Delhi can do better

Bangladesh celebrated its Bijay Diwas (Victory Day) on December 16 to mark the birth of the new nation in 1971. On that day, the entire surrender ceremony was re-enacted as usual at the very place in Dhaka's Suhrawardy Udyan.

Bangladeshis dress up a man in Sikh turban to play India's former eastern army commander Lt Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora who accepted the surrender – and another clean shaven man dressed in Pakistani military uniform played Lt Gen AAK Niazi, Pakistan's last eastern army commander who surrendered with 93,000 troops.

Then more than 30 leading freedom fighters of Bangladesh, including former army chiefs Generals KM Safiullah and Harun-ur-Rashid, handed over the Bangladesh flags to young men and women in a symbolic gesture signifying the passing the legacy of the Liberation War with a pledge to protect its secular and democratic values.

This year, media coverage of the Bangladesh's Victory Day celebrations was overshadowed by the massacre of 140 schoolchildren in Pakistan on December 16. Many Dhaka dailies captioned "Another Black Day – 16th December."

Nothing drove home the point of the two nations taking widely different paths – one sinking into the abyss of mindless radical religiosity, the other emerging as a moderate Muslim nation proud of its Bengali language and culture, its current government zero-tolerant towards terrorism.

A small incident in Dhaka did highlight the terror threat in Bangladesh – hours into the Victory Day celebrations, the police in Dhaka arrested two radicals of Ansarullah Bangla Team with components to make a drone to launch a possible terror attack.

Major General Shamsul Haque, who heads the country's National Security and Intelligence, was quick to stress that terrorism "never quite goes away but emerges in ever new forms." Hence Haque's warning against complacency in the fight against terror.

Haque drew much from the October 2^nd Burdwan blasts to drive home his point – Bangladesh has hammered the likes of JMB and HUJI radicals very hard to force them to flee the country but they have exploited the conditions in neighbouring West Bengal and Assam to set up sanctuaries for making bombs and training new recruits to launch future attacks in Bangladesh.

Much as closer India-Bangladesh cooperation is needed to fight terror, the Bijay Diwas can be leveraged better, not only for better bilateral relations, but to nullify the Pakistani claim on Kashmir. Many Bangladesh freedom fighters want India to celebrate the Bijay Diwas with as much pomp and show as Bangladesh does.

"It was a victory for both of us, was it not," asks former Bangladesh army chief Lt Gen Harun-ur-Rashid, one of the top functionaries of the Sector Commanders Forum, the organisation of the war veterans which re-enacts the December 16, 1971 surrender ceremony. "We should celebrate this day together," said the forum's secretary-general Haroon Habib, a writer and editor who fought in 1971 as a guerrilla, shoulder-to-shoulder with the Indian Army.

Some in the Indian Army also realise that the joint celebration of the Bijay Diwas would not only boost bilateral relations in general but also improve military-to-military relations between India and Bangladesh.

That, many say, would bear huge consequences for India's long term security interests in the East and North-East. It will bring the two nations closer in South Asia's own war against terror, not quite the US script that involves Pakistan, half of whose army fights the terrorists and the other half quietly supports them.

It is also time for Bollywood to come up with something better than 'Gunday' to bring alive the heady moments of 1971 – both the birth of Bangladesh and India's military victory over Pakistan, not one to the exclusion of the other. Three years ago, on the fortieth anniversary of the Liberation War, I had offered a script to any Bollywood or Tollywood filmmaker willing to do a great film on 1971.

Operation Jackpot

'Operation Jackpot' is the greatest simultaneous naval commando operation in the history of warfare. For those whose idea of a similar operation begins and ends with the 'Guns of Navarone,' it is useful to recollect that 'Jackpot' led to a massive simultaneous assault on four ports of the, then, East Pakistan, in which 57 ships, big and small, were sunk. That led to the huge blockages in East Pakistan's harbours, hampered the Pakistani supplies, and demoralised its troops after they ran low on ammunition.

The months that followed 'Jackpot' (August 14, 1971) turned the tide of the guerrilla war decisively, and paved the way for the ultimate victory over Pakistan. For anyone willing to make an Indian 'Guns of Navarone,' 'Jackpot' is a cinematic goldmine and anyone doing the project stands almost totally assured of all logistic support of Bangladesh's present regime for reasons not difficult to see.

Playing up the 1971 narrative is crucial for India as much as it is for Bangladesh. It drives home the point that if Bengali Muslims, clearly Pakistan's majority group in 1971, could not fulfil their aspirations, how could anybody else, including our Kashmiri brothers, expect anything of Pakistan, either through merger or in the form of support for secession? 1971 exploded to smithereens Jinnah's two-nation theory, and unless our own Hindu fundamentalists are willing to reinforce it, the ghost of 1947 will sink into the pages of South Asia's contemporary history.

India's current rulers will have to choose between 1947 and 1971 as the defining moment of contemporary South Asia as they seek to take India forward to realise its true potential for a place in the global high table. For Bangladesh, the choice stands exercised.

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The article was published in the Deccan Herald on January 26, 2015 – India's Republic Day.

Subir Bhaumik is a former BBC correspondent and author of "Insurgent Crossfire," and "Troubled Periphery." He is now a Senior Editor with bdnews24.com.