Pakistan is now engaged in a mini-war with Afghanistan ::: About 1971 War -- it banked a lot on Censorship and perceived "uncomfortable silence"

In Pakistan, a shroud of uncomfortable silence has long surrounded the 1971 war of liberation or birth of Bangladesh.  

It did not help them much but yet they believed in propaganda and mostly absurd falsehood. Thus, literature non-fiction and fiction based on the happenings during and around the war is almost existent from Pakistan. 

"... it’s no surprise that, on December 16, 1971, with the news of their army’s surrender, many ordinary citizens (of Pakistan) were stunned, unable to reconcile it with months of bombastic rhetoric," writes a researcher Madhurima Sen in Dhaka-based 'The Daily Star'. 

snap source - 'The Daily Star' 

"Much like other South Asian nations, Pakistan has developed a solid reputation for censorship and ideological repression of writers. One need only think of Saadat Hasan Manto, Habib Jalib, Ahmed Faraz or Faiz Ahmed Faiz for well-known confrontations between writers and the Pakistani state. 1971 marked one of the most dramatically severe periods of state control over information," she points out.  

Of course in general sense, essential books on the 1971 Pakistan-Bangladesh war covering military operations, genocide, and personal accounts, include 'The Blood Telegram' by Gary J. Bass.

There were a few others -- Dead Reckoning by Sarmila Bose

1971: A People's History by Anam Zakaria. 

These works offer diverse perspectives from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India, examining the conflict's trauma and strategic impact.  

'Memories of a Lacerated Heart (1971): A War Memoir (From East Pakistan to Bangladesh)'  is a 2017 publication written by  Major Iftikhar-Ud-Din Ahmad (Retired). 

The night of March 25, 1971 marked a point of no return. Almost nine months after this night, Pakistan officially conceded defeat and signed the Instrument of Surrender. 

Understandably, Bangladeshi fiction has made it central to its narrative imagination, notes Sen.

From Mahmudul Haque’s novella Jiban Amar Bon written in the immediate aftermath of the war to Numair Atif Choudhury’s magical-realist novel Babu Bangladesh! (2019), Operation Searchlight has been imagined and reimagined in Bangladesh across decades.  

In Pakistan, the story has been much more difficult to tell, she notes. 

The 1971 war was relatively swift and decisive in its outcome. At a single stroke, Pakistan was cut down from five provinces to four; it lost its entire eastern wing and more than half of its population. "With the creation of the populous nation of Bangladesh, the balance of power was fundamentally reconfigured in South Asia...".  

Sen also notes:" Silence in the official sphere and media deception had much to do with this. 

Selective amnesia in state narratives was echoed in Pakistani cultural productions, where references to the war are, at best, sporadic, and often peripheral." 

"The creation of Bangladesh and the resignation of Yahya Khan, who, until a day earlier, had been professing certain victory, unfolded at a dizzying speed for citizens carefully kept in the dark for months," runs the article. 

Some of these happenings could be reflected even in 2026. Look at the manner Donald Trump is claiming 'certain victory'. 

War - they say - serves no purpose. Yet we have it around. On the backdrop of 1971 war, Madhurima Sen has this to say --  

"The brave, politically awakened Bengalis of Bangladeshi textbooks often appear in Pakistan as misled separatists, mere pawns lured into larger geopolitical conspiracies. 

"In Bangladesh, 1971 is a people’s war, in which ordinary citizens band together in a bid for self-determination. However, in much of Pakistani state-engineered narratives, 1971 is a war primarily between India and Pakistan, with Bangladesh treated as little more than a subsidiary actor in its own story. "

ends