Jagjit Singh Aurora
Lt-Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora (February 13, 1916 - May 3, 2005) was the Indian commander whose comprehensive defeat of Pakistan in 1971 led to the creation of Bangladesh. He was born in Jhelum, Pakistan and died in New Delhi, India.
Aurora was commissioned into the Indian Army in the first battalion of the 2nd Punjab Regiment in 1939. He led that battalion in 1948 war with Pakistan in Rajouri, Jammu and Kashmir as well.
Jagjit Singh Aurora, defeated Pakistan in a 13-day war that led to the creation of the state of Bangladesh, is a household name to schoolchildren in India and Bangladesh because of a single photograph that appears in history textbooks. It shows the turbaned Sikh general impassively taking the surrender of the Pakistani commander, General A. A. K. (“Tiger”) Niazi, in a ceremony watched by thousands of people at the race course in Dhaka [1]. General Niazi ceremonially handed over his personal .38 army-issue pistol and removed his insignia of rank from his uniform , a degradation he had desperately wanted to avoid, pleading for a simple ceasefire and withdrawal under United Nations supervision.
![[1]](/wiki/Image:Niazi.jpg){kind=link}
Aurora accepted the surrender without a word, while thousands cheered. He was hoisted on soldiers’ shoulders amid shouts of jai Bangla (victory to Bangla).
Niazi then had to be swiftly spirited away when crowds began calling for him to be lynched. Back home, he was widely criticised for submitting to such humiliation. More than 90,000 Pakistani fighters, around half of them regular soldiers, were taken prisoner after the ceremony.
The day, December 16, 1971, is familiar to every Bangladeshi as the day their nation was effectively born. Indeed, the name of the new country (later reduced to a single word) was used in the instrument of surrender, which declared: “The Pakistan Eastern Command agree to surrender all Pakistan armed forces in Bangla Desh to Lieutenant-General Jagjit Singh Aurora, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Indian and Bangla Desh forces in the Eastern Theatre.”
The eternal gratitude of Bangladesh to General Aurora was emphasised in a message to India, after his death, from Mohamed Morshed Khan, the Bangladeshi Foreign Minister, stating: “Aurora will be remembered in the history of Bangladesh for his contribution during our war of liberation in 1971, when he led the allied forces.” The site of the Pakistani surrender is being converted into what will be called Independence Square, with an eternal flame.
In less than two weeks Pakistan had lost 55,000 square miles of its territory and 70 million of its people, in an operation meticulously prepared months in advance by Aurora and others. Aurora had also been closely involved in training and equipping the Mukti Bahini, a ragtag group of freedom fighters who were transformed into an effective guerrilla force that harassed and demoralised the Pakistanis.
This softened up the Pakistanis in readiness for India’s strike, which was launched after Pakistan carried out bombing raids on several Indian airfields on December 3, 1971. These had been preceded by several Pakistani attacks on Mukhti Bahini camps inside India. War was now inevitable.
Aurora had helped to oversee the logistical preparations for the coming battles, including the improvement of roads, communications and bridges, as well as the movement of 30,000 tons of supplies close to the border of East Pakistan.
Even so, the Indian Army could never have anticipated how quickly the Pakistanis would be routed. Instead of attacking Pakistani positions head-on, Aurora ordered his troops to bypass them wherever possible and head straight for Dhaka.
The key breakthrough came when thousands of forces succeeded in crossing the Meghna River, which the Pakistanis had left unguarded, having blown up the only bridge. Local people ferried the Indian troops across in huge numbers of small boats under cover of darkness: “That was the turning point,” Aurora later recalled.
The break-up of Pakistan had become unavoidable earlier, after national elections in December 1970, in which the people of East Pakistan had voted overwhelmingly for Bengali nationalism. Pakistani troops intervened to stop the nationalist Awami League taking power — a hopeless task, given that their lines of supply were from bases 1,000 miles away in West Pakistan, and that India was sympathetic to the Bengali cause. Thousands of civilians died at the hands of Pakistani troops before the outbreak of war.
Jagjit Singh Aurora was born the son of an engineer in Jhelum, in what is now Pakistan. He was commissioned into the 2nd Punjab Regiment in 1939 after his graduation from the Indian Military Academy, and went on to command it during the 1947-1948 hosilities with Pakistan in Kashmir. He had reached the rank of brigadier by the time he was involved in border hostilities with Chinese troops in 1961.
After his retirement Aurora spent several years as an MP in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament) for the Sikh party, the Akali Dal.
He fiercely opposed the 1984 army attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, to flush out armed Sikh militants who had taken up positions inside. He was also a leading activist on behalf of the victims of anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984, which followed the assassination of the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, by her Sikh bodyguards.
He is survived by a son and daughter. Lieutenant-General Jagjit Singh Aurora, former Indian GOC-in-C Eastern Theatre, was born on February 13, 1916. He died on May 3, 2005, aged 89.
External links
- "1971 war hero Lt General J S Aurora dead" - Times of India article dated May 3, 2005