On September 6, the war broke out between India and Pakistan. As a Pakistani and a young boy, that was a great source of excitement. We were told that India was the villain and Pakistan was the hero. Under President Ayub Khan, Pakistan dealt a blow to the Indian aggressor.
Our world revolved around the propaganda we were exposed to through Pakistani media. Apart from newspapers and radio, a good source of information and propaganda was the newsreels put out by the publicity department of the Pakistani government, accompanied by music and voiceover.
We had no doubt in our minds that India received a severe beating from the heroic Pakistani forces. The Bengal Regiment, and especially the Bengali soldiers, carried out suicidal missions by tying explosives to their bodies (we were told dynamite, but now know that was probably not possible) to destroy the incoming Indian tanks, creating history of patriotism.
The Indian soldiers came close to Lahore, and it was the sacrifices of the Pakistani soldiers, including many Bengalis, that defended the city. In my young mind, it did not occur to me why, if India was the losing side, it was on the throes of Lahore!
We were told that India launched a surprise attack, and the incursions made by Pakistani forces were glossed over. I learned about this many years later.
Nationalism is a crazy thing. You learn in the deepest sanctum of your heart that, right or wrong, your country, your motherland, is always right.
As a schoolboy, the question never occurred to me as to how Pakistan was my motherland. My mother never visited Pakistan, that is West Pakistan. She was born in Murshidabad to a family of an official of British India and later migrated to East Bengal, which was renamed East Pakistan.
India was bad, Pakistan was good. Nothing more, nothing less. End of the story. Pakistan did a great job in constructing the myth of national identity, but ironically, the 1965 war was also an occasion that helped create a counter-narrative of Bengali identity.
In Pakistan days, Bengalis were portrayed as weak, effeminate, fish-eating, Tagore-loving people who were more at home with poetry than guns. They were not considered military material. That Punjabis were the military material was a myth spun by the British rulers. I had no idea of that back then.
I grew up seeing the Pakistani cricket scene dominated by Fazal Mahmood and Hanif Mohammed, who were idols to all budding cricketers. Bengalis were not physically strong enough for cricket, we were told. No wonder Bengalis were not included. Back then, it would have been unimaginable that someday a team made up of Bengalis would beat them in two consecutive Test matches on the soil of Pakistan!
The 1965 war also created some war heroes, like the ace pilot Squadron Leader MM Alam, who shot down several (I read five) Indian fighter jets. Another Bengali pilot, Flight Lieutenant Khalid, brought back his ailing bomber from a successful mission and crashed at an air force base.
As Bengali pilots brought down Indian planes, another myth was destroyed, and a new narrative began to breed.
The 1965 war, which lasted for more than two weeks and ended on September 23, fueled the burgeoning Bengali nationalist narrative, which argued that the lack of security in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) was due to the negligence of the Pakistani rulers.
Bengali soldiers and airmen fought valiantly and defended the western part of Pakistan, but their families were left unprotected and vulnerable. I am still not very clear why India did not launch any incursions on the eastern side. With hindsight, I should have asked this question to a former Indian army chief whom I met at a conference in Dhaka last year.
In 1965, neither I, a schoolboy, nor anyone I knew thought that in four years’ time, a new narrative of Bengali nationalism would carry us off our feet. As the new-old nationalism brewed, and fiery speeches of Maulana Bhashani or Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman created aspirations for the Bengali people and inspired them to demand and fight for their rights, it culminated in the War of Liberation six years later.
Six years is not a long time. Back in September 1965, Bengali soldiers were fighting side by side with their Pakistani comrades; they were brothers and comrades fighting against a perceived common enemy.
Six years later, inspired by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib’s clarion call of national awakening, Bengali soldiers were fighting against their former comrades. Many of the battlefront heroes on the Bangladesh side, officers and soldiers alike, had fought to save Pakistan six years ago.
As Bangladesh is passing through a critical phase of its history, new narratives and counter-narratives are being woven in the cauldron of changes and turmoil.
Habibul Haque Khondker is a sociologist and columnist.
