Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd)
To most sea-power advocates, whose pleas have, for decades, been falling on deaf ears, it seemed ironic that the events of May 2020 in the icy Himalayan wastes should have focused the nation’s attention on the maritime domain. To use a hackneyed idiom, chronic ‘sea-blindness’ amongst our decision-makers has been the bane of the Indian Navy (IN) and has served to stunt its growth since Independence. Even as our attention is currently engaged in predicting outcomes on our northern borders and in the waters of the Indo-Pacific, a look back at the 1971 Bangladesh conflict may be useful.
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While the 1947 and 1962 conflicts had lacked a maritime dimension, the 1965 Indo-Pak war saw the IN discomfited by an unreasoned government directive not to initiate any offensive action at sea, nor to permit its units north of Kathiawar. To add to the Navy’s woes, a Pakistan Navy (PN) task force bombarded the coastal town of Dwarka, and retired with impunity, leaving a psychological scar on the IN. However, just years later, the Indian subcontinent was again engulfed in a conflict, providing the IN another chance to vindicate itself.
In early 1971, Pakistan, riven by political and ethnic differences between its Punjabi-dominated western wing and its Bengali eastern wing, descended into civil war, triggering a massive exodus of East Pakistani refugees into India, creating a social and economic crisis for India. The cynical American duo of President Nixon and his Chief of Staff, Henry Kissinger, not only lent full support to Pakistan’s military rulers, but also egged on China to create military diversions for India. It was under these circumstances that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in consultation with her military commanders, crafted a grand strategy which would halt the Pakistan army’s murderous rampage and reverse the refugee influx.
The IN, still smarting from the ignominy of inaction in 1965, ensured that it had an important role to play in the coming conflict. The Service was truly blooded during the Bangladesh war, in which an imaginative leadership boldly employed the full range of maritime capabilities.
While the heroic exploits of our sailors will be recounted elsewhere, here are a few defining events that not only encapsulated the significant maritime contribution to this conflict, but also highlighted some serious shortcomings of the IN:
This war saw the IN employing the full gamut of its maritime capabilities, including missile warfare, carrier operations, submarine and anti-submarine warfare, trade warfare, amphibious operations, shore bombardment, special operations, and mine counter-measures. It was, fondly, hoped that the IN contribution to the 1971 victory would stamp, indelibly, on the minds of India’s decision-makers the vital role that maritime power could play in India’s security matrix. That this did not happen has been amply demonstrated by the Navy’s dwindling share of the defence budget over the past 50 years.
The nature of warfare has, no doubt, transformed since 1971. However, given the reality that the growing Chinese military pressure in the north, coupled with a steady naval build-up in the Indo-Pacific, could have ominous security implications for India, perhaps some lessons of the past will be useful.
The writer is former Navy Chief
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