Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
मनोहर पर्रिकर रक्षा अध्ययन एवं विश्लेषण संस्थान

Journal of Defence Studies

India’s Politico-Military Strategy for the 1971 India–Pakistan War

India displayed its firm political resolve, robust military capability and deliberate decision-making process in the 1971 India–Pakistan War to achieve significant strategic success. The politico-military strategy evolved progressively from a cautious response to a firm decision to employ the Armed Forces at an appropriate time as the last instrument. India adroitly calibrated an indigenous freedom movement led by Mukti Bahini and concurrently launched a diplomatic outreach campaign to shape the environment in its favour.

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The Battle of Garibpur

The ‘Lightning Campaign’ to liberate Bangladesh during the 1971 IndoPak War was one of the finest moments in Indian history. The ‘Battle of Garibpur’ fought on 21–22 November 1971, before the Indo-Pak War was officially declared on 3 December 1971, was a key battle in East Pakistan where a single infantry battalion, 14 Punjab (Nabha Akal) supported by a squadron of armour and intimate artillery support, successfully fought a Pakistani attack by infantry and armour.

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Politics in Pakistan and the Bangladesh Liberation War, 1971

The Partition of India in August 1947 was a colossal man-made catastrophe resulting in the formation of Pakistan, with its east and west wings.Jinnah’s two-nation theory ignored the diverse culture and geographical settings. East Pakistan got its first political shock when Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy—a popular mass leader—did not become the chief minister of East Pakistan. Further, in the initial period of state formation, there was forceful imposition of Perso-Arabic culture and Urdu language by the leadership of Pakistan, consisting majorly of Punjabis and Pathans from West Pakistan.

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Did Pakistan Learn from its Bangladesh Experience?

This article seeks to re-analyse the pattern of Pakistani response to the demands from East Bengal as a federating unit with distinct linguistic
and regional identity, which led to eventual vivisection of Pakistan, and examine whether in the post-1971 years Pakistan learnt any lesson from
its Bangladesh experience and used it to deal with similar assertions at ethnic and regional levels.

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Mistakes on Repeat Mode: Pakistan’s Civil–Military Debacle

The military has been an integral part of Pakistan’s survival since the formation of that nation state. The idea of the country was based on a united Islamic religion, but series of events dampened the nation’s integrity. In the absence of robust political institutions to promote democracy, the bureaucratic and military apparatus made inroads into polity and expanded their role as dominant powerful elite in the initial years after independence.

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Role of the United States in the 1971 War: Implications for India–US Relations

The India–Pakistan War of 1971 happened at the time when the US was developing a new balance of power relationship in Asia with US-ChinaPakistan at its core. This new balance of power initiative was based on the United States’ ‘Opening to China’ through secret diplomacy with the help of Pakistan, and this resulted in a convergence of interests of US, China and Pakistan.

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Cultural Explanation of Statecraft: The Polities and Policies of Asoka and Akbar

Constructivism argues that the behaviour of actors in international politics is shaped by factors like identity, norms, rules, etc. Though it has been well argued that these factors shape and sometimes regulate the behaviours of political actors, not much has been written about the formation of such norms and how the identity of a political actor becomes operational through them.

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A Comparison of Kamandaka’s Nitisara and Kautilya’s Arthashastra: Statecraft, Diplomacy and Warfare

Kamandaka’s Nitisara was composed after the classic and the only surviving root text of Kautilya’s Arthashastra. Both the texts are important milestones in Indic heritage and tradition of political science. They share many fundamental and enduring similarities in concepts and vocabulary. There are also dissimilarities and some unique features such as Kamandaka’s strategy of Upeksha (neglect, diplomatic indifference) reused and revived during the Indian freedom struggle.

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A ‘Regional’ Intervention in the Debate on India’s Strategic Culture: Maratha Statecraft in Agyapatra

Existing scholarship on India’s strategic culture pronounces on it either based almost entirely on India’s post-independence strategic behaviour with some references to the pre-independence period or on select historical experiences and texts. For a large part of its history, however, the Indian sub-continent has been under ‘regional’ rulers, ranging from small to very large kingdoms. There are traditions that emanate from them that are as much part of the Indian strategic culture as the pan-Indian phenomena.

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Interrogating ‘Hyphenated Cultures’: India’s Strategic Culture and its Intelligence Culture

In the late 1950s, the concept of 'political culture' was first developed. Towards the end of the Cold War, scholars in International Relations (IR) theory and security studies developed the concept of 'strategic culture'. Over a period, state bureaucracies were thematised by scholars of comparative politics leading to the concept of 'bureaucratic culture'. Lastly, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, a comparative turn in intelligence studies began to emerge with the concept of (national) 'intelligence culture'.

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Countering Islamic State Ideology: Voices of Singapore Scholars edited by Muhammad Haniff Hassan and Rohan Gunaratna, with a Foreword by Karen Armstrong

People often complain that Islamic scholars do little more than condemn the inhuman acts of so-called jihadist groups and fall short of delivering strong, incontrovertible rebuttals against the vicious narratives of terrorist groups, like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS). It has also been stated that the ever-rearing Hydra-like heads of terrorism will have to be endlessly severed until genuine Islamic scholarship drains the very swamp of irreligious radicalism from which the monstrosity continually raises new and ugly distortions.

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Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems and the Legal Regime

Present-day world order marks a new dawn in the field of international law. The unusual pace and nature of technological advancements has resulted in the creation of a world where problem solving is leading to the creation of more complex problems. Development and deployment of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), on land, air, sea and space, generally gains momentum as a force multiplier.

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Is Sino-Pakistan Collusion a Chimera?: A Game Theory Perspective

Myriad complexities underlie the India–China–Pakistan triangle, with narratives varying from competition to collaboration. Recent developments in Galwan, renewed ceasefire agreement with Pakistan and a resurgent Quad, all amidst Covid diplomacy, necessitate a relook at traditional approaches and narratives on Sino-Pakistan collusion. Is it only a common anti-India sentiment that is driving it or is the pentagram of the United States, Russia, China, India and Pakistan, with their dyadic interplay, manifesting itself?

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