"He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight," Chinese sage Sun Tzu had said centuries ago.



Since every war has a political objective, the question posed in the title of this article can be reframed: Did India achieve the political objective for which the war was waged? This raises yet another question: what was India’s political objective in that war. The answer to this is not quite as simple as it would on the face of it appear.

The actual political objective of a war is rarely stated publicly by a state resorting to war because doing so exposes its aggressive intent. For public consumption therefore, aggressors declare objectives which portray them as innocent victims of an outrage. India justified its military intervention in the inter-wing political crisis in Pakistan on the ground that the economic and political consequences of a large number of refugees pouring into its territory from East Pakistan was unacceptable. By itself this is flimsy ground for an all-out war. Some Indian authors have hinted at the actual object of war which can also be inferred from Indian policies and actions.

India has not accepted the partition of the subcontinent and has been pursuing policies to weaken Pakistan. It has not missed any opportunity to weaken Pakistan in the past and will not hesitate to exploit one should it arise in future. Moreover, it regards the entire South Asian region to be its hegemonic domain. Some examples of its actions to promote its hegemonic designs(apart from the 1971 full-scale military intervention under discussion) are: Forceful annexation of Kashmir, Junagadh, and Hyderabad, military intervention in Tamil uprising in Sri Lanka and its current subversive activities in Baluchistan and Afghanistan specifically targeting Pakistan.

On the basis of the above mentioned policies and actions it can safely be inferred that the political objective of India in the 1971 war was none other than to weaken Pakistan and discredit the two-nation theory which was the basis of the creation of Pakistan.

Keeping in view the above mentioned Indian objective, the answer to the question whether or not India won the 1971 war rests on a comparison of the state of balance of power in the subcontinent before and after the bifurcation of Pakistan into two independent states. If the balance of power tilted towards India it won the war, if not it lost the war in the sense that it failed to achieve the political objective for which the war was waged.

If in the long term, it turns out that thepost-1971 sub-continental balance of power was less favorable for India as compared to the one that prevailed earlier; the entire concept of war becomes flawed. India achieved the military objective (Occupation of most of East Pakistan, later changed to fall of Dacca) but failed to achieve the political objective. In short there was a mismatch between the political and military objectives and the war was an exercise in futility as far as India was concerned.

Looking at the second aspect of India’s political aim the break-up of Pakistan did not discredit the two-nation theory. The theory would have been discredited only if India had absorbed East Pakistan into its union as one of its states. Since this did not happen the two-nation theory remains intact with the sub-continental situation being exactly as envisaged in the 1940 Pakistan Resolution.

For Pakistan the war was indeed a ‘tragedy of errors’ as pointed out by General Kamal Matin ud din in his book under this title. Huge as these errors were, India’s one big error outweighs all of them put together. What can be more absurd than waging a war from which you gain nothing. India could not even obtain a clear disavowal of Pakistan’s stance on the Kashmir issue in talks that followed.

Subsequent events and developments have shown that the balance of power in the sub-continent has tilted in favour of the two emerging independent states on India’s west and east as a consequence of the 1971 War.

The dilemma of pre-1971 Pakistan was that the deployment of military assets to provide equitable protection to both wings of Pakistan was very difficult if not impossible due to limited military resources. Any attempt to do so would have weakened Pakistan on both fronts. Consequently a military strategy to defend East-Pakistan from the West was adopted. This strategy was based on the assumption that the main battle would be fought on Pakistan’s western front.

At its best this strategy could have redressed minor territorial losses in the eastern wing by occupation of some Indian territory of strategic importance on Pakistan’s western front. It lost all relevance when the venue of the main battle shifted to East Pakistan. Pakistan lacked the capacity to occupy and sustain its occupation of Indian territory of such strategic significance which could compensate for the loss of the whole of East Pakistan.

Moreover, India operating on interior lines could conveniently and promptly switch forces from west to east and vise-versa. Pakistan operating on exterior lines and that too with the only inter-wing physical link being provided by about 3000 miles long route around the south-Indian peninsular projection.

In this context, it should be noted that Pakistan Navy was neither developed, deployed or tasked to keep the inter-wing sea lines of communication open during war. The first two Commanders-in-Chief of the Pakistan Navy Rear Admiral Jefford and Vice Admiral HMS Choudhary had proposed development of a navy consisting of two almost equal sized fleets based at Karachi and Chittagong. But the Navy was not developed according to the geographical imperatives of a country whose two wings were separated by a thousand mile of hostile territory with sea providing the sole physical link between them.

Had this been done at least the humiliation of surrender and travails of 90,000 services and civilian personnel in Indian prisoners of war camps could have been averted, provided Dacca had not been left totally defence-less and the Polish ceasefire resolution accepted. Without the POWs in its custody India would not have been in a position to pressurize Pakistan over the Kashmir issue.

India has not in any way benefitted from the bifurcation of Pakistan in the strategic or military sense. Pakistan no longer faces the dilemma of splitting its armed forces to defend its two wings separated by a thousand mile of hostile territory. In addition, it has also achieved effective strategic deterrence through development of its nuclear and missile arsenal.

Effectiveness of Pakistan’s strategic deterrence stands confirmed by India’s failure to undertake military actions that its political and military leaders wanted to carry out on several occasions mostly in response to imaginary or contrived provocations, the latest being the skirmishes following the Pulwama incident in which two of its intruding aircraft were shot down and a submarine chased away from Pakistani waters.

Bangladesh has a growing economy and will become militarily stronger with the passage of time. Cooperation in many fields including strategic is inevitable between Pakistan and Bangladesh arising as a natural response to policies being pursued by India under the leadership of Prime Minister Moody.

Pakistan, however, while making amazing headway against heavy odds in the strategic sphere is lagging behind in the economic domain. For Pakistan vindication of the consequences of the 1971 war lies in a battle on the economic front by all elements of the state concerned with politics, economics and governance in a concerted effort to stabilize the economy and accelerate its growth while maintaining the existing defense policy and strategic posture. In this regard we should follow Germany and Japan who were defeated in the Second World War but are respected nations today because of their economic and technical prowess.

I leave it to the imagination of readers to speculate as to how the sub continental balance of power would have fared if India had not intervened militarily allowing Pakistan to languish in inordinately lengthy civil strife. There could have been several paths but none so adverse for India in the long term as the one it chose.

To conclude the answer to the question posed in the title of this article is plain and simple: India did not win the 1971 War.