move in West Bengal for its unification with East Pakistan was thus motivated by political and economic considerations. By undoing the partition, the West Bengal leaders hoped to impose their dominance over East Pakistan and restore the source of raw material for its factories."
Analyzing India's motives one of the leading Papers of East Pakistan the Pakistan Observer, noted that Apart from India's political desire to see Pakistan weak and eventually disrupted, she was also economically motivated to try to capture East Pakistan. In the world's jute market, she has been facing tough competition from the jute industry of East Pakistan. Many of the jute mills in Calcutta which were established with the income of jute of East Pakistan and were being fed on East Pakistan's jute, had to close down after the creation of Pakistan because of the loss of the jute of this province East Pakistan, before partition served as the hinterland for Calcutta port. Since the partition, East Pakistan has come to have its own jute industry. Indian's eyes are on the jute of East Pakistan. This economic motive, plus her political hostility towards Pakistan went into her planning, to separate the East Wing from Pakistan. In pursuance of this plan, she began sending arms and men into East Pakistan for an armed uprising. It is now clear that she had been conspiring for quite some time with certain anti-state elements in East Pakistan, supplying the latter with necessary arms and money to set up a clandestine organisation to take over East Pakistan by force."
Mujib's Involvement with Agartala Conspiracy
Indeed direct evidence of India's collusion with anti-state elements came to light when the Agartala Conspiracy was unearthed in 1967 and several witnesses testified to Mujib's involvement with this Conspiracy as early as September 1964. It was then that the conspirators' group was joined by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at a meeting convene in Karachi “to form a revolutionary organisation for separating East Pakistan from the rest of the country".
The main plan of action of Agartala Conspiracy was to capture the armories of military units so as to paralyze them. The action was to be carried out on commando style and surprise was to compensate for the lack of manpower. In pursuance of these objectives, a meeting was arranged between the representatives of the secessionist conspirators who had to conduct the operations in Pakistan with the representatives of India who were to supply arms and ammunition. This meeting took place at Agartala in India on 12 July 1967.
When the conspirators were actually arrested in December 1967, one of them revealed that, apart from arms and financial aid promised by India for organizing an armed revolt in East Pakistan, India had told them that on the “D-Day" the Government of India will block the air and sea routes linking East Pakistan with West Pakistan.
Threat Followed By Big Arms Build-up
That was four years ago. But India did carry out threat in February 1971, when the obviously pre-planned hijacking and blowing up of an Indian aircraft on the soil of Pakistan by two hijackers from Indian-held Kashmir was made an excuse for banning
