge of them being false would be with the authorities making them. Ordinary soldiers, with their only source of information being the higher military officials, would believe them. In such a scenario, soldiers on the ground would come to believe that ‘Indian infiltrators’ are causing the unrest. Because Indians are primarily Hindus, a soldier on the ground, when given orders to target infiltrators, would not try to ascertain whether the person they are targeting is an Indian or not, but would target them for just being Hindu. On the other hand, when given an order to ‘kill Hindus’, he would probably understand it to mean the same thing as ‘target infiltrators’. Thus, when killing Hindus, he would not be able to (due to the image projected by his superiors) differentiate between Indian infiltrators (Hindus from India) or Hindus who are civilians of Pakistan. Thus, Hindus being considered enemy infiltrators is another argument that can explain Hindu targeting.

Regarding the second argument, we see that the civil unrest in East Pakistan resulted in millions fleeing across India. This placed a lot of economic strain on the Indian states bordering East Pakistan (Raghavan 2013). Amidst this refugee crisis in India, the prime minister of India charged that Pakistanis are deliberately terrorizing Bengali Hindus and other potential dissidents into fleeing across the border to place grave strains on India's economic and social fabric (‘Three million links in a chain of misery’ 1971). India’s ambassadors were 32 also reportedly given instructions to convey to foreign governments that “the Pakistani Army is now calculatedly terrorizing certain unwanted elements in the East Pakistan population, such as the minority Hindus, so that they will flee across the border and place grave strains on India's economic and social fabric” (India seeks halt in refugee flow 1971, p.11). Moreover, for India, the refugee crisis would impede its development. In May, the Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi said that the consequence of the Pakistan Army’s repression in East Pakistan “throws a terrible burden upon India which may be forced to slow down some of her development programmes to release resources for the care of refugees” (Mukerjee 1971, p.3). Meanwhile, Indian Foreign Officials said on the same day that India would have to take action to safeguard her interests if Pakistan did not stop “pushing across into India” hundreds of thousands of Bengalis from East Pakistan (‘Ready for battle’ 1971). It was true that the refugee crisis was placing a huge financial burden on India. The Times, in an analysis of the crisis reported that by the end of June, the refugees coming from East Pakistan were costing the Indian economy a million pounds a day (‘How India was sucked into the maelstrom’ 1971). Moreover, in a letter from Henry Kissinger, the then US National Security Advisor, to US President Richard Nixon, Kissinger informed the president of the worsening situation in East Pakistan. He indicated that this may lead to a broader crisis in South Asia, as India may be dragged into it. He apprised the president that Indian policy to support an independent Bangladesh may be motivated by economic considerations and the fact that the refugee crisis was impeding its economic development program, as maintaining the present number of refugees is projected to cost $600 million in a year (‘Document 24’, 2002). These reports and statements suggest that Hindus and secessionists were being driven out as part of a broader geo-political strategy. Thus, another argument is that Hindus were targeted for broader political motives.

33

Conclusion

As mentioned in the introduction, the thesis aimed at understanding the causal mechanism behind Hindu targeting during the Pakistani civil war. The targeting is an puzzling aspect of the Pakistani civil war and has not garnered much attention from scholars who have studied the war. The thesis put forth a question regarding why the Hindu minority was targeted at a greater rate than the Bengali Muslim majority during the counter-insurgency campaign to suppress the secessionist Bengali movement. It specifically described the policy of death and expulsion as an intriguing aspect of the civil war and asked why the state would waste its resources on such a policy when they should have been focused on the secessionist rebels.

As opposed to the explanations based in religious prejudice and Hindus being considered ‘enemy agents’, the thesis sought to look at the possibility of a strategic aspect to the violence against the Hindu minority. However, when it comes to the literature which looks at the link between large-scale violence against civilians and the strategic interests of the perpetrator, there exists a gap. We see that the literature does not focus much on the question of how a state would behave toward the civilian populace of the rebelling ethnicity if it is sub-divided into sub-groups. The answer to this question was sought in the case of the Pakistani civil war as it was felt that answering the question of the targeting of the Hindu sub- group through a strategic approach would also advance the analysis of the scholars who look at the link between violence and strategy.

Through an analysis of the period of the civil war by a study of reports from three newspapers and declassified government documents related to the war, we found out that some of the data indicated a slight plausibility of there being a strategic aspect of the violence against Hindus. We found out for a fact that there existed a systematic campaign of extermination and expulsion against the Hindu population and that eight million of the 10 million people who had fled to India were Hindus.

With regard to the strategic aspect of targeting, the fact that Hindus were vital supporters of the secessionist party and were perceived of having a major role in the secessionist movement, explains why the state would consider their demographic weight a threat and seek to remove them from the region to reduce not only the support base of the secessionist movement, but also the support of the political party that was leading the 34 movement. Such an action would hypothetically prevent a future party with similar ambitions from coming to power, as civilian targeting during the civil war had reduced East Pakistan numerically from a majority to a minority.

The study is however limited by the fact that these reports and documents cannot be taken to mean the official state policy during the Pakistani civil war. We can look at the data and make claims as to the plausibility of the existence of a strategic aspect to Hindu targeting. This does not mean that our argument is totally implausible. We do see from the letter from the Bengal Student Association that the idea of violence against civilians being carried out to reduce the majority of the Bengali population is not that far-fetched.

However, the existence of such a strategic policy behind civilian targeting can only be ascertained through official military documents. Such documents, that can implicate the state for mass crimes during wars will understandably never be declassified. The work of scholars studying this war (and other such wars), is further complicated by the fact that ex-military officials refrain from talking about incidents of violence against civilians. This is evident from the fact that this study only found it possible to interview one ex-military official, while another military official initially offered to give an interview but did not respond later despite repeated attempts. Thus, this study, like many others of this nature, in the absence of official documents and reluctance on part of actors involved in the conflict, will always be limited to establishing the plausibility of claims based on data from the victims or observers present on ground, and not the perpetrators whose behaviour is actually being studied.

Nevertheless, due to the fact that there is data that is consistent with the idea of there being strategic causal mechanisms behind Hindu targeting during the civil war, we must look at the contributions our argument can make to the literature and how it can be used by policy makers in the real world.

First, this study is an addition to the causal mechanisms that look at the link between strategic interests and large-scale violence. We can argue that the existence of sub-groups within a rebelling ethnic group can make the post-war demographic configuration of the country a vital strategic interest of the state. The demographic weight of the sub-group of a rebelling ethnicity, coupled with the fact that the group is also a strong supporter of the party leading the secession movement, may lead to it being perceived as a threat by the state. The removal of that group may become a part of the counter-insurgency campaign to suppress the secession movement. The state must then engage in strategic targeting that seeks to remove 35 the ethnic group from the region, in order to reduce the prospects of secession through democratic means after the war. The targeting of the Hindu minority to maintain the status quo, to maintain West Pakistani majority (or the dominant ethnic groups from West Pakistan) over East Pakistan, suggests that ethnic cleansing and ethnic expulsion can be used to maintain the established power sharing equilibrium of the state.

Second, Michael Mann, in The Dark Side of Democracy, had argued how democratization can lead a majority group to tyrannize minorities, leading to ethnic cleansing and genocide. Our analysis adds to this argument by arguing that democratization may also lead a dominant minority group to tyrannize the majority. Ethnic cleansing and expulsion may also occur when the minority is stronger and seeks to change the demographics of the majority so that it may not succeed in a democracy. Such killing may occur in the run-up to establishing a democratic setup or if the result of a democratic procedure has upset the status quo which allowed the minority to rule over the majority. Thus, ethnic cleansing and ethnic expulsion to prevent a group from gaining power through democratic means can also be part of the theoretical link between strategic interests and large-scale violence.

This study also opens avenues of research for scholars of civil wars and ethnic conflict by making sub-groups of actors fighting against the state an integral part of the study. Scholars, who are studying the political dynamics of the conflictual relation between a state and a rebelling group should also look at what role the sub-group plays in upsetting the relation between the state and the rebelling group. This can help scholars identify sub-groups in regions of civil conflict that are at the risk of being ignored amidst the background of the wider conflict. These groups can be members from the same ethnicity or co-regionalists populating the same province or area.

With regard to the applicability of our case findings to other cases, this study can only apply to cases of civil war where the configuration of ethnic groups is similar and there exists a similar situation whereby democratization has upset the status quo. Thus, the applicability of our case to other cases is low. However, scholars intending to apply our case’s findings to identify sub-groups under threat, can do so through a model attached in Appendix C. For simplicity’s, let us take an arrangement of groups called A, B and C. In the arrangement, A forms roughly half the population (49 percent), and B is slightly lesser than A (41 percent). Group C (10 percent) may be a co-ethnic (a sub-group based on religion, dialect etc.) of group B or a co-regionalist of group B. Combined, B and C form a population greater than A. 36

Thus, the demographic weight of group C is significant enough to upset the majority of A. This model can be used to identify sub-groups with demographic weights significant enough to give another group within the state a majority. These sub-groups, according to the analysis of this thesis, are at the risk of being targeted if war breaks out between group A and B. However, this model may only apply if the conflict has arisen from A and B’s aim to gain supremacy in the government through democratic means.

Identification of these groups at risk of being targeted with large-scale violence can be helpful for international actors working for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities. It is obvious to such actors that civilian populations of rebelling groups are at risk, but a risk to a sub-group may be ignored and lack of violence toward the main rebelling group can be taken to mean that a state is not targeting civilian populations during civil wars. In reality, it may be targeting a sub-group, which may not be immediately visible to observers working for conflict prevention. Such ignorance is evident from how little focus Hindu targeting has received in the study of the Pakistani case.

Thus, information on the role of sub-groups of rebelling groups in the broader political dynamics of a country can help identify sub-groups at risk of mass violence during civil wars, which can be helpful for international actors seeking to prevent violence against civilians. Rebelling groups may not require protection but sub-groups at the risk of erasure may require immediate assistance from international actors during civil wars. Studies like this thesis can make the identification and protection of these groups a possibility.

37

Appendix A

Source: (Uca.edu 2018)

38

Appendix B Questions for General Mirza Aslam Beg

Q1) What was your rank and unit in East Pakistan? How long did you serve there?

Q2) What were your daily duties?

Q3) What was your view of the unrest going on in east Pakistan? What was the general view of soldiers fighting with you?

Q4) There are a lot of sources that claim that the military targeted civilians intentionally. These include works of Pakistani authors too. Did you witness such actions on part of the army? Were you ever given such orders?

Q5) Colonel Nadir Ali (author of A Khaki Dissident) has claimed that you were friends with him and "had expressed your distaste at what was happening in East Pakistan". What is it that you did not approve of?

Q6) Colonel Nadir has also written about how he was repeatedly given orders to 'kill hindus'. The order is also mentioned in the Hamood-ur-Rahman commission report. News reports that I have come across say that Hindus were specifically targeted during March- December 1971. (Example: Hindu houses being marked with 'H' in Faridpur and attacked). Did you witness such actions of deliberate targeting of Hindus? Were you ever during your operations, given an order to specifically look for and target Hindus? If yes, then do you have any idea about why the military was going after Hindus? Was this a 'grand military strategy' or the actions of some army officers?

Q7) I have also come across sources that part of the military strategy during Operation Searchlight was to "eliminate the Hindus by death or expulsion from East Pakistan". Were you aware of any such strategy, through the orders given to you or through what you may have seen or heard? If yes, then do you have any knowledge of why this strategy was being pursued?

39

Appendix C

Group B Group A (49 (41 percent) percent) Group C (10%)

Group B+C>A

C’s demographic weight is significant = At greater risk of being targeted during conflict between A and B

40

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