Based on eighteen years of research and previously unexplored material, this is the definitive book on India’s role in the liberation of Bangladesh India and Bangladesh achieved a historic victory in the 1971 war.Yet fifty years later, important questions remain about India’s aims and policy in the war. Did India have a plan to break up Pakistan? When and why did it involve itself with the Bangladesh freedom struggle? When did India decide to prepare for military action? Why was no other country prepared to support the cause of an independent Bangladesh? Did India ‘win the war but lose the peace’ by signing the Simla Agreement? Drawing on previously unexplored Indian records, eminent diplomat and historian Chandrashekhar Dasgupta dispels many myths as he sheds fascinating new light on these and other questions. Deeply researched over eighteen years, this authoritative, lucid and compellingly narrated book also reveals why and how India fashioned an overarching grand strategy, employing every instrument of national power – political, diplomatic, economic and military – to help the Bangladesh freedom fighters speedily liberate their country.