The history of any conflict is normally inscribed by the victor while truth is the first casualty in the fog of war. Similarly, a number of myths and shibboleth spread by India, the victor in the 1971 Pak-India war, have come to be accepted as facts. The first hyperbole is India’s rationale for its assault on Pakistan. The general elections of 1970 and the delay by the military government in the transfer of power to the elected representatives was part of an internal democratic process and should not have been used as a pretext for India’s naked aggression to dismember Pakistan. The seeds of the secession of East Pakistan, however, were laid nearly a decade earlier. A perception prevails that Sheikh Mujib, despite securing maximum seats in the 1970 elections, was denied power by conniving West Pakistani politicians. The truth can be gauged from APP correspondents interviewing Sheikh Mujib in Dhaka post-elections, congratulating him on his victory. They inquired of the Sheikh’s future plans after he would assume the mantle of premiership in Pakistan. His response was that he would rather be the “father of a nation (Bangladesh)” than just a prime minister of Pakistan. Indian involvement in the dismemberment of Pakistan was on various levels. Its parliament approved support for Bengali insurgents while its military and intelligence clandestinely trained Mukti Bahini insurgents. The Indian drama of hijacking and destroying its own Fokker aircraft, Ganga, in Lahore on January 30, 1971, was a ruse to deny overflight rights to Pakistani aircraft so that no logistical support could be provided to the troops stranded in East Pakistan. Sheikh Mujib declared March 23, 1971, a Black Day instead of Pakistan Day. The military government of General Yahya Khan undertook army action on March 25, 1971. The insurgency operations gradually grew in intensity and the Mukti Bahini got bolder while the Pakistan army in the east became demoralised due to the onslaught. It got so widely dispersed and stretched in trying to contain the Mukti Bahini that when the Indian army launched its operations on November 22, 1971, beleaguered and handicapped by a shortage of weapons and provisions, its operations were badly hampered. The Pakistan army, though heavily outnumbered, with 34,000 troops combating 500,000 Indian troops and 200,000 Mukti Bahini guerrillas, one squadron of fighter aircraft facing 11 squadrons of the Indian air force and a handful of naval vessels, which were blockaded by the Indian flotilla, fought gallantly. Indian Army Chief General S H F J Manekshaw, while talking to the Indian Express, on February 1, 1972, during a lunch reception by the Press Association in honour of the three services chiefs stated: “An impression has been created that the Pakistanis had not fought well. They fought extremely well; if they had not, India would not have suffered heavy casualties.” Another false propagation by India is that 93,000 Pakistan army troops surrendered in 1971. In reality, there were never more than 34,000 troops in East Pakistan. The figure of 93,000 includes police, paramilitary and the pro-Pakistan civilian population. It has been widely proliferated that the Pakistan army killed over three million people in the military action. This has been challenged by Sarmila Bose in her book Dead Reckoning. The Awami League is still pursuing alleged war crimes. On the one hand, it is seeking an apology from the Pakistan army for its genocide of Bengalis while, on the other, it is persecuting and meting out death sentences to the collaborators of the Pakistan army in 1971. In its obsession to pursue its whims, a Bangladesh court has found an award-winning UK journalist, David Bergman, guilty of contempt for questioning the official death toll of three million in the country’s 1971 independence war. Unless the record is set straight, younger generations will continue to give credence to the myths and shibboleths of the 1971 Indo-Pak war and history will continue to be distorted. The writer is a former group captain of PAF, who also served as air and naval attaché at Riyadh. Currently, he is a columnist, analyst and a television show host