Text of speech delivered by the author on 8/11/2017 at the Inaugural session of the
International Seminar on Indo-Bangladesh Relation in the 21st Century at University of Kalyani, West Bengal, India
————————————————————————————————-Dr.P M Kamath
For persons endowed with thinking abilities in the early 1970s, December 1971 was a period to stand up for Indian foreign policy; for its acting as a mid-wife for the birth of Bangladesh as an independent nation in the territory of erstwhile East Pakistan. That also buried Jinnah’s ‘Two Nations theory’. That weakened Pakistan for next one decade at least as it was earlier using East Pakistan as a dagger held against India’s heart.
Was Liberation a Blessing in disguise?
But some of my friends in the US disagreed. They offered following reasons. First, soon after the birth of Bangladesh, truncated Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Zulfiqur Bhutto launched his search for enhanced security for Pakistan by his project of an ‘Islamic Bomb’. Second, humiliating defeat suffered by Pakistan in the war made it to search for a cause to pay back, to revenge the defeat at the hands of India with singleness of purpose. That made
Zia ul- Haq military dictator to support the Khalistan movement in Punjab. Pakistan failed in that. Then Pakistan supported the same goal in Jammu & Kashmir; it is still on. Third there was a combined purpose of Pakistan aiming to gain strategic depth adding to revenge, initiated by Zia but powerfully pursued by General Ashfaque Kayani.
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