What makes Sanjeev Bikhchandani interested in books on 1971 Indo-Pak War?

The 1971 India-Pakistan war was one of the shortest in history, but it left a lasting impact on Sanjeev Bikhchandani. The founder of InfoEdge, one of India’s original internet startups, has read three books on this war, starting a fourth soon.

In the last few years he has read Blood Telegram by Gary J Bass, 1971: A Global History of Creation of Bangladesh by Srinath Raghavan, and India and the Bangladesh Liberation War by Chandrashekhar Dasgupta.

“It is timely, since it has been 50 years since the 1971 war. All these had slightly different perspectives and together, complete or semi-complete the jigsaw puzzle,” he said on Episode 18 of Moneycontrol’s All About Books, a show on Twitter Spaces hosted by M Sriram and Swathi Moorthy.

Bass, an American journalist, sheds more light from the US perspective and is based on declassified archives, which does not portray then US President Richard Nixon and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in a complementary manner, he said.

“Raghavan's was more focused on the government chess game over the nine months before India won, while Dasgupta's book gives deep insight into the government’s decision making process,” he said.

The books also resonate with Bikhchandani, who lived through it largely unaware of its gravity as a seven-year-old boy. “Growing up in Delhi, I remember trenches being dug and playing games. I also remember sirens going off and refugee relief camps.”

While these books were written in the last decade, Bikhchandani argues that such narratives decades after the war help debunk myths and lend a perspective that cannot be found in the immediate aftermath. 

“These books also debunk several myths associated with the war. One of them was about Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw's role in postponing the 1971 war. It was believed that it was Manekshaw who told then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that India was not ready for the war in April 1971. But the truth was that Indira Gandhi was under a lot of pressure to go into war in April-May 1971. But she did not want to. So, she asked Manekshaw, who she knew would agree with her. This was revealed in Dasgupta's book,” he said.

Given that there could be multiple untold angles in such a complex story, Bikhchandani also searches the names of people mentioned in the book and sees their life history.

"The Pakistan ambassador to the USSR at that time was a Parsi gentleman called Jamsheed Marker. He passed away a couple of years ago, and he has written a couple of books that I have ordered on Amazon, where he talks about his life as a career diplomat. I am pretty sure there will be stuff in the book that should talk about his time in Moscow before the war,” he said.

“One key pillar of India's strategy was India signing the India-Soviet treaty in 1971 before the war. That deterred the US and China from intervening proactively in the war. I am pretty sure he would have known about it. I haven't received the book yet, but I will read it,” he said.