05-02-2007, 10:21 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Manekshaw got glory, but Jacob's bluff on Niazi pulled it off </b>
Udayan Namboodiri | New Delhi
The Daily Pioneer
http://www.dailypioneer.com
2007/05/02
On December 16, 1971, more than 30,000 Pakistani troops faced just 3,000 Indians at the gates of Dhaka. Yet, by mid-afternoon, General AK Niazi, the Pakistani commander-in-chief in the east, decided to surrender without firing a shot.
The reason for this supreme show of cowardice? An equally supreme piece of bluff pulled on him earlier in the day by Major General JFR Jacob, the top staff officer of India's Eastern Command chief, Lieutenant-General Jasjit Singh Aurora.
Well, history is often made by the outrageous, not those who stick to form. This week, speaking to Karan Thapar in India Tonight, a talk show on CNBC TV-18 channel, Maj Gen Jacob, a World War II veteran who retired as GOC-in-C, Eastern Command, and went on to serve as Governor of Punjab and Goa, broke his silence after 35 long years on what helped India clinch its first-ever decisive military victory.
Gen Jacob describes in vivid detail how he drove through the streets of Dhaka with a Pakistani brigadier as fighting raged between the Mukti Bahini and Pakistani troops on the streets. He carried with him a copy of a surrender document which he had proposed to his Army Chief, General (later Field Marshall) Sam Manekshaw (but never got it wetted) and presented it before Niazi.
Till that moment, the Pakistanis were expecting a cease-fire proposal under United Nations' aegis. They were hoping to keep Dhaka and broker an honourable sharing of powers with the Mukti Bahini, which would ring the curtains down on the nine-month-old civil war and India would have withdrawn without any gains.
But what Gen Jacob slapped him with was a demand for unconditional surrender. A surprised Niazi tried to bargain, but fell for Jacob's assurance that it was not, after all, as unconditional as he thought. The Indian Government was willing to guarantee the lives of all Pakistanis in the event of his accepting it. Now, that meant a lot to the Pakistanis as, outside, their former countrymen were baying for their blood.
Niazi wanted time to consider. Jacob gave him half-an-hour. "I walked out of the room and said to myself, 'God, he has 30,000 troops and we have just 3,000. (Lt Gen) Aurora is about to land, what if he says no?" But, after 30 minutes, Niazi seemed a broken man. "Three times I asked him, but he did not answer. Then I held up the document and said 'I take it as acceptance'." The wily general recalls that Niazi was in tears at that time.
After the war, Niazi faced a commission - the Hamidoor Rehman Commission - and was grilled on why he allowed 3,000 Indians to walk over him when he had ten times as many soldiers. To that, Niazi said: "I was forced to do it because Gen Jacob blackmailed me with a massacre".
The interview was pegged on a recent Government decision to hand over a cheque for Rs 1.6 crore in back wages to the ailing Field Marshall Manekshaw. To Gen Jacob this was belated justice because the soldier who brought so much honour to India retired on a salary of just Rs 1,300 - just Rs 100 more than what the Army Chief of the time got.
Jacob recalls that Manekshaw had been disappointed that Indira Gandhi did not make him Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission. Instead, she agreed to make him an envoy to one of the Commonwealth countries.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Udayan Namboodiri | New Delhi
The Daily Pioneer
http://www.dailypioneer.com
2007/05/02
On December 16, 1971, more than 30,000 Pakistani troops faced just 3,000 Indians at the gates of Dhaka. Yet, by mid-afternoon, General AK Niazi, the Pakistani commander-in-chief in the east, decided to surrender without firing a shot.
The reason for this supreme show of cowardice? An equally supreme piece of bluff pulled on him earlier in the day by Major General JFR Jacob, the top staff officer of India's Eastern Command chief, Lieutenant-General Jasjit Singh Aurora.
Well, history is often made by the outrageous, not those who stick to form. This week, speaking to Karan Thapar in India Tonight, a talk show on CNBC TV-18 channel, Maj Gen Jacob, a World War II veteran who retired as GOC-in-C, Eastern Command, and went on to serve as Governor of Punjab and Goa, broke his silence after 35 long years on what helped India clinch its first-ever decisive military victory.
Gen Jacob describes in vivid detail how he drove through the streets of Dhaka with a Pakistani brigadier as fighting raged between the Mukti Bahini and Pakistani troops on the streets. He carried with him a copy of a surrender document which he had proposed to his Army Chief, General (later Field Marshall) Sam Manekshaw (but never got it wetted) and presented it before Niazi.
Till that moment, the Pakistanis were expecting a cease-fire proposal under United Nations' aegis. They were hoping to keep Dhaka and broker an honourable sharing of powers with the Mukti Bahini, which would ring the curtains down on the nine-month-old civil war and India would have withdrawn without any gains.
But what Gen Jacob slapped him with was a demand for unconditional surrender. A surprised Niazi tried to bargain, but fell for Jacob's assurance that it was not, after all, as unconditional as he thought. The Indian Government was willing to guarantee the lives of all Pakistanis in the event of his accepting it. Now, that meant a lot to the Pakistanis as, outside, their former countrymen were baying for their blood.
Niazi wanted time to consider. Jacob gave him half-an-hour. "I walked out of the room and said to myself, 'God, he has 30,000 troops and we have just 3,000. (Lt Gen) Aurora is about to land, what if he says no?" But, after 30 minutes, Niazi seemed a broken man. "Three times I asked him, but he did not answer. Then I held up the document and said 'I take it as acceptance'." The wily general recalls that Niazi was in tears at that time.
After the war, Niazi faced a commission - the Hamidoor Rehman Commission - and was grilled on why he allowed 3,000 Indians to walk over him when he had ten times as many soldiers. To that, Niazi said: "I was forced to do it because Gen Jacob blackmailed me with a massacre".
The interview was pegged on a recent Government decision to hand over a cheque for Rs 1.6 crore in back wages to the ailing Field Marshall Manekshaw. To Gen Jacob this was belated justice because the soldier who brought so much honour to India retired on a salary of just Rs 1,300 - just Rs 100 more than what the Army Chief of the time got.
Jacob recalls that Manekshaw had been disappointed that Indira Gandhi did not make him Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission. Instead, she agreed to make him an envoy to one of the Commonwealth countries.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->