4: An excerpt from my book, "The Forgotten Few", briefly describing the day, and the battlefield investiture by Lord Mountbatten a few weeks later:

3: Jagan (Bharat-Rakshak/IAF webmaster)'s diligent ids of personnel in pic showcases the wonderful regional and religious diversity of the IAF: Hafeez, Singh(s), Herbert; and among the Hindus, Kapur, Rao, Sanyal, Pandit - North, South, East, West. Much to be proud of ✊🏾

2: For original source nerds among us (which definitely includes me!!), part of the Form 540 page reproducing Sir John's signal …/3

What, no champagne and limousine?? I'm disappointed!!

Congratulations, Group Captain @mazjovanovich.bsky.social Ma'am 🎖️!!

My father was honoured with two post-nominal decorations in his career. I much preferred the first investiture, tho' it was the "junior" award of the two - because it included a flypast!!

Great pic, Phil 📚😊📚!!

All the best, Dr-to-be 🤞🏾@silenceinpolish.bsky.social

11: ... that our poor, crowded Third World can be fixed by our own selves, without white saviours - even if no-one built global narratives out of it, the way they have about the World Wars.

And if I may be forgiven a moment of publicity, thanks to @harpercollins.bsky.social, I say more on this:

10: For those of us who were Indian schoolkids then (as I was), the 1971 war was like a fairy tale: evil & horror, redeemed by compassion, resistance & unmitigated heroism, culminating in a brilliant, spectacular victory of Good over Evil ... It validated the enormously optimistic belief ... /11

9: … Even if those other wars, too, involved the stopping of genocide, or near-genocidal brutality … /10

8: The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War should be better-remembered, & I argue, differently-remembered. WW2 is uncritically remembered as a justifiable war, and its young participants are deified as ‘the Greatest Generation’. How rarely is similar respect accorded to other wars ... /9

7: Decades after the horrifying events which started OTD, its memory is in danger of being forgotten. It was never entirely acknowledged by Pakistan or its sponsors at the time, the United States and China, much less by the world at large #WhosToBlame ... /8

6: ... In fact Bangladesh, as they all too painfully know, suffered most during the war, on a scale that arguably approaches that sometimes-misused word, genocide - the headline for courageous Bangladeshi journalist Anthony Mascarenhas's revelation in the UK's Sunday Times ... /7

5: But as a key reservation, imho India & Bangladesh have not fully taken on board their own humanitarian & ethical justifications for that war. So the war & victory have deteriorated into endless displays of whataboutery & false equivalence between India and Pakistan ... /6

4: Why more than the military victory & diplomatic success? Because ***India withdrew all her military forces from the new country within weeks *** – in contrast to the aftermath of many Western countries' military “successes”, throughout the twentieth century ... /5

3: It was Bangladesh's moment of birth, & for India too, one of her finest achievements after Independence (recent issues notwithstanding). It was a military victory, a diplomatic success against odds, and in some still unappreciated but key ways more than either ... /4

2: What began OTD ended with the famous (in India & Bangladesh, at least) surrender on 16 December 1971, at Ramna Racecourse in what was then Dacca ... /3

The Bangladesh Liberation War #1971War effectively began 54 years ago #OTDin1971, when the Pakistan Army initiated Operation Searchlight, the horrific crackdown in Bangladesh, on 25 March 1971 ... /2

Absolutely!!

And the Better Half is indeed, a schoolteacher (of a kind - she's a Special Educator, technically)