Instrument of Surrender (1971)

The Instrument of Surrender was a written agreement that enabled the surrender of the Pakistan Armed Forces in the Bangladesh Liberation War. The surrender took place at the Ramna Race Course in Dacca on December 16, 1971. Lieutenant-General A A K Niazi, joint commander of the Pakistan Armed Forces of East Pakistan contingent, and Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, joint commander of the Bangladesh-India Allied Forces, signed the instrument amid thousands of cheering crowds at the race course. Air Commodore A. K. Khandker, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Bangladesh Armed Forces, and Lieutenant General J F R Jacob of the Indian Eastern Command, acted as witnesses to the surrender.

Subsequently, around 93,000 Pakistani troops and officials were taken as prisoners-of-war by the Indian Army, the largest number of POWs since World War II. They were later repatriated in 1973 under the terms of the Simla Agreement.

Surrender ceremony
Also present were Vice-Admiral Mohammad Shariff, commander of the Pakistani Naval Eastern Command and Air Vice-Marshal Patrick D. Callaghan of the Pakistan Air Force's Eastern Air Force Command, who signed the agreement. On behalf of Bangladesh, Air Commodore A. K. Khandker acted as witness to the surrender. Lieutenant General Jacob Rafael Jacob, Chief of Staff of the Indian Eastern Command, along with the other commanders of Indian naval and air forces, acted as witnesses on behalf of India. The signing of the document marked the end of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and the creation of Bangla Desh (later reduced to a single word). Aurora accepted the surrender without a word, while the crowd on the race course started shouting anti-Niazi and anti-Pakistan slogans.

Text of the Instrument
The text of the surrender is now a public property of Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani governments and the text of the document can be seen on display in the National Museum in New Delhi. The text of the Instrument of Surrender document was as follows:

In literature
In Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, the encounter between the two generals is shown in the chapter "Sam and the Tiger".