India hosted over 10 million Bangladeshi refugees following the genocide by Pakistani forces, who accounted for 3 million Bengali deaths, as per official Bangladeshi records. The Indian Government recorded 3,842 Indian soldiers as having been killed and 9,851 wounded in the 1971 Indo-Pak War (an estimated 8,000–9,000 Pakistani soldiers were killed, and 93,000 were taken prisoners). Besides the incalculable human cost that India sacrificed, it wily-nilly funded the creation of “Bangladesh” with its own government expenditure, with reallocated budgetary spends and the subsequent creation of a Bangladesh Relief Fund.

The doyen of the Bangladeshi Freedom Movement, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was to generously acknowledge, “The people of Bangladesh will remember forever the sacrifices of the Indian people and soldiers,” and that, “Without India’s support, our independence would not have been possible.” In what might seem surreal today, given the perception being sought to be created by the dispensation of the day in Bangladesh, Mujibur Rahman had bluntly said, “India stood by us in our darkest hour.” But as the wounded and recorded history of Bangladesh is getting callously and falsely reimagined, and Mujibur Rahman himself is getting demonised, the outcome of the “new history” in Bangladesh could fail so many countless heroes, even on the Indian side.

Regrettably, those who delivered........

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