British India which included the modern states of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh has always been a home to both Hindu and Muslim …show more content…
This paper will look to address the crisis between East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and West Pakistan and the interventions by India, which eventually led to this war. In March of 1971, in East Pakistan there were calls for freedom from West Pakistan and the right to autonomy as the state of Bangladesh. This resulted in West Pakistan creating a military operation to crackdown on the Bengali nationalist movement. This revolt lasted for nine months and the military operation, which was called Operation Searchlight lasted three months. The aim of this operation was to take control of the major cities and then eliminate all political and military opposition within that time period. The operation caused in the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, which was resulted in the deaths of an estimated three million people and the rape of hundreds of thousands of women. In addition, tens of millions civilians were displaced and caused 10 million refugees to flee to India. Upon receiving refugees, India decided to intervene and after an initial attack by Pakistan, it resulted in a full out war between the two …show more content…
The Indian army reacted to the Pakistani armies attacks in the west by capturing over 10.000 square kilometers of Pakistani territory. On the eastern side, two weeks of fierce fighting the Pakistani forces surrendered to the joint effort of the Indian and Bangladeshi forces. Following this short, yet intense war the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh was created. Although this was short-lived it involved the highest number of casualties in any Indo-Pakistan war to this point as well as a large number of prisoners of