jcc india formatted · east pakistan is the other half of west pakistan, separated only by the...

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JCC:EastPakistanCrisisIndianCabinet

Chair:PrateekSwainCrisisDirector:AlexFager

JCC: East Pakistan Crisis – India PMUNC 2016

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Contents

Letter from the Chair…….………………………...……………………...…..3 Introduction………..…….………………………...……………………...…..5

The Situation in the Indian Subcontinent……............……………..……..……7

Setting the Stage…...………………………..……………………….……….…………7 A Brief History of Modern India..…………..……………………….……….…………9 Indo-Pakistani Relations………...…………..………………...….….……….………...10 Domestic Affairs………………………………………………………………….…...12 Current Situation……………………………………….……………………………...13

Committee Positions………..…….………………………...………………..16


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Letter from the Chair

Dear Delegates,

Namaste! I welcome you to the magnum opus of this year’s PMUNC, The JCC: East

Pakistan Crisis. My name is Prateek Swain and I will be your chair for the India committee.

First, I’ll introduce myself; I will be starting my sophomore year at Princeton and will be

majoring in Economics or Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy (depending on my

mood when I have to declare) with a certificate in computer science. I have been debating as

well as participating/chairing MUNs since my sophomore year of high school, and have

carried on with these endeavors in college.

Last year I was the Director for the Korean Reunification Committee at PMUNC, so

I’m naturally extremely excited to be chairing this committee and have full faith that it will

be a great experience for both you and me. This is certainly not my first crisis, but perhaps

the one closest to my heart. Last semester, I took one of those eye opening classes at

Princeton on Human Rights with Rebecca (Chair of the Pakistan committee) which set the

foundation for this JCC to come into existence. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh together

house more than 1.5 billon of our Earth’s population, but their history, and nuances of their

relationships isn’t common knowledge, and at best a mention in history textbooks. This is

what makes us believe it would be a great learning experience for all of you, if not a lot of

fun. While discussing this topic, I look forward to some extremely engaging and often

contentious debate between all delegates to recreate history, written in our words.

For the committee, it’s 1971 and India’s an extremely new democracy which has

been engaged in a passive power struggle in the South Asian territory, with no clear victors


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that have emerged yet. It’s also licking its relatively fresh wounds from the 1965 war. I urge

you all to familiarize yourselves with the diplomatic and geo-political relations of India

during this period to get better clarity on the setting of the committee (hint: Nixon isn’t our

biggest fan). In this committee, I hope to be able to execute a well-defined and strategic path

of action which helps India emerge as the victorious force of this territory and also get

international recognition as a strong, smart and progressive force: the next superpower. A

balance between diplomatic action and military or covert action must be maintained, and our

goal of long term peace for this region must be achieved, with the added edge of history

remembering us as having the upper hand.

As for the committee itself, I find myself in the shoes of the Iron lady of India:

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. And you all will be my cabinet of trusted advisors with

portfolio powers spanning from government, military, to espionage: all the ingredients

required to achieve our committee’s objectives. I love to see ingenious solutions and

directives. Don’t shy away from being creative in your personal directives, as long as you

don’t lose touch with reality. I hope this committee has a strong balance between structured

debate and crisis management, and provides you all with a novel experience. Please feel free

to contact me at [email protected] with any questions, or to just chat! I look forward

to meeting you all in November, and hope the stars are ever in your favor. Jai Hind!

Regards,

Prateek Swain


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Introduction

It’s 1971. Led Zeppelin’s about to release their best album, microprocessors are fast catching

on, John Lennon is still alive, and oh! Revolution is in the air comrades. India’s got its fair

share of problems, but our pesky neighbors in the west have trouble brewing in their

backyard.

East Pakistan, the better half of Pakistan, has been causing trouble for the leaders sitting

in Islamabad with secessionist ideas that have been floating around in Dacca and other parts

of their territory. East & West Pakistan are the much-touted two-state solution1 founded on

the basis that a country with a unified religion will be more stable. Its creation led to much

bloodshed and a messy partition of the glorious landmass of what was once a unified India.

India’s a diverse country with various exotic spices to excite your olfactory senses, but

you and I only smell one thing: opportunity. This is a golden chance to divide Pakistan to

make our enemies weaker, establish us as the leaders of the South Asian region and help

democracy in the process.

However, we have a long and treacherous path ahead of us. We’re still licking our

wounds from our defeat to China in our first war as an independent country2. Furthermore,

United States of America under the (gloriously disastrous) rule of Nixon have sided

themselves firmly with that despot Yayha Khan of Pakistan3. Thus a direct confrontation

1 O' Brien, Connor Cruise. "Holy War Against India." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 1 Aug. 1988.

Web. 15 Sept. 2016. 2 Lidarev, Ivan. "History's Hostage: China, India and the War of 1962." The Diplomat. The Diplomat, 21 Aug. 2012. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. 3 Bass, Gary Jonathan. "The Tilt." The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, n.d. 12. Print


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with Pakistan provoked by us may lead to quick escalation and unpleasant scenarios I do not

yet wish to imagine.

Further, a partition could again lead to a massive influx of refugees to India and

instability in the already disturbed region of West Bengal4. And since India is a land of so

many cultures, helping a country divide on the basis of different cultures could massively

backfire on us. We won’t be currying favor with the international community either if we

are caught openly as playing troublemaker.

But we cannot ignore the pleas and protests of our fellow men who so desperately crave

to liberate themselves from such a draconian nation’s constraints. While we risk looking like

the villains nosing for selfish reasons (which granted, do exist), I believe we must act for a

higher cause. It is our moral obligation and our duty to help them achieve it. India stands for

the principles of human rights, freedom and democracy, the very antithesis of the Pakistani

administration5. And to ensure our principles and values triumph will be the best damn

victory we will ever achieve.

4 Bass, Gary Jonathan. "The Inferno Next Door." The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, n.d. 91. Print 5 Sharlach, Lisa (2000). "Rape as Genocide: Bangladesh, the Former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda". New Political Science. 1 (22): 89–102. doi:10.1080/713687893


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The Situation in the Indian Subcontinent

Setting the Stage

General Yahya Khan, the magnificently (incompetent) dictator of Pakistan, recently

announced he would be stepping down. Thus Pakistan, in a rare and surprising win for the

suffrage supporters, held an open and fair election. There was one problem though which

Yahya, and the main front-runner political heavyweight of West Pakistan Zulfikar Ali

Bhutto, did not anticipate: the elections were won by a Bengali activist sitting thousands of

miles away from them in East Pakistan, Mujibur Rahman6.

East Pakistan is the other half of West Pakistan, separated only by the landmass of India.

The last act of British rule left the subcontinent in shambles after an extremely messy

partition of our country on the basis of religion that has had severe ramifications to this day.

India and Pakistan do not enjoy the warmest bilateral relations with each other.7 India,

under the Congress Party (popular Indian Party fighting for Independence) leader and future

Prime Minsiter Jawahar Lal Nehru pleaded with Viceroy Mountbatten (the British Head of

Colonial India) and other Imperial Officials to not divide the country upon Independence.

However, on the insistence of Muhammed Ali Jinhah, the founder of Pakistan and leader of

All-India Muslim League, the country went through a partition8 right before it tasted

Independence. This partition was based on the underlying principle of religion, with India

(called Hindustan in Hindi) being the land of Hindus and East and West Pakistan being the

6 Owen Bennett-Jones (2003). Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. Yale University Press. pp. 146–180. 7 Hashim, Asad. "Timeline: India-Pakistan Relations." Al Jazeera English. N.p., 27 May 2014. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. 8 Mahajan, Sucheta. Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. Print.


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country of Muslims. The idea was that countries with a unifying religion would be inherently

more stable9 (if only they knew what it looks like today)

On India’s west, bordering the states of Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan and

Gujarat is West Pakistan. And to India’s east, bordering West Bengal, is East Pakistan. While

the religion most prolifically practiced in East Pakistan is Islam, the population shares more

in common with their counterparts in West Bengal than their countrymen in West Pakistan.

They speak the same regional dialect Bengali, and have a plethora of cultural similarities

while West Pakistan has various subsets of people and speak Urdu. East Pakistan also had a

Hindu minority unlike in the West Pakistan region.

But why does this pose a problem? Because East Pakistan never wanted to exist under

the shadow of West Pakistan. The Bengalis there always wanted to secede, and autonomy

was their top priority10. The government in the west had long neglected them and their

differences were more than enough reason to provide weight to their independence

argument. However, USA was firmly for an undivided Pakistan. Here’s where the plot

thickens: Mujibur Rahman, the populist leader of East Pakistan and his Party Awami league

won 141 seats in the elections, losing only 2 in the East. This makes Mujibur Rahman set to

become the Prime Minister of all of Pakistan. Rumors are afoot that he wants to use his

current position to secede and create an independent “desh” (Country), which obviously

does not sit well with the western Pakistan population or align with the country’s

aspirations11.

9 O' Brien, Connor Cruise. "Holy War Against India." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 1 Aug. 1988. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. 10 Cordera, Sonia. "India's Response to the 1971 East Pakistan Crisis: Hidden and Open Reasons for Intervention." Journal of Genocide Research 17.1 (2014): 48. Web. 11 Owen Bennett-Jones (2003). Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. Yale University Press. pp. 146–180.


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Why does this help us? Because the geo-political power struggle in South Asia has been

largely missing a single dominating power due to a lack of precedence of might by Pakistan

or India. The current situation is ripe for exploitation12. Creation of Pakistan had always been

considered the worst mistake of the British (and believe me they have a huge list of mistakes)

by us Indians and helping East Pakistan secede would be the perfect stage to prove how

Pakistan’s “two state” solution is fundamentally flawed, weaken our biggest threat to

national security, and help us emerge as the victor of this geo-political struggle: a perfect

trifecta.

However, history has proven that nothing is truer than the proverb ‘no pain no gain’.

Yahya and Pakistan won’t let such ideas of carving up their country float around without

repercussions, and India could be caught in the crossfire of this independence struggle.

India’s partition in 1947 rendered millions of families homeless, which led to mass migration

movements, uprooting households that had existed for centuries.13 It also led to both

Pakistan and India being forced to accommodate these refugees when they weren’t capable

of supporting them. Not to forget the thousands who lost their lives in the bloody religion

based riots that erupted in various regions of both countries14. Another Independence

movement in its neighborhood could prove costly for us, something we wish to dearly avoid.

A Brief History of Modern India

Following our nation’s liberation from British colonial rule and the great Gandhi’s

efforts and the movement he spawned, the subcontinent was wracked by one of the most

gruesome events in our history. The Partition of India, by the time it reached its conclusion

in 1948, had claimed some 2 million casualties with over 15 million uprooted from their

12 Cordera, Sonia. "India's Response to the 1971 East Pakistan Crisis: Hidden and Open Reasons for Intervention." Journal of Genocide Research 17.1 (2014): 45-62. Web. 13 Dalrymple, William. "The Great Divide." The New Yorker. Condé Nast, 22 June 2015. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. 14 Ibid.


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homes and thrust into perilous conditions at the hands of sectarian violence.15 The plan that

Lord Francis Mountbatten, then Governor-General of India, drew up for the partition set

forth the following proposals;16

• That the Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim populations of Punjab and Bengal would vote in

referenda within each group; if any wanted partition, then India would be partitioned

into Hindu and Muslim states

• The provinces of Sind and Baluchistan would independently decide their own status

• India would gain its independence by 15 August 1947

• Bengali independence was taken off the table

It is in large part due to the last provision of this plan that we find ourselves in this current

predicament. Following the disastrous partition, however, we had established our glorious state, free

from the yoke of colonial rule and free to chart our own course. Although we have only discussed

our nation until 1947, you will soon see that much of our history for the purposes of our debate will

primarily be dictated by relations with our neighbors to the west.

Indo-Pakistani Relations

Nearly immediately after the declaration of independence war with Pakistan broke

out over the disputed region of the formerly princely states of Jammu and Kashmir;

following a formal declaration of war on 22 October 1947, Indian and Pakistani forces

fought over the disputed Kashmir Valley.17 Initially sparked by tribesmen from Waziristan

and the North-West Frontier armed by the Pakistani government, incursions into Jammu

and Kashmir provoked a military response by the Nehru government.18 The conflict raged

15 Ibid. 16 “Mountbatten Plan of 3 June, 1947,” accessed from: http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/51922/15/15_chapter%208.pdf 17 Schoefield, Victoria. “Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War.” I.B. Tauris, London, 2003. 18 Ibid.


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until 1 January, 1949, when a ceasefire brokered by the newly-established United Nations

went into effect. The conflict largely ended in a stalemate, with Pakistan gaining some

territories including Azad Kashmir, but with the Republic of India retaining the Kashmir

Valley, Jammu, and Ladakh.19

Following the cease-fire, relations stabilized for a period of time, peppered of course

by border skirmishes and the like. Indeed, instability continued to plague the Pakistani

nation, but the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir did not boil over until the summer of

1965. In what has come to be known as “Operation Gibraltar,” Pakistan began launching

clandestine military incursions into Indian-Held Kashmir (IHK) with the hopes of sparking

an insurgency within Jammu and Ladakh.20 However, this proved to be quite the ill-advised

misadventure on behalf of the Pakistani forces. On 5 August 1965, between 20-30,000

Pakistani soldiers masquerading as Kashmiri locals breached the Line of Control dividing

Azad Kashmir with IHK;21 mobilizing rapidly our armies retaliated. However, our aerial

might coupled with our generals’ strategic prowess successfully held the Pakistani offensive

at bay. Finally, a ceasefire was reached on 23 September 1965, with both the United States

and the USSR pressuring our nation as well as Pakistan to halt hostilities. Or, indeed, it could

have been that the Pakistani forces found themselves well-outnumbered “nearly 5:1” by our

far-superior air force.22 The diagram below shows the current (1965) boundaries of the Line

of Control separating Azad Kashmir and IHK.

19 Ibid. 20 Hali, S. M. (R), SI(M). "Operation Gibraltar-an Unmitigated Disaster?" Defence Journal 15, no. 1 (Aug, 2011): 1-49. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid.


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The Line of Control (ca. 1965)23

Domestic Affairs

Currently, the Prime Minister of India, the Honorable Mrs. Indira Gandhi, of the

Indian National Congress Party is leading our nation.24 Daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira

became a member of Lal Bansur Shashtri’s cabinet in 1964 following her father’s death.25

Running on a platform of “Garibi Hatao,” (or Eradicating Poverty), the Congress Party

sought to bolster a weak showing in the polls by appealing to a broader swath of the

population with social programs. Indeed, the program proved to be quite an effective

mechanism for direct access to local and rural communities, bypassing the mire of caste

politics in many of India’s agrarian and underdeveloped states.26

23 http://www.dostpakistan.pk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/line_of_control.jpg 24 Frank, Katherine. Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi. Houghton-Mifflin, 2002. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid.


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However, since partition many issues have plagued India. Food shortages caused by

the refugee crisis after partition led to significant strain on our then-nascent economy.

Following an essentially forced liberalization of the rupee at the insistence of foreign aid

organizations such as the World Bank, the GDP per capita grew nearly 35% in the 1960’s.27

In addition, investments in industries such as manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation

have all proven to be valuable for our nation’s economic well-being. Following the 1965 war,

however, defense expenditures made up nearly 25% of total government spending.28

Current Situation

While it’s a great opportunity to raise a toast to Pakistan’s trouble, we shouldn’t be

counting our chickens before they hatch. The state of West Bengal (that borders East

Pakistan) has been facing a lot of Marxist and Maoist insurgency in recent times. Maoist

extremists called Naxalites (named after a village in West Bengal called Naxalbari)29 have

been wreaking havoc, painting the entire eastern coast as red as they can. Secessionist

movements in their neighborhood could spell trouble for our administration and give the

naxalites some dangerous ideas. And while it is logically extremely lucrative to support East

Pakistan to finally put Pakistan’s two-state theory to bed and prove a point, it can put us in a

very precarious situation.

Furthermore, East Pakistan is a land of 67 million people. When India was partitioned, it

led to the uprooting of millions of families and large migration movements, not to forget

bloody riots in which millions were massacred and butchered mercilessly. Tensions from the

religion-based riots are still felt to date. History tends to repeat itself, and such a repeat

27 Ibid. 28 Hali, “Operation Gibraltar” 29 Appa, G. (1970). The naxalites. New Left Review, 0(61), 34.


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situation won’t be pretty. India is certainly not in a position right not to accept many

refugees as we struggle to provide enough for our current denizens.

While it’s too early in history to pronounce Nixon and Kissinger as the villains who

occupied the halls of power in the West, they are the men in charge of United States of

America. And it’s no secret that Nixon is an admirer of General Yahya Khan (and they say

Watergate couldn’t be predicted). Nixon and Kissinger, according to many sources, have

been using Pakistan for backroom dealing with China30 and thus that puts them in a position

where they would be more inclined to support Pakistan. This puts India in a risky position.

However, it still is 1971, and the Cold War is alive and well. An enemy of an enemy is a

friend, and thus there is solace to be found in the halls of the Kremlin. The USSR is a

superpower more or less on par with America and this is your chance to rewrite history in a

different way.

While the more comfortable and safer route is to support this movement from the

shadows and pull the strings without any direct involvement as logic would dictate, this

current situation also provides an opportunity to rebalance the power equation of the region.

This could also mean direct confrontation with Pakistan in the least, and perhaps World War

III at worst with USA, USSR and other countries getting involved. Such a risky situation

must be carefully analyzed and steps taken must be thought out carefully with a strategy in

place.

It would be foolish to not exploit the current situation to help East Pakistan to secede.

And dividing Pakistan could also potentially be an opportunity to make East Pakistan a

strong ally, or maybe even annex both halves of Pakistan and fulfill a lifelong dream of

having a United India, and reverse an irreversible mistake made by colonizers. But it would

30 Bass, Gary Jonathan. "Don’t Squeeze Yahya" The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, n.d. 102-104. Print.


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also be foolish to think our immediate neighbors from the Orient and less than friendly

hegemonies in the West would take that lying down.

So the course of action depends on you. Freedom, democracy and many other

fundamental pillars of society dangle on the scales, along with the lives of millions of

humans. Your decisions will dictate how history writes itself, and how India and our

committee are remembered many years later.


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Positions

Sardar Swaran Singh

Minister of External Affairs, Government of India. The External Affairs Ministry is in

charge of all foreign relations, which means that Mr. Singh is in charge of India’s diplomacy.

Mr. Singh was a member of the Sikh party, the Shiromani Akali Dal in the 1940’s before

becoming the first Home Minister of Punjab after Independence. He has served in the

central cabinet since 1952. He worked in various capacities, but has worked with both China

and Pakistan during sensitive negotiations, establishing a friendly dialogue with his fellow

diplomats. He is supportive of the Bangladeshi rebels and has argued passionately in the past

about the humanitarian situation in East Pakistan.31

Yashwantrao Chavan

Minister of Finance, Government of India. The Ministry of Finance controls the allocation

of funding from the central government with the budget, as well as control of both revenue

collection and financial regulation. Chavan, born in Maharashtra, has a long history of

service as a member of Congress, including Minister of Defense during the 1965 war.

Leaning towards a socialist bent common among the party members, Chavan is the most

popular politician from Maharashtra. Although he is unable to entirely alter the budget on

his own, his ability to control the allocation of monetary resources will be critical to any

military operations.32

31 http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/personalities/swaransingh.html 32 http://www.in.com/yashwantrao-chavan/biography-289957.html


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Jagjivan Ram

Minister of Defense, Government of India. As he is charge of the Ministry of Defense, Ram

has the ultimate authority to authorize the distribution of military resources logistically, as

well as deciding which units will be authorized to participate in which military theaters. This

means that Ram, while not controlling the on-the-ground situations or specific theaters of

operation, has the strongest authority by which he can ensure units are supported or in

which geographies they will be fighting. Famed for fighting for Dalit rights while also fiercely

opposing British rule in Bihar, he went on after independence to serve in the central

government. Among many positions, he served as Minister of Labor helping to guarantee

Dalit rights as well as Minister of Food and Agriculture.33

Lt. Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora

General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C), Eastern Command, Indian Army.

Born in Punjab, Aurora served in Burma during World War II under the British after

graduating from the Raj’s Military Academy. Since then serving as a distinguished military

officer, he was appointed to his current position in 1969. Being in charge of Eastern

Command, he has control of all major units in eastern India. This includes the 8th, 23rd, and

57th divisions near East Pakistan as well as three divisions spread out on India’s borders

with China in the east (Arunachal Pradesh and Assam).Besides these divisions, being an

entire command, Aurora also controls engineering corps and military tactical units. 34

33 http://jagjivanramfoundation.nic.in/pdf/Speeches%20in%20Parliament/JAGJIVAN%20RAM-PROFILE.pdf 34 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/world/jagjit-singh-aurora-89-indian-war-hero.html


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Lt. Gen Kunhiraman Palat Candeth

General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C), Western Command, Indian Army.

Born in Kerala, Candeth served as the commanding officer during India’s annexation of Goa

as well as the commanding officer against Naga insurgents in Northeastern India.

Controlling the Western Command, Candeth has to battle concerns about Chinese forces as

well tough mountain warfare in Kashmir and tank battles in the vast dusty plains of

Rajasthan and Punjab. Western Command controls 5 divisions in Kashmir and Ladakh, 3 in

Jammu, and 5 divisions in Punjab. Western command also controls engineering corps and

tactical units, as well as accompanying armored divisions. Candeth must balance the

operations of his forces by cooperating with both the diplomatically tense situation with

China as well as the absolutely critical support of the Air Force.35

Admiral Sardarilal Mathradas Nanda

Head of the Indian Navy. Known as a bold commander, Nanda is a strong advocate for a

more aggressive posturing of the Indian Navy. He has been a big supporter of purchasing

naval equipment from the USSR, as well as for upgrading Indian Naval units for offensive

maneuvers instead of defensive ones. The Indian Navy operates out of Visakhapatnam in

the Bay of Bengal and out of Cochin on the Arabian Sea. Western command includes 2 new

missile ships, as well as 12 destroyers and 2 submarines. In the East, the Indian Navy has

one aircraft carrier, one new missile ship, 4 destroyers, and one submarine. He also has the

authority to authorize marine operations.36

35 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/lt-gen-k-p-candeth-36784.html 36 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/5551938/Admiral-Sardarilal-Nanda.html


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Air Chief Marshal Pratap Chandra Lal

Head of the Indian Air Force. Lal served as a reconnaissance pilot in Burma during World

War II, and is considered an expert in providing aerial support to ground operations. In the

Western Command, the Indian Air Force has 6 squadrons of MiG-21s commanded from

Jodhpur and in the east, 3, commanded from Shillong. The air force has received

considerable training and support from the USSR, which gives them strength against forces

supported by the US such as Pakistan, but the forces of China also use similar equipment

and may be more evenly matched. Besides the control of these conventional air forces, Lal

also commands the use of missiles and the use of paratrooper units.37

K Sankaran Nair

Head of West Pakistan Desk, Research & Analysis Wing. In Charge of all espionage related

activities in Pakistan by India. (miscommunication, etc, but he needs to set up all of these

type of these things, there is an existing group obviously but more needed)

Serving for decades first in the British Indian Imperial Police and in the Intelligence

Bureau, Nair has experience setting up intelligence networks in Africa after the departure of

the Europeans, as well as working on the numerous issues that have cropped up since the

1965 war in terms of India’s intelligence services. Although there are several deep agents in

Pakistan, he must still work on setting up networks of information that are more relevant to

immediate operations. Also, the current model of espionage is focused on supplying

information. Although Nair has worked hard to train a different model of operations that is

more aggressive, it remains to be seen if this pays off in any operational capacity.38

37 http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Personnel/Chiefs/257-PC-Lal.html 38 http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/former-raw-chief-shankaran-nair-passes-away/article7887034.ece


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PN Banerjee

Head of East Pakistan Desk, Research & Analysis Wing. Banerjee runs the operations in

Eastern India for RAW. With the foresight of the founders of RAW, his officers have

already prepared for the training of militias and set up networks of informants in East

Pakistan. He is the sole point of contact for the Indian Government with the opposition

leaders in East Pakistan. In fact, rumors suggest he may have a close personal relationship

with Mujib, given his operational history of meetings with opposition leaders in countries

near India’s Eastern periphery. Although his operators are not equipped yet for the

sophisticated sabotage efforts that the West Pakistan desk, they do have an extensive

network of Bengalis committed to an independent Bangladesh.39

Brigadier MBK Nair

Head of technical division, Research & Analysis Wing. Nair is in charge of RAW’s

operations for training new operators and supplying them with the equipment to accomplish

their tasks. His division is equipped with enough to arm small militias, as well as launch

sabotage missions that may destabilize political situations. He is in contact with Soviet

technology experts as well, which gives him the credibility to introduce new tactics in the

field. His expertise is crucial to any operations within other nations outside India, as well as

to the training of new operators.40

Siddhartha Shankar Ray - Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Minister of

Education

39 http://www.dailyo.in/politics/1971-bangladesh-war-research-and-analysis-wing-rn-kao-pakistan-army-indian-army/story/1/7972.html 40 Ibid.


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Born into one of the most prominent families in all of Bengal, Ray is close friends with Ajoy

Mukherjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal. A longtime member of Congress, he is a

close ally of Indira Gandhi41 who has recently appointed him Minister of Information and

Broadcasting in addition to his role as Minister of Education. His Bengali background and

ministry powers mean he has the best ability to influence the people of Bengal on both sides

of the border. He controls all public dissemination of information by the central government

in India. He also is able to garner the support of businessmen in Dhaka, his ancestral home,

and in Calcutta.

41http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/south-asia/siddhartha-shankar-ray-aristocrat-bengali-politician

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