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Indira counted on his advice in '71

Son tells Star of father's role upon receiving Liberation War honour on his behalf

Zyma Islam
It may not be entirely presumptuous to say that India's involvement in the Liberation War of Bangladesh was decided by only five people, one of them being late Indian prime minister Indira
Gandhi herself.
Among the other four was former Indian president Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, who was conferred the Bangladesh Liberation War Honour posthumously in Dhaka last week.
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He was one of the only two who were honoured with the award in gratitude for their crucial role during the 1971 Liberation War. The other was Bharat Ratna Gulzarilal Nanda, former home minister of India and twice acting prime minister.
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, union minister of food during at that time, was an integral part of Indira Gandhi's cabinet committee dealing with the war.
His son Dr Pervez Ahmed recently visited Bangladesh for the first time to receive the award on his behalf. In a conversation with The Daily Star, he discussed the part played by his father during
the war.
"My father, along with minister of finance Yashwantrao Bulawantrao Chavan, minister of defence Jagjivan Ram and minister of external affairs Sardar Swaran Singh, formed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's group of counsels," Pervez began. "They influenced Indira in making the decisions that she made about East Pakistan."
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was very close to Indira Gandhi, who valued his counsel very much, said the son.
"When the issue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman not getting his due place as the prime minister of Pakistan cropped
up, my father took a strong stance in his favour," said Pervez, adding that his father had grown up with Bengalis in Assam.
"Assam was a place where a lot of Bengalis came and went. They were like our neighbours, and my father grew up getting to know them, getting to know about their culture. 1 think it was his understanding of the Bengalis which moved him to the cause."
He went on to say his father had never supported the division of greater India into India and Pakistan. The region had historically been a place where people moved about freely.
"My father was against clamping a geo-political
division without much regard for whether the people of the territory would be compatible with each other, or whether they would have been more compatible with another group of people," Pervez observed.
He also described his father as one who thought East Pakistan was not compatible with West Pakistan.
He continued, "Having grown up with Bengalis, my father felt that Bengalis in general were a more pluralistic society with a large population of non-Muslims. Even the Islam practised by the Bengali Muslims is more secular in nature and more syncretic [tending to reconcile opposing beliefs or
practices). It accepted many more cultural influences...."
Religion can never be the strongest of the forces that unite a nation, since a population might have people with differing ideas about religion, Pervez maintained.
"Culture is more cohesive than religion, and my father felt that the people of East Pakistan and West Pakistan simply did not have harmonious cultures," he said.
However, he still feels that the Liberation War could have been averted if steps had been taken to declare Bangla as a state language.
"It would have meant respect for equality," he stated.