Sun from the ruins: The final hours of East Pakistan
The message that signalled the end of an empire and the birth of a nation was not delivered via a secure diplomatic pouch or a scrambled military frequency. It was a handwritten note, scribbled on a scrap of paper, carried by an aide-de-camp across a bridge where the air was thick with the scent of cordite and impending winter rain.
It was the morning of 16 December 1971. Major General Gandharv Singh Nagra of the Indian Army stood at the Mirpur bridge, the gateway to Dhaka. Inside the city, Lieutenant General AAK Niazi, the commander of the Pakistan Eastern Command – the man charged with the defence of East Pakistan – sat in his fortified headquarters, a man unravelling.
The note was personal, stripping away the veneer of military protocol to reveal the shared history of two men who had once been cadets together.
"My dear Abdullah, I am here. The game is up. I suggest you give yourself up to me and I'll look after you."
It was a casual greeting – "Hello Abdullah!" – that belied the cataclysmic shift occurring on the Indian subcontinent. In the hours that followed, a drama of Shakespearean proportions would play out in the crumbling offices of the Pakistani command and on the grassy expanse of the Ramna Racecourse. It was a day of trembling hands, unshed tears, and a silence that roared louder than the artillery fire that had preceded it.
The treacherous journey
The road to Dhaka had been paved with grit, mud, and improvisation. Just eleven days prior, on 5 December, Major General Nagra had taken command after his predecessor, Major General Gurbax Gill, was injured by a mine. Nagra inherited a lightning campaign, advancing with two brigades from the north.
It was a "treacherous journey", often undertaken on bull-carts and on foot, moving through a riverine and difficult landscape. By the chilly morning of 9 December, Nagra's forces had crossed the river south of Jamalpur, bypassing the formidable Pakistani troop positions at Kamalpur. The strategy was clear: bypass resistance, cut retreating lines, and race towards the "ultimate prize" – Dhaka.
The momentum was unstoppable. Nagra's brigades linked up with Indian paratroopers dropped earlier at Joydebpur, meeting fierce resistance. Yet, the advance continued. By 14 December, they faced a new obstacle near Kaliakair – stiff resistance on a newly built road.
It was here that the local dynamics of the war proved decisive. On the advice of Kader Siddiqui, the legendary guerrilla leader who had been fighting a war inside the territory for nine months, Nagra shifted tactics.
Accompanied by hundreds of Siddiqui's fighters, the Indian forces marched rapidly, flanked by the very people they were there to liberate. A contingent of guerrilla fighters led by Nasiruddin Yusuf Bachhu joined them from Savar. The noose was tightening. By the time Nagra reached the outskirts of Dhaka in the early hours of 16 December, his troops took position across the Mirpur bridge.
The military reality was absurd, a testament to the psychological collapse of the defenders. Nagra had only 3,000 troops with him to take on 26,000 Pakistani soldiers garrisoned to defend the capital. A lull descended before the final battle – a silence that begged the question: would the city burn, or would it surrender?
When the game was over
Unknown to the soldiers in the trenches, the decision had already been made in the corridors of power.
Two days prior, on 14 December, a cable had arrived in Dhaka from the President of Pakistan, Yahya Khan. Addressed to General Niazi and the Governor, AM Malik, the message was a death knell for the Pakistani administration in the East. "You have fought a heroic battle against overwhelming odds…You have now reached a stage where further resistance is no longer HUMANLY possible nor will it serve any useful purpose. You should now take all necessary MEASURES TO STOP THE FIGHTING…"
The capitalisation of "MEASURES TO STOP THE FIGHTING" screamed from the page. The cable spelt doom.
Desperation set in. In the evening, Niazi and Major General Rao Farman Ali rushed to the office of the US Consul General, Spivack, hoping for a diplomatic miracle. They asked him to negotiate a ceasefire on their behalf. Spivack's response was cold and bureaucratic: "I cannot negotiate a ceasefire on your behalf. I can only send a message if you like."
Defeated, Rao Farman Ali drafted the message addressed to the Indian Army Chief of Staff, General Sam Manekshaw. It was a plea for a ceasefire. Manekshaw's reply, broadcast over the radio, was unequivocal. A ceasefire would be acceptable only if the Pakistan army surrendered.
He offered a window of safety, "The ceasefire would be acceptable provided the Pakistan Army surrendered…anyone for the night with a white flag will be protected."
He also provided two radio frequencies for contact. The timeline was set. The temporary ceasefire was to be from 5pm on 15 December until 9am the following day. It was later extended to 3pm on 16 December to finalise the arrangements.
The mighty Pakistan army's "days of braggadocio were over", as the historical accounts note. Niazi and his "band of brothers" were waiting to surrender, their careers as soldiers in Dhaka ending where they had started their marauding journey nine months ago.
Niazi's command and control centre room was filled with ghosts. Major General Jamshed, the defender of Dhaka, shook his head sideways to signify "nothing" when asked for advice. Rear-Admiral Sharif sat in silence. Major-General Farman Ali asked, "Do you have any reserves left?" asking about the Pakistani forces. But the questions were rhetorical. The fight had left them.
"Hello Abdullah!"
Back at the Mirpur bridge on the morning of the 16th, the tension was palpable. Nagra sent his aide-de-camp, Captain Mehta, with the handwritten note to Niazi. The message was clear and exact. Nagra was waiting.
Nagra entered Dhaka not with a conquering legion, but with a handful of soldiers and a lot of pride. It was, in effect, the "virtual fall of Dacca". As he walked into Niazi's office, the weight of the moment crushed the room's occupants.
"Hello Abdullah, how are you?" Nagra asked, extending a hand to his old coursemate.
The response was silence. Niazi, the man who had boasted to journalists that he would fight until the last man, was broken. The tea that followed was a surreal ritual of civility amidst ruin.
"Pindi mein bethe hue logon ne marwa diya," Niazi muttered, breaking his silence. (The people sitting in Pindi doomed us).
"I let him talk to lighten his heart," Nagra later reminisced. "There were reminiscences. Tea followed and of course, there was forced friendliness."
"Take it or leave it"
If Nagra's arrival was the personal reckoning, the arrival of Major General JFR Jacob at 12 noon brought the cold, hard steel of international law. Jacob, the Chief of Staff of the Indian Army's Eastern Command, arrived at Tejgaon airport with the Instrument of Surrender in hand.
He stepped off the helicopter and was whisked to Niazi's headquarters. The scene described in historical texts is cinematic. Jacob handed the document to Rao Farman Ali. Farman Ali read the terms and objected specifically to the clause stating the surrender would be to the "Joint Command of India and Bangladesh".
"It is not acceptable to me," an angry Farman Ali said. Jacob, calm and imposing, entered the room with a pipe in hand (often recalled as a cigar in popular memory, though accounts vary). He looked at Niazi.
"It has come from Delhi. Either you take it or leave it," Jacob asserted. Niazi had no alternative. Any terms being dictated were better than the chaotic annihilation that awaited if they refused. Jacob then asked General Jagjit Singh Aurora, the chief of the Indian Army's Eastern Command, to come to Dhaka for the surrender ceremony.
The bloody birth of a nation
A few hours later, the victors and the vanquished made their way to the Racecourse at Ramna, a site already laden with political memory. The atmosphere was tense and charged. On the open field, thousands watched as Pakistani forces formally surrendered, just 13 days after the Indian army had launched its full-scale intervention in East Pakistan.
Lieutenant General AAK Niazi, visibly subdued, sat at a plain table to sign the Instrument of Surrender.
"As I signed the document with trembling hands, sorrow rose from my heart to my eyes, brimming them with unshed tears of despair and frustration," Niazi later wrote of the moment.
The scene was briefly interrupted by a short exchange with a French journalist who approached the defeated general.
"How are you feeling, Tiger?" the reporter asked.
"Depressed," Niazi replied.
With the signing complete, the political reality of South Asia shifted decisively. A military campaign that had begun with a violent crackdown months earlier came to an end on a winter afternoon in December, marking the emergence of a new state after one of the region's bloodiest conflicts.