Srinath Raghavan Speaks of the Emergence of Bangladesh

The South Asian Studies Council welcomes to its weekly Colloquium, Srinath Raghavan, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.  Dr.Raghavan will give a talk based on a book he is finishing on the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

4.30pm, April 11 · Room 203, Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue

Dr. Raghavan is the author of War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years. He has also written extensively on contemporary foreign policy and security issues.

Abstract
The emergence of an independent Bangladesh in 1971 was the most decisive geopolitical event in South Asia since the partition of India. Forty years on, the historiography of the crisis remains captive to the parochial perspectives of the subcontinental protagonists. For the Indians this was a war of liberation; for the Pakistanis a war of secession; and for the Bangladeshis a war of independence. Despite the differences of inflection in each of these narratives, the underlying assumption remains the same: the independence of Bangladesh was, for a variety of reasons, inevitable. This paper argues against this dominant, determinist reading. It does so by widening the framework in which we view the event. The paper contends that the international context of the late 1960s played a central role in enabling the creation of an independent Bangladesh. Only by situating the event in the international history of the period can we explain the outcome and interpret its significance.