JCC: East Pakistan Crisis Indian Cabinet Chair: Prateek Swain Crisis Director: Alex Fager
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asdf JCC: East Pakistan Crisis Indian Cabinet Chair: Prateek Swain Crisis Director: Alex Fager JCC: East Pakistan Crisis – India PMUNC 2016 Contents Letter from the Chair…….………………………...……………………...…..3 Introduction………..…….………………………...……………………...…..5 The Situation in the Indian Subcontinent……............……………..……..……7 Setting the Stage…...………………………..……………………….……….…………7 A Brief History of Modern India..…………..……………………….……….…………9 Indo-Pakistani Relations………...…………..………………...….….……….………...10 Domestic Affairs………………………………………………………………….…...12 Current Situation……………………………………….……………………………...13 Committee Positions………..…….………………………...………………..16 2 JCC: East Pakistan Crisis – India PMUNC 2016 Letter from the Chair Dear Delegates, Namaste! I welcome you to the magnum opus of this year’s PMUNC, The JCC: East Pakistan Crisis. My name is Prateek Swain and I will be your chair for the India committee. First, I’ll introduce myself; I will be starting my sophomore year at Princeton and will be majoring in Economics or Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy (depending on my mood when I have to declare) with a certificate in computer science. I have been debating as well as participating/chairing MUNs since my sophomore year of high school, and have carried on with these endeavors in college. Last year I was the Director for the Korean Reunification Committee at PMUNC, so I’m naturally extremely excited to be chairing this committee and have full faith that it will be a great experience for both you and me. This is certainly not my first crisis, but perhaps the one closest to my heart. Last semester, I took one of those eye opening classes at Princeton on Human Rights with Rebecca (Chair of the Pakistan committee) which set the foundation for this JCC to come into existence. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh together house more than 1.5 billon of our Earth’s population, but their history, and nuances of their relationships isn’t common knowledge, and at best a mention in history textbooks. This is what makes us believe it would be a great learning experience for all of you, if not a lot of fun. While discussing this topic, I look forward to some extremely engaging and often contentious debate between all delegates to recreate history, written in our words. For the committee, it’s 1971 and India’s an extremely new democracy which has been engaged in a passive power struggle in the South Asian territory, with no clear victors 3 JCC: East Pakistan Crisis – India PMUNC 2016 that have emerged yet. It’s also licking its relatively fresh wounds from the 1965 war. I urge you all to familiarize yourselves with the diplomatic and geo-political relations of India during this period to get better clarity on the setting of the committee (hint: Nixon isn’t our biggest fan). In this committee, I hope to be able to execute a well-defined and strategic path of action which helps India emerge as the victorious force of this territory and also get international recognition as a strong, smart and progressive force: the next superpower. A balance between diplomatic action and military or covert action must be maintained, and our goal of long term peace for this region must be achieved, with the added edge of history remembering us as having the upper hand. As for the committee itself, I find myself in the shoes of the Iron lady of India: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. And you all will be my cabinet of trusted advisors with portfolio powers spanning from government, military, to espionage: all the ingredients required to achieve our committee’s objectives. I love to see ingenious solutions and directives. Don’t shy away from being creative in your personal directives, as long as you don’t lose touch with reality. I hope this committee has a strong balance between structured debate and crisis management, and provides you all with a novel experience. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with any questions, or to just chat! I look forward to meeting you all in November, and hope the stars are ever in your favor. Jai Hind! Regards, Prateek Swain 4 JCC: East Pakistan Crisis – India PMUNC 2016 Introduction It’s 1971. Led Zeppelin’s about to release their best album, microprocessors are fast catching on, John Lennon is still alive, and oh! Revolution is in the air comrades. India’s got its fair share of problems, but our pesky neighbors in the west have trouble brewing in their backyard. East Pakistan, the better half of Pakistan, has been causing trouble for the leaders sitting in Islamabad with secessionist ideas that have been floating around in Dacca and other parts of their territory. East & West Pakistan are the much-touted two-state solution1 founded on the basis that a country with a unified religion will be more stable. Its creation led to much bloodshed and a messy partition of the glorious landmass of what was once a unified India. India’s a diverse country with various exotic spices to excite your olfactory senses, but you and I only smell one thing: opportunity. This is a golden chance to divide Pakistan to make our enemies weaker, establish us as the leaders of the South Asian region and help democracy in the process. However, we have a long and treacherous path ahead of us. We’re still licking our wounds from our defeat to China in our first war as an independent country2. Furthermore, United States of America under the (gloriously disastrous) rule of Nixon have sided themselves firmly with that despot Yayha Khan of Pakistan3. Thus a direct confrontation 1 O' Brien, Connor Cruise. "Holy War Against India." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 1 Aug. 1988. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. 2 Lidarev, Ivan. "History's Hostage: China, India and the War of 1962." The Diplomat. The Diplomat, 21 Aug. 2012. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. 3 Bass, Gary Jonathan. "The Tilt." The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, n.d. 12. Print 5 JCC: East Pakistan Crisis – India PMUNC 2016 with Pakistan provoked by us may lead to quick escalation and unpleasant scenarios I do not yet wish to imagine. Further, a partition could again lead to a massive influx of refugees to India and instability in the already disturbed region of West Bengal4. And since India is a land of so many cultures, helping a country divide on the basis of different cultures could massively backfire on us. We won’t be currying favor with the international community either if we are caught openly as playing troublemaker. But we cannot ignore the pleas and protests of our fellow men who so desperately crave to liberate themselves from such a draconian nation’s constraints. While we risk looking like the villains nosing for selfish reasons (which granted, do exist), I believe we must act for a higher cause. It is our moral obligation and our duty to help them achieve it. India stands for the principles of human rights, freedom and democracy, the very antithesis of the Pakistani administration5. And to ensure our principles and values triumph will be the best damn victory we will ever achieve. 4 Bass, Gary Jonathan. "The Inferno Next Door." The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, n.d. 91. Print 5 Sharlach, Lisa (2000). "Rape as Genocide: Bangladesh, the Former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda". New Political Science. 1 (22): 89–102. doi:10.1080/713687893 6 JCC: East Pakistan Crisis – India PMUNC 2016 The Situation in the Indian Subcontinent Setting the Stage General Yahya Khan, the magnificently (incompetent) dictator of Pakistan, recently announced he would be stepping down. Thus Pakistan, in a rare and surprising win for the suffrage supporters, held an open and fair election. There was one problem though which Yahya, and the main front-runner political heavyweight of West Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, did not anticipate: the elections were won by a Bengali activist sitting thousands of miles away from them in East Pakistan, Mujibur Rahman6. East Pakistan is the other half of West Pakistan, separated only by the landmass of India. The last act of British rule left the subcontinent in shambles after an extremely messy partition of our country on the basis of religion that has had severe ramifications to this day. India and Pakistan do not enjoy the warmest bilateral relations with each other.7 India, under the Congress Party (popular Indian Party fighting for Independence) leader and future Prime Minsiter Jawahar Lal Nehru pleaded with Viceroy Mountbatten (the British Head of Colonial India) and other Imperial Officials to not divide the country upon Independence. However, on the insistence of Muhammed Ali Jinhah, the founder of Pakistan and leader of All-India Muslim League, the country went through a partition8 right before it tasted Independence. This partition was based on the underlying principle of religion, with India (called Hindustan in Hindi) being the land of Hindus and East and West Pakistan being the 6 Owen Bennett-Jones (2003). Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. Yale University Press. pp. 146–180. 7 Hashim, Asad. "Timeline: India-Pakistan Relations." Al Jazeera English. N.p., 27 May 2014. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. 8 Mahajan, Sucheta. Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. Print. 7 JCC: East Pakistan Crisis – India PMUNC 2016 country of Muslims. The idea was that countries with a unifying religion would be inherently more stable9 (if only they knew what it looks like today) On India’s west, bordering the states of Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan and Gujarat is West Pakistan. And to India’s east, bordering West Bengal, is East Pakistan. While the religion most prolifically practiced in East Pakistan is Islam, the population shares more in common with their counterparts in West Bengal than their countrymen in West Pakistan.