e compendium is an effort to document the hopes and aspirations of the two nations, their successes and failures, their expectations and disappointments, their contradiction in action and dichotomy in thought. Seven hundred and thirty four documents presented here try to capture this mood of the last two and a half decades. For facility of reference, the documents have been grouped into seven sections so that a coherent Picture of each issue emerges sharply. These have been further divided into two volumes for easy handling, otherwise both volumes, by themselves are an integral compilation.
Some of the Indo-Bangladesh issues have their genesis in the developments of Pakistan days. Such documents of the pre-1971 period as have relevance to the post-1971 Events have been included in a separate section. This would, it is hoped, Help the Study of the issues in their right perspective.
The documents have been collected from various sources both published and unpublished. A Large number of them are from my own collection made while serving the Ministry of External Affairs from 1963 to 1993. They have been put together so that they are not lost to posterity. Extensive footnotes have been added either to amplify the context or to add to the contents, where necessary. Use of mass media to advance a particular line of thought or action is not uncommon today. Kite-flying is an Art which the modern Bureaucracy has perfected with precision to chart the direction and or velocity of the winds. Hence the unofficial briefings and off the record Plant stories become an important even critical input. Every effort has been made not to ignore this add-on information. This has made some of the footnotes extensive and lengthy, sometimes, perhaps lengthier than the document itself. |
