War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh [Paperback]

Richard Sisson (Author), Leo E. Rose (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 13, 1991

A decade after the 1971 wars in South Asia, the principal decisionmakers were still uncertain why wars so clearly unwanted had occurred. The authors reconstruct the complex decisionmaking process attending the break-up of Pakistan and the subsequent war between India and Pakistan. Much of their data derive from interviews conducted with principal players in each of the countries immediately involved-Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh-including Indira Gandhi and leaders of the Awami League in Bangladesh.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

A political study set in a framework of oral history, this book outlines the issues behind the 1971 secession of East Pakistan, India's two-front war with West Pakistan, and the impact of superpower foreign policy in the region. The authors present the interplay of duplicity, distrust, rigidity, and self-interest of the major leaders of this drama: General Yahya, President and Chief of the Martial Law Administration in Pakistan; Mujibar Rahman, leader of East Pakistan's Awami League; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, leader of West Pakistan's People's Party; and Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India. With clarity, the authors detail Bhutto's aggressive thirst for power, Rahman's woolly-headed intransigence, Yahya's military bias, and Gandhi's need to expel millions of refugees. In an area whose recent political history is so fraught with prejudice, this work superbly focuses on the issues.
- John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ . , Mt. Pleasant
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (August 13, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520076656
• ISBN-13: 978-0520076655
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #777,818 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > History > Asia > Bangladesh

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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unbiased, well-researched accurate account, May 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh (Paperback)

The authors provide a well-balanced, unbiased historical account of the accounts leading to the war of 1971. The book is very well researched with numerous notes on various sources of information.

The book describes the genesis of the problems in East Pakistan, beginning with the partition of India and the formation of Pakistan's two wings. Carefully collected economic data demonstrates the lop-sided distribution of wealth in Pakistan with more government spending and foreign aid going to the West than to the East, despite the latter having a greater population and suffering from severe natural disasters. Also cited are the differences between East and West Pakistan over confronting India over Kashmir. The East did not share a penchant for confronting India over Kashmir - a territory that lay over a 1000 miles away. There were more pressing problems at home then (circumstances that are eerily similar to those today in Pakistan!).

These differences came to a height in a war fought over Kashmir in 1965 (instigated upon Bhutto's advice to Ayub Khan) when East Pakistan was left virtually undefended against any potential Indian military advances. This further contributed to its sense of insecurity.

The politicians of West Pakistan, most notably Z. A. Bhutto and Yahya Khan, are blamed unambiguously for their role in canceling a session of the first democratically elected national assembly in Pakistan that precipitated in a crisis in March 1971. India's role in contributing to the crisis until March 1971 was minimal, if any, but was to assume greater importance in the months to follow. The failure of all political processes to placate the demands of Z. A. Bhutto led to the suspension of the National Assembly, and subsequent events.

However, once the crisis resulted in millions of refugees flowing into India that threatened to upset the delicate demographic balance in the affected states, the problem also became one of India's. The authors fault Indira Gandhi for not trying harder to achieve a political settlement of the problem. It is highly unlikely that India could have mediated a problem between West and East Pakistan. After Indira Gandhi concluded that the problem could not be resolved politically by Pakistan's leaders, India began to play an increasingly larger political-military role, beginning in the summer of 1971 and concluding with a lightning military campaign in December, 1971.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Balanced and informative, May 3, 2000

By 

A. Khaishgi "assadk" (Lakewood, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh (Paperback)

Sisson and Rose present a highly informative account of the events leading to the independence of Bangladesh. As a Pakistani, it proved depressing reading as one sees how events unfolded in what would almost be a comedy of errors had the human cost not been so high. The actions of key protaganists leave one disgusted at their short-sightedness and venality. Much as we may like to think that it was 'all India's fault', the authors make it quite clear that while India acted to take full opportunity of the chances it had, its role in precipitating the Crisis was negligible (if at all). Similarly, while Yahya Khan and the Army must take the blame for the ultimate decision of the Army action, the behaviour of the prominent Pakistani political leaders, especially Bhutto (who, from the events narrated in the book, seems to come away with the most blame), beggars belief. A must read for anyone interested in the events of 1971 free of the baggage that subcontinental writers bring to the subject.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A case study in academic sterileness, October 27, 2010

By 

Paul Seaman (Concord, CA (SF Bay Area)) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh (Paperback)

This "unbiased," thoroughly researched account, has all the feel of hermetically-sealed academia. While reading "War and Secession" I kept trying to account for the authors' strangely sterile analysis of one of the most outrageous and shameful unravelling of the democratic processes in recent history. I can only assume that neither of the authors spent much time in Pakistan or Bangladesh previous to their research trips for interview purposes. Their sometimes painfully detailed account is limited to the bureaucratic and military chambers of power and is curiously drained of the flesh and blood of the real historic situation. Academic "objectivity" actually becomes less objective by not adequately indicating the real consequences of the dry political struggles. This becomes especially evident halfway through the book when, astoundingly, after spending a long chapter detailing final negotiations, the skip ENTIRELY any details of what the infamous military crackdown of March 25, 1971 actually entailed, in terms of the brutal extermination of tens of thousands of Bengali civilians.

The authors' subtle anti-Indian bias and curious defensiveness of Nixon-Kissinger becomes more apparent in the last third of the book. I was expecting a case study in conflict resolution (or some such thing), but kept wondering why they wrote this book. The final "Interpretations," when I finally got to it, was a disappointment. It offered no new insights or thought-provoking analysis, or, most pointedly, suggestions for how to avoid, or more constructively intevene in, such conflicts in the future.

This is definitely NOT a book for the general reader, as the authors not only write in a dry, typically old-fashioned academic style, but seem to assume readers' familiarity with the situation. For example, they switch from referring to the capital of Pakistan as "Rawalpindi" to "Islamabad" without explanation, and similarly offer the first use of the term "Bangladesh" without quotes or context.

There are also a few minor factual errors that don't change the book's value for its detailed account or the overall import of the history it describes, but do make me wonder why they didn't use a fact-checker (standard procedure, I thought, for a major scholarly work). For example, they describe the "major" cyclone of "October" 1970, which in fact took place on November 12-13; and then procede to give no indication of the singular, historic nature of this cyclone, which killed at least 250,000 people in the Ganges Delta OVERNIGHT.

Overall, this book provides some valuable "primary source" information for specialists, with insights into why the war happened, but little acknowledgement of its probable inevitability, given the arbitrary divisions of post-British Partition. Regarding the Pakistan Army, Shuja Nawaz's Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within (Oxford Pakistan Paperbacks) (2008) is a far better resource. Alas, the definitive book about the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence has yet to be written.