In 1971, Pakistan repudiated the results of their first-ever general election, held late the previous year – because it gave too many seats to what was then still East Pakistan.

In March that year the West Pakistan-dominated government initiated an Army crackdown, in what was then East Pakistan, leading inevitably to civil uprising. To escape the Pakistan Army’s massacres, something like ten million East Pakistanis fled into India, itself at that time a far from prosperous country. With whatever resources she had, India set up refugee camps, and did what she could to help the refugees, but she simply did not have the resources to host them indefinitely.

Meanwhile, spearheaded by the Bangladeshis’ unimaginable courage, the Bangladesh Liberation War began, across East Pakistan. In less than a year, despite Pakistan’s conventional military superiority, Bangladeshi resistance had tied down three divisions of Pakistan’s Army. Indian military support from quite early in the process, and active intervention from November onwards, backing up the civil and guerilla uprising within East Pakistan itself, helped bring victory to those seeking effective governance and representation for the people of Sonar Bangla. And thus was born the new nation of Bangladesh.

The Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 is an important part of both Bangladesh’s and India’s post-independence journey and identity (and arguably even Pakistan’s). And it is crucial to Bangladesh’s very existence. Yet the Indian contribution has been only partly covered by contemporary writers outside India. The Liberation War remains a significant historical transformation, and should have become authentic folk memory. Several thousand Indians and Pakistanis, and a huge number, possibly in millions, of Bangladeshis lost their lives during the repression and the War. And yet, it is rarely treated as a historically defining moment, except by Bangladesh.

1971 and its immediate aftermath represented a huge feel-good period for the new nation of Bangladesh, and for India. This was particularly true since it was accomplished in the teeth of American official obfuscation and denial, for abominable Cold War reasons. But the feel-good sense did not last, in either Bangladesh or India. Both countries have had to deal with significant traumas in the decades since then, Bangladesh more recently. The fading memory, in countries whose populations are both dominated by people too young to remember the period, is understandable.

Even so, in my view, the war remains inappropriately remembered, both historically and in terms of popular media and culture.  When remembered at all, it tends to be as a victory over an old foe, rather than the validation and remembrance of the high principles that both Bangladesh and India were founded on.

There are some popular publications and media, but only a few genuinely thoughtful books and documentaries on this nation-defining war, and (again in my view) not enough popular understanding of its significance. The issues were so clear, and the result so decisive, that this war should have permanently changed the sub-continental narrative. In fact, very little changed. Indeed, within 15 years of perpetuating crimes against self-determination on her own people, Pakistan had, astonishingly, succeeded in re-casting itself as the champion of self-determination for Kashmir.

The Liberation War threw up numerous stories and visual impressions, both poignant and heart-warming. They should have become part of both Bangladesh’s and India’s folklore.  Instead, they are repeated and forwarded, by veterans to each other and their families, in a military version of preaching to the choir.  A number of the vivid visual impressions left by the war should have become iconic representations of South Asian success. Instead, certainly in India, we seem to continually fall back on American or British pictures, sometimes with an Indian tricolour clumsily photoshopped in, to try and drum up patriotic sentiment. In that context, the work of filmmakers like Arefeen Khan are all the more important, as they work in arguably the most powerful medium across all of South Asia.

Bangladesh’s and India’s comprehensive victory remains one of the clearest, most indisputable military victories since the Second World War, one of the few ethically “just wars” of the 20^th century, and should be more widely studied. The victors liberated the country, saw to the repatriation of refugees and prisoners-of-war, and non-Bangladeshi troops returned to their home countries, in record time. This is a record that resonates even better by comparison with recent situations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Looking back after over half a century, it should be as grand a monument to Bangladesh and India as any in living memory.

It is unfortunate that so much went wrong in both Bangladesh and India in the years following the Liberation War and Bangladesh’s independence.  In some questionable ways, government reluctance to close certain open issues does disservice to the sacrifices of both Bangladeshis and Indians, during that shining victory. Yet, whatever the state of relations between Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, the memory of this victory should underpin global optimism about the potential future of South Asia.

I hope a walk through some of the historic locations of the Liberation War will help us understand why these stories and images are not better known even within our two countries, and how that has diminished the significance of Bangladesh’s and India’s victory.

Alongside Bangladeshi film director Fakhrul Arefeen Khan, K.S. Nair will be accompanying Sampan’s Bengal Rising journey, exploring the events of 1971 and the birth of Bangladesh. Find out more about Nair’s book “December in Dacca” here.