Manjgu, yes, there was this section preceding that which I felt was very pertinent and correct.manjgu wrote:the one para which i found very pertinent and summed up things rather well....
' The result is a methodological slippage: the work drifts periodically from the terrain of the historian, who must evaluate and organize material with a ‘so what’ question in mind, into that of the chronicler, who wants to catalog ‘everything that happened.’
...
This was a point that we tried to ponder every time we were putting our fingers to the keyboard. is this necessary?, why include this bit of info?.. and ultimately decided to include it anyway despite knowing the reading may get tedious/boring. The reasoning was that future writers will have something to verify and reference to. So yes - it was a chronicling effort by us. it was one of the objectives - to make this the reference book for future generation of researchers.Sections of the book can be tedious: it is really not necessary to detail every mission flown in the eastern sector of the war, or to reproduce every bit of information available on the movement of squadrons from base to base. The authors seem to have proceeded under the impression that information must be included regardless of its value, without first establishing the criteria for what makes information relevant.
He is also right on certain observations, like the need for Bangladeshis not to delve on collateral damage like Karwan Bazaar. However the reasoning could be different - having lost millions (or hundreds of thousands - depending on your pov). what would a few more lives on the ground matter when they just got the freedom they wanted? The casualties just got lost in the narrative. but I am confident looking at the amount of literature that was generated in Dhaka after the war, that someone may have covered it.
Next question on why the M-62s were not used in the West - I tried looking into it - but didnt put much effort. On the surface it looks like some attempt was made against airfields closer to the border - Lahore, Pasrur, Chander etc.. but Sargodha , i believe was attacked by day only once and only by rockets. TACDE did singleton bombings that were successful too. but no concerted effort like what was done in the east. but one should consider that there would have been half a dozen PAF squadrons defending the same airspace so the risk was higher. But I agree that they didnt seem to think about as much as the folks in east did. again, this is still preliminary thoughts.
and yes I didnt agree with Satadru's point on us spending more time on the events leading upto the war, or delving into the civilian casualty numbers, they are not for this book and they could take a whole book by themselves - and probably someone has already written that stuff.
KaranKaran M wrote:the PAF didn't come out to play,
so true. we probably mentioned that briefly somewhere but as you said may have failed to emphasise it enough. the IAF relied on the PAF coming up and fighting on the first and second day.. they didnt really do that much as the IAF expected.