The Diplomacy that made Bangladesh’s Liberation possible

The year 1971 was a turning point for India and South Asia, a year when genocide in East Pakistan triggered one of the world’s largest refugee crises, and India found itself navigating a flood of persecuted civilians and a tense Cold War-dominated global landscape. As Washington courted Beijing through Pakistan, and global powers looked away from the unfolding tragedy, Indian diplomats were fighting a parallel battle: shaping narratives, building alliances, and keeping international pressure at bay while the subcontinent moved toward war.

In this episode, we unpack those seismic diplomatic manoeuvres with The Hindu’s Kallol Bhattacharjee, who has written extensively on India’s foreign policy and Bangladesh’s liberation.

Together, we will explore how India read the geopolitical winds, how the Indo-Soviet Treaty changed the game, how global powers responded to the war, and how the legacy of 1971 continues to shape India–Bangladesh relations today.

Host, script and editing: Aniket Singh Chauhan

Production support: Shikha Kumari A

Camera: Jude Francis Weston and Tayyab Hussain

Archival assistance: R Saravanan and K Prabhakaran