The present volume is the first full-length study by a senior Indian military officer of the campaign that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. The author writes authoritatively with the inside knowledge of the developments both in the field and at Army Headquarters and he makes a professional appraisal of the leadership and strategy and tactics.

"A thousand years of Indian history is replete with stories of humiliating defeats and subjugation by foreign invaders, who either rolled down the five passes in the Hindu Kush Mountains in the north or from the sea in the south," says Major General Sukhwant Singh.