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A land torn in two by another, Pakistan once existed on either side of India. In 1971, East Pakistan quailed in terror as West Pakistan began a military assault that consisted of murder and genocidal rape. The war ended with the country finally ripped in two. 1971: A Global History is the story of the creation of Bangladesh. Summary of the Book March 26, 1971. East Pakistani military forces prepared to execute Operation Searchlight, the systematic genocide and rape of the Bangladeshi population. In what is the largest recorded genocidal rape against a single group of people, they ravaged the women, killing millions in their attempts to wipe out the race entirely. This was their answer to the first democratic election which resulted in a demand for a separate East Pakistan, a new country that called itself Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Liberation War terrorized the people for nearly nine months before culminating in the events of Operation Searchlight, an event so grotesque that it warranted India's entry into the foray, an entry justified not just on humanitarian grounds but by the fact that Pakistan attacked North India. The war that followed, resulting in the capture of the largest number of prisoners of war since World War II, saw the defeat of Pakistani military troops and the liberation of a nation that cried for freedom. The war saw the birth of a new nation: Bangladesh. About Srinath Raghavan Srinath Raghavan is a Senior Research Fellow at King's India Institute and former Lecturer in the Defence Studies Department, King's College. He has also written War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years and has edited Imperialists, Nationalists, Democrats: Collected Essays of Sarvepalli Gopal. He is also one of the authors of NonAlignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the Twenty First Century. A graduate of Department of War Studies, King's College, he spent 6 years as an infantry officer in the Indian Army prior to taking up academia. His research interests include: contemporary history of India, international politics of South Asia, Indian military history, and India's foreign and defence policies.