The year 1971 changed the map of post-colonial South Asia with the emergence of Bangladesh after the breakup of Pakistan. This year did not merely establish the supremacy of the Indian military in the region within nine years of its humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese army; it also marked the ideological victory of the Indian idea of a secular, inclusive polity over M.A. Jinnah’s two-nation theory. When the Baloch rebellion broke out in 1973-74, it only justified the apprehensions of Maulana Azad about the unsustainability of Pakistan. The founder chief of the Research and Analysis Wing, R.N. Kao, could not oblige Indira Gandhi with a sustained covert operation to support the Baloch rebellion the way he could orchestrate the takeover of Sikkim under the nose of the Chinese. But India did emerge as the prima donna in South Asia after 1971.
The creation of Bangladesh removed the military threat posed by Pakistan to India’s Northeast, tenuously linked to the mainland by the Siliguri corridor. It put an end to Pakistan’s covert offensive in the east through its sustained backing of the Naga and then the Mizo insurgencies in collusion with China. It revived the possibility of restoring the pre-Partition transport linkages of Northeast India through Bangladesh. Last, it left Pakistan deeply vulnerable to threats of Balkanization.