This volume, first published in 2005, analyses the persistence of the India-Pakistan rivalry since 1947.

A decade after the 1971 wars in South Asia, the principal decisionmakers were still uncertain why wars so clearly unwanted had occurred. The authors reconstruct the complex decisionmaking process attending the break-up of Pakistan and the subsequent war between India and Pakistan. Much of their data derive from interviews conducted with principal players in each of the countries immediately involved-Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh-including Indira Gandhi and leaders of the Awami League in Bangladesh.

The first edition of this work appeared in 1953. The Foreign Service Journal greeted it as a "basic work" and the New York Times Book Review hailed it as "unquestionably the best and most balanced account of India and Pakistan." The second edition appeared in 1963 and received an equally warm welcome. The Times of India said, "It provides the historical perspective, and discusses the present-day social, economic, and political problems with knowledge, sympathy, and acumen." Between 1963 and 1972 the two nations of India and Pakistan made a number of important governmental, political, economic, and cultural changes. They had to meet crises caused by forces of nature as well as crises originating in their own institutions. Democratic processes advanced in India; they were repudiated in Pakistan and the repudiation led to the civil war in East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. W. Norman Brown covers all of this and more in his fresh look at the subcontinent.

The war of 1971 that created Bangladesh was the most significant geopolitical event in the Indian subcontinent since partition in 1947. It tilted the balance of power between India and Pakistan steeply in favor of India. Srinath Raghavan contends that the crisis and its cast of characters can be understood only in a wider international context.