Part 5: Demand for Separate Tamil Land
By the 1970s, the Tamils had thrown their towel due to the events above. Two different groups of separatists emerged:
Tamil United Liberation Front: who wanted to achieve autonomy through peaceful means.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam: who had no hesitation to use violence and force.
In 1983, the worst of anti-Tamil pogroms happened - Black July. This was reportedly provoked by the LTTE's first ambush, where they killed 13 SL soldiers - Four Four Bravo.
Part 6: Indian Involvement: Training the Tigers
As things started to get out of hand in Lanka, India was worried. There was huge pressure from the Tamil Nadu parties for an intervention. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka started moving towards the US and Pakistan, worrying India.
For India, these were the following considerations:
Sri Lanka was aligned with the US and Pakistan. India was at that time aligned with the USSR (and it was rumored that the USSR's KGB had a high level of control over Indian bureaucracy. It was at the height of the Cold War (early 1980s), and India had to break the US-SL nexus. LTTE proved an ideal foil for India.
The brutality of pogroms in Sri Lanka was forcing droves of refugees into India. Historically, Sri Lankan Tamils had a high level of support in Tamil Nadu, and politicians including MG Ramachandran and Karunanidhi put enormous pressure on the Centre. Indira Gandhi needed one of these to shore up her politics.
Thus, India started involving herself. In the 1970s and '80s, there were camps all over TN that started training the tigers. It is rumored that these were trained in the Arcot districts of TN where there are plenty of forests.
Jain commission revealed that India trained five extremist organizations using its intelligence agency - Research & Analysis Wing (RAW):
Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF)
Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO)
Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS)
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE)
Each was given its own camps across Tamil Nadu, and some even went to Libya, Syria and Lebanon to get trained. They learned the deadly tactics of suicide bombing (LTTE was the world's most advanced in this deadly skill).
In a short time, severe in-fighting among these groups emerged. In 1982, LTTE supremo Prabhakaran had a shootout against his rival Uma Maheswaran in broad daylight in the middle of Chennai (Pondy Bazar). Although the police arrested him, he was released immediately on bail (allegedly due to the intervention of RAW).
Eventually, the other organizations either merged or were destroyed by the LTTE.
Part 7: India's Volte-Face: Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF)
At the peak of the civil war in 1987, India dropped supplies in Jaffna and foiled an attempt by the Sri Lankan army to win over the rebels. And then on May 1987, Rajiv made an inexplicable move to cozy up with the Lankans through the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. Under the terms of that accord, India was to deploy a peacekeeping mission. As though to warn that the Sri Lankan government was untrustworthy, a Sri Lankan soldier attempted to assassinate Rajiv when Rajiv was in Colombo as an official guest. He is a successful politician in Sri Lanka now.
A blind trust in the Sri Lankans cost India and Rajiv too dear. Just like his grandfather he labored some grand visions of neighborhood friendship only to appear foolish eventually. India was brutally bruised in Ceylon by both the Lankans and Tamils.
Part 8: Frankenstein Turns Its Head
LTTE was furious at this about-turn by Rajiv, but the monster had already been set loose. Prabhakaran was in a blind rage.
The IPKF was one of the worst shames for the Indian army in the past two centuries. At my college, a couple of ex-military men who were a part of the operation recounted the horror stories of the operation. They told stories of getting lost in tropical jungles and getting shot by a number of different players. However, the IPKF had no power to fight back. By the time the operation ended in March 1990, close to 10K Tamils and 1,200 Indian soldiers had died unnecessarily.
LTTE's sharpshooters and anti-tank mines were extremely good at killing the Indian soldiers. The operation drew opposition from both the Tamils and Sinhalese. However, Rajiv Gandhi was adamant in staying.
Meanwhile, Rajiv Gandhi lost the elections in December 1989. The newly elected VP Singh government was not interested in continuing Rajiv's war. The troops came home in the next four months. India's Vietnam was over.
Planning Rajiv's Assassination
The LTTE had almost forgotten about Rajiv until a popular interview with Rajiv Gandhi in the Sunday Magazine on August 1990. Rajiv explained that he planned to restart the IPKF's mission. This shocked the LTTE and it was then decided to prevent Rajiv Gandhi from coming back to power.
In early 1991, Rajiv got the opportunity to get back to power as the coalition of left and right parties collapsed. Rajiv earnestly began his campaign, and it appeared likely that he would come back to power. In his populist mold, India's J.F. Kennedy (with the same idealism, youth, naivete, and charisma) decided to ignore security rules and began taking risks in public rallies.
On May 21, 1991, he appeared at a rally in Sriperumbudur in the outskirts of Madras. At about ten past 10pm, a suicide bomber named Dhanu approached Rajiv and triggered the bomb.
* * *
Now back to the trouble in the island of Rameswaram. The island's close proximity to Sri Lanka and LTTE (the terrorist organization responsible for his death) meant it received great blows. The mastermind of the plot was a Sri Lankan refugee living in the island before the assassination. Given the Congress supporters' history of randomly destroying anything close to the alleged cause whenever one of their leaders died (1984 Indira's death vs. violence on Sikhs), it was not totally unexpected.
Thus, we planned to leave the island ASAP. All buses and trains out of the island (through a long bridge on the sea) were stopped. We were completely trapped. There was no food given that the hotels and shops were shut. Even the legendary temple at Rameswaram was mostly closed.
It was a scary time and the only silver lining was that we still had a place to stay. Luckily, we found the priest of the temple whose wife was running a small canteen at their home. It is a common practice in many holy towns for the families of poor priests to find any avenue to make ends meet.
They were gracious enough to share whatever little stuff they could make with limited grocery provisions. Food never tasted so good. After about 4-5 days of this curfew life, the Indian government had a partial opening of the railway line and got one train to take away the people trapped there. Although we were initially apprehensive due to the riots, we took a chance. We sat in the footboard of the train and it was a totally different experience. There were around 10,000 people in a single train (10-12 carriages).
* * *
Wars with Pakistan
Hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows at the right time and place.
-- Gen. Ayub Khan of Pakistan (1965)
May 27, 1999
The summer vacation was coming to an end and the Cricket World Cup was still on. Breaking all this was the news from India's borders with Pakistan. Pakistan had shot down two IAF fighter jets and taken a flight captain as a prisoner of war. A new war had begun.
Since the brutal partition in August 1947, India and Pakistan had fought three wars. After the period of relative peace for about 28 years, a new war beckoned Indian soldiers.
Most of the Indo-Pak disputes centered around Kashmir. When the nation was partitioned, India's last Viceroy Lord Mountbatten allegedly ensured that there would be road access to Kashmir from both India and Pakistan, by providing a chunk of the district of Gurdaspur in Punjab to India (only road access to the Kashmir valley from the rest of India). Although the claim is unproven, it makes sense as the Viceroy wanted to ensure the economic survival of the state as wel
l as provide it a choice between India and Pakistan. Most of the state of Kashmir was taken over by India, and since then, Pakistan has been eyeing the Indian part of Kashmir.
1948 War
The first war with Pakistan was over Kashmir. As we saw in Chapter 1, Pakistan wanted to annex Kashmir and set off a year-long war with India. At the end of it, both armies were exhausted, and the cease-fire line (called the Line of Control, or LoC) at the end of the war is used to this day as the unofficial border in Kashmir.
In August 1951, over the objections of the UN, India conducted polls to elect a Constituent Assembly for Jammu & Kashmir. The Constituent Assembly created a new Constitution for Kashmir and also ratified the accession of the state to India. Since then India has considered the state people's verdict as the official proof for the accession’s legitimacy. Pakistan didn't accept this.
1965 War
In 1965, a second war started after Pakistan started patrolling in India's territorial claims in the Great Rann of Kutch (in Gujarat and 1,000 kilometers away from Kashmir). The Great Rann (Rann means desert in Sanskrit) is among the world's largest salt marshes and is practically barren. India had started controlling the territory in 1956. As Pakistan started patrolling in India's claims in the first week of April 1965, tensions started. In June, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson brokered a peace deal that gave Pakistan 350 square miles of the Rann.
Buoyed by the success of this venture and emboldened by the defeat of India in the 1962 Sino-Indian war, General Ayub Khan of Pakistan started Operation Gibraltar that sent the Pakistan army to infiltrate Jammu & Kashmir and foment extremists there. Nehru was already dead and the General thought it was time to test India's strength under the new leader. Also, the most famous political leader in Kashmir - Sheikh Abdullah - had just visited Pakistan, and it was alleged that he had talked about the growing unrest in the valley.
On August 5, 1965, days before the 18th independence celebrations of both the nations, between 26,000 and 33,000 Pakistani soldiers entered Kashmir. They hoped to get the local populace excited and get them to rise against India.
The local population, instead of rising in revolution as Pakistan expected, tipped off the Indian Army [the same happened in each war]. In the next month, both nations fiercely fought, with India taking over 1,800sq km of fertile Pakistani territory in Punjab and Kashmir and Pakistan taking over 550sq km of desert in Gujarat and Rajasthan. India lost 3,000 soldiers and Pakistan 3,800. A daring commando mission by Pakistan failed miserably with most of the commandos ending up as prisoners of war.
While India held advantage over land, Pakistan had a better success in the air, with its US-bought aircraft. The Indian Air Force was forced to keep several aircrafts in the east front to keep a possible Chinese attack at bay and therefore was not able to sufficiently hit back Pakistan's Air Force. The Indian Navy was also not very successful with the sole aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, locked up in Bombay harbor fearing submarine attacks and the Pakistan Navy raiding the coastal town of Dwarka.
Both nations claimed victory, but felt that they didn't have enough munitions to go on. Pakistan was on the brink of defeat on land, having also lost more territory, and thus was eager for a ceasefire. India had already fought a war with China just three years before this and feared a possible attack from the Red army. It was also weakened by massive inflation and poor economic conditions. Moreover, its navy and air force were both exposed to much superior weapons. Thus, India was ready for ceasefire too. Both nations were pressured by the US and the USSR to end their business.
India and Pakistan ceased fire on September 23, and both nations met in Tashkent in the USSR then (currently a part of Uzbekistan) in January 1966. On the last day of the conference, the Indian Prime Minister mysteriously died of a heart attack. Both nations went to the pre-war borders.
1971 War
This was among the shortest decisive wars among major nations in history. It led to the creation of Bangladesh out of East Pakistan.
In 1947, Pakistan was created with two halves - one to the west and another to the east of India. The western half dominated by the Punjabis held most of the power while the eastern half of Bengalis, had little say in the matters of the nation.
Unlike the western half, the eastern half had a lot of Hindus. This was because Mahatma Gandhi's peacemaking role in Bengal at the time of partition led to reduced population exchange between West and East Bengal. Many Muslims continued to live in West Bengal, and many Hindus continued to live in East Bengal.
In November 1970, one of the worst cyclones in recorded history - Cyclone Bhola - hit Bengal. Pakistan didn't respond enough to the plight of the Bengalis, and thus the Bengali-led Awami league swept to power in the national elections of December 1970. It was a shock for everyone in West Pakistan. They didn't believe that the Bengalis would rule over them.
General Yahya Khan - then-President of Pakistan - suspected the Hindus of helping the Bengalis win and started a brutal campaign codenamed Operation Searchlight on March 25, 1971. Lt. General Tikka Khan (nicknamed the butcher of Bengal) was assigned the task of getting rid of Hindus and began a massive pogrom that resulted in over ten million Hindus fleeing to India. Nearly three million Bengalis (Hindus and Muslims) died during the few months of pogrom, although Pakistani reports quoted a much lower number.
On March 26, Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the Awami League, declared independence of Bangladesh. The Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, had also consolidated political power by then and was willing to take a more active action in the crisis. On March 27, Indira put her weight behind the people of East Pakistan and pledged to support their cause for independence. India trained armed rebels under the banner of the Mukti Bahini.
Operation Chenghiz Khan
West Pakistan was filled with the slogan Crush India. Inspired by Israel's daring strike in 1967, Pakistan flew 50 planes to India in a pre-emptive strike focused on neutralizing India's defense infrastructure by attacking 11 airfields in north India. The date was set as December 3, 1971. It was on a Friday evening when IAF controls were changing hands.
This attack was caught by surprise and was forced to cover quickly cover up key assets like the Taj Mahal.
However, Pakistan was no Israel and India was no Egypt. Like his predecessors, Yahya Khan underestimated India and believed that India would quickly give in. The Operation Chengiz Khan, named in a vain attempt to add luck to the campaign, ended in a massive failure. While many of the Indian airfields were damaged, they were also repaired very quickly. However, Pakistan lost over 50 aircraft and that was terribly damaging to its fledgling military.
The same day, both nations declared war. The war involved all three branches of the military. The Indian navy attacked Karachi under Operation Trident on December 4, while on December 9 the Pakistani submarine PNS Hangor sank INS Khukri that resulted in close to 200 Indian casualties. Eventually, the Pakistani Navy suffered heavy defeats, with more than a third of the force destroyed. On land, India inflicted huge losses too with a 3:1 casualty rate.
Meanwhile, US President Nixon built a three-way alliance (US-Pak-China) against India and the USSR and gave both political and military help to Pakistan. He even asked Iran and Jordan to attack India in an air battle. The US sent its navy under Task Force 74, but the fleet was actively trailed by Russian nuclear submarines and frigates preventing it from getting close to India. Nixon also asked China to attack, but the Chinese felt that the Indian army was more prepared after the surprise assault of 1962 and didn't want to risk troops. Thus, Pakistan faced a humiliating defeat despite being a US ally.
On December 16, Pakistan surrendered. India had captured 90,000 prisoners of war and 14,000 square kilometers of Pakistani territory. Lt. General Jagjit Singh Arora accepted the Pakistani surrender in the east. Bangladesh won its independence.
In June 1972, India and Pakistan met in the hill station of Shimla to discuss the peace terms. Although India won the war, it didn't push the new civi
lian government under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. India wanted the Pakistani army to stay off the government and thus didn't want to weaken Bhutto by imposing harsh terms. Instead of settling the Kashmir issue for good, it was left unresolved. Indira missed the game in 1972.
Operation Meghdoot of 1984
The Simla agreement brought peace for awhile. However, in the agreement, there was confusion about the ownership of a glacier in northern Kashmir. The glacier named Siachen was claimed by both the nations, and to prove their claims, both sent mountaineering expeditions. In 1984, Pakistan allowed a Japanese expedition to climb the glacier. The glacier was closer to India's borders with China, and thus India was quite sensitive to this report.
At army headquarters in Rawalpindi, Pakistani generals decided they had better stake a claim to Siachen before India did. Islamabad then committed an intelligence blunder, according to a now retired Pakistani army colonel. "They ordered Arctic-weather gear from a London outfitters who also supplied the Indians," says the colonel. "Once the Indians got wind of it, they ordered 300 outfits—twice as many as we had—and rushed their men up to Siachen." When the Pakistanis hiked up to the glacier in 1984, they found that a 300-man Indian battalion was already there, dug into the highest mountaintops.
-- TIME (Jul 4, 2005)
On April 13, 1984, just four days before Pakistan was planning its operation, India sent 300 troops atop this glacier and captured over 2,300sq kilometers of territory. It was a major victory for India, but the region still remains a battlezone. It is the world's highest and coldest battlezone, claiming more deaths by frostbites than bullets.
From Tryst to Tendulkar: The History of Independent India Page 11
