Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

We all listened to him quietly.

On the morning of March 25, 1971, under plans drawn up on five sheets of paper by two majors in two days, the army put into action Operation Searchlight. Perhaps Zafar knows about this, said my father.

But Zafar said nothing. I’m not even sure that my father was expecting a response. My father was talking as if talking were necessary, and perhaps Zafar had understood this. I wondered how much my friend already knew about those events. I myself was ignorant of so much about Pakistan. That day I told myself I would set aside time to remedy this, but the years came and went and I never did. I’d made the same promise to myself before but never kept it. Only now, prompted by Zafar’s return and the circumstances of work and marriage, not to mention the world’s new interest in that region, have I gone back over the past and taken time to discover more.

Under Operation Searchlight, my father continued, every Hindu and every potential opposition element in Dhaka was to be killed. Journalists and lawyers were systematically hunted down. Doctors and engineers were killed, academics and other professionals.

You spoke out against this, didn’t you? I interjected.

Many others also did. There were American diplomats who wanted their government to condemn Pakistan, but Nixon was playing Cold War games.

It must have been very difficult for you in the Pakistani community, said Zafar.

It’s all past now, but yes, it was hard at the time. I’m afraid to say we were shunned by Pakistanis in Princeton and New York.

We received threatening letters, said my mother. But, she continued, your father knew he had to speak out.

My father poured us all some more tea. The garden air was perfectly still.

When India intervened in December, I was relieved. Of course, I was sad for my countrymen, sad for the poor soldiers, as ever fighting wars for idiotic leaders, but I believed that it would be over soon, which it was, and that Pakistan would emerge from it all, from its own moral reckoning, a wiser and less belligerent nation. It was naïve idealism.

My father stopped there and poured some milk into his tea. The rest of us were silent.

But you know, even two days before the final surrender, when Pakistan had no hope of victory, the army carried out one last operation in Dhaka, rooting out as many intellectuals as they could and killing them.

From her slight leaning toward him, you could tell that under the table my mother had taken my father’s hand.

Well, the war ended, continued my father, but Pakistan’s troubles were only to carry on in one shape or another. As for Bangladesh, with three million dead, hundreds of thousands of women raped, and an entire generation of its professionals, its engineers, its doctors, its thinkers and doers exterminated, that poor country was hobbling on its infant feet.

The estimates vary, said Zafar.

How, asked my father, does the expression go? Truth is the casualty of war, slaughtered by victors and vanquished alike. I know they’ll argue till the cows come home about the numbers, but the estimates don’t vary enough to alter the magnitude of the horror.

In the quiet, I became aware again of the garden. Late spring in Oxford, the first floral scents, the sound of the brook, and these things my father and Zafar discussed, they seemed to belong to another time and place. At the time, I knew nothing, of course, about the facts of Zafar’s origins. Now, when I look back on that evening, I am a little disturbed by what I see was Zafar’s enormous restraint. The discussion must have been close to the bone and yet he held back so much. It seems to me now that Zafar’s conversation had a tendency to take on an academic tone when it hit something emotionally charged, by way perhaps of a defense mechanism. If that’s not too facile.

I haven’t read very much about this period, said Zafar, but one thing that did strike me when I read about India’s intervention is that the Indian military leadership was an extraordinarily diverse group of people.

You mean Manekshaw and the rest? asked my father.

Who was Manekshaw? I asked.

Sam Manekshaw was the head of the army, my mother replied. He was a Parsee from Zoroastrian Iranians who migrated to India way back. And there was Jacob, of course. You meant Jacob also, didn’t you? she asked, looking at Zafar.

My friend nodded.

Jacob was an Indian Jew, his family originally from Iraq, said my mother. He was second-in-command of Indian forces in the east. And there was Jagjit Singh Aurora, a Sikh, who accepted the Pakistani instrument of surrender. Yes, it was quite a diverse bunch at the top of the Indian military.

I wouldn’t let that diversity deceive you, said my father, speaking to Zafar.

What do you mean? I asked.

They were all really the same, Hindu, Jew, Sikh, Zoroastrian. They were all educated in the same military college founded by the British, you know?

My father also studied with them, said my mother. Before the British left, she added.

As a matter of fact, continued my father, there’s a fascinating letter you absolutely must read, from a Pakistani officer to his Indian counterpart on the eve of a conflict. The Pakistanis are under siege, they’ve suffered huge casualties, and their cause is lost, but despite this the Pakistani officer is goading the Indian officer to join battle. The language is superb. It’s in English, of course — it’s pure Victorian Rajput English. He writes to the Indian officer as if they both went to the same public school.* They’re all from the same social group. I’ve heard this before and, if you don’t mind my saying so, Zafar, everyone makes so much of this diversity in the Indian army, when really they are focusing far too much on religion and race and not seeing the reality, which is that these officers come from the same class. Good Lord, all the generals, even the Pakistani ones, went to military college together, under the British. In the most important respect of all, they weren’t remotely diverse.

Some of the Indians and Pakistani generals had earlier fought side by side in the Second World War. Manekshaw fought alongside those formidable Gurkhas, now part of the British army.

Manekshaw, my mother interjected, said that any soldier who says he’s not afraid of dying is a liar or a Gurkha. Anyway, all this will come out, my mother concluded. It’s only two decades since the war, but it will all come out, including the American role in it. They have a thirty-year rule, don’t they? I mean their official documents are released after thirty years, no?

She looked around for confirmation, but no one seemed to know.

So, she continued, American shenanigans in Pakistan will come out in 2001 and 2002 and then questions will be asked. These days no one needs Pakistan as an intermediary for anything.