Independence is a man’s birthright that helps people to express themselves within the contours of family, state and society. The lack of freedom leads to the insecurity that he strives to escape from. The paucity of political freedom is largely associated with the independence of a state in which people usually live in a state of captivity, in mass deprivation and persecution. To tackle these issues of dispossession and exploitation, revolutionaries emerge on the scene with charismatic words, values and acts, with the motive of emancipating people.

• Monirul Islam , Rafiqul Islam |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

In March 1971, I was working on an Oxfam-UK supported Gandhian village development project in Bihar, India, where I had been for almost three years. Through the BBC and some sketchy Indian newspaper reports, I learnt about the unrest in Dacca in the early part of March 1971. Sheikh Mujib’s speech of 7 March was well reported by The Statesman newspaper which always reached Gaya from Calcutta one day late. However, nobody was prepared for what would unfold later that month.

• Julian Francis |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

Question: 01: How relevant was 1971 for you, both in political and cultural sense?

• Tanvir Mokammel |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

The tale of Bangladesh’s liberation war of 1971 cannot be told without the ‘before’ and a bit of the ‘after’ of that year, as it would then turn into a futile exercise in historicism,2 merely, ‘capturing’ that instant of extensive explosion which ascended like the phoenix, while ignoring the intensive seedbed of creative ‘becoming’ from which it arose.

• Lubna Marium |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

India’s role in the liberation war is often seen through the geopolitical prism. Its response to developments in East Pakistan was complex and evolved over a period of time. Before taking recourse to military action, India exhausted its diplomatic initiatives to draw the attention of the international community to the refugee crisis which arose due to the Pakistan Army-perpetuated genocide – a term first used by India in the Parliament Resolution of 31 March.

• Smruti S. Pattanaik |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

‘Isn’t it wonderful to be witness to the birth of your country?’ These words were shouted out to my mother and myself by David Vanzant, an international aid worker, just outside the ‘neutral zone’ that was set up in the Hotel Intercontinental in Shahbagh, Dhaka. Crowds were milling around him, and truck-loads of Indian soldiers who had fought their way into Dhaka, alongside troops of Mukti Bahinis (Bangladeshi freedom fighters), shouting ‘Joy Bangla’ at the top of their voices in sheer ecstasy!

• Meghna Guhathakurta |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

The article takes up the political cartoons printed in newspapers, particularly in Bengali from West Bengal to highlight the popular opinion-base they built in support for Bangladesh and the War of 1971 which perhaps brought a new age in Indian foreign policy where military intervention was upheld as a tool for maintaining peace and security in the region.

• Urvi Mukhopadhyay |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

The War of Liberation 1971, or the (Muktijuddho), or just Ekkator er Juddho as it is popularly known in Bangladesh, was a People’s War in which all Bengalis participated, sans a few thousands of the country’s seven and a half crores. This was a peoples’ struggle against the undemocratic Government of Pakistan and its oppressive Army. It was a war where ordinary people from all strata of life ? who knew nothing about waging a war ? took up arms against a trained and fully armed Pakistan Army, while many others ? men and women ? contributed in various other ways.

• Nasreen Ahmad |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

In the twentieth century, South Asia experienced mass migrations of millions of insecure homeless people twice: it witnessed the Partition-refugees from 1947 and saranarthis during the liberation war of 1971. The Indian State treated the first category as ‘citizen-refugees’, whereas the saranarthis were like temporary shelter-seekers. Among the Northeastern states, Tripura played the most crucial role in providing them with all essential supports.

• Anindita Ghoshal |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

The attack by the Pakistan Air Force on Indian airfields at Srinagar, Avantipur, Pathankot, Uttarlai, Jodhpur, Ambala and Agra at 1745 hours on 3 December 1971, was an act of war that set the stage for the Indo–Pakistan War of 1971. Unlike the earlier two wars of 1947–48 and 1965, Pakistan found to its detriment that this time the Indian armed forces were well prepared and ready.

• Ian Cardozo |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis