The 1971 war reaffirmed the importance of inspirational senior leadership in battle and heralded the emergence of a new fighting class amongst officers and men of India's armed forces.
'The only effective defence against a suicide attack is 'pre-emptive' destruction of the attacker,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'The failure to remember the martyrs on a grand scale is a national problem. As a nation-State, India time and again fails to honour its true heroes: The men in uniform.'
'The Congress has become two distinct parties, one of the durbar, the other of the field and if they keep drifting apart, death is a certainty,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'New Delhi feels that given the internal dynamics in Pakistan and the overwhelming powers wielded by the army, one will have to wait for better times to see any meaningful progress in the India-Pakistan relationship,' says Ambassador G Parthasarthy.
The British administration ignored the mounting evidence of violence between Hindus and Muslims... Military historian Barney White-Spunner traces the countdown to the tragedy in his book, Partition.
The remarkable story of Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian in space, will be seen in a film featuring Aamir Khan.
'The Naga Hills region, Nagaland and Manipur, have had the most uncaring and corrupt state governments with little to show on the ground despite the nation's highest per capita development expenditure,' says Mohan Guruswamy.
'Our experience in Nagaland and Kashmir for the last 60 years has shown our insanity, defined by Albert Einstein as doing the same thing again and again and yet expecting different results,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'The creation of Pakistan was integral to Britain's grand strategy.' 'If they were to ever leave India, Britain's military planners had made it clear that they needed to retain a foothold in the NWFP and Baluchistan because that would provide the means to retain control of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar.'
'It would not be incorrect to say that the Chinese-Pakistani strategy of containing India began in the aftermath of the 1965 war.'
Honorary Captain Bana Singh won the Param Vir Chakra, India's highest ranking gallantry award, for recapturing a Pakistani post on the Siachen Glacier. Living a retired life in a quiet village in Jammu and Kashmir, he makes you feel that his act of phenomenal courage was part of a soldier's day at work.
'Indira Gandhi, it appears, did not to consult her Cabinet colleagues, or diplomats, or civil servants when she decided to sign the agreement in Shimla.' 'We ruefully recall Bhutto's perfidy and the Indian prime minister's gullibility,' says Lieutenant General Ashok Joshi (retd).
'The biggest advantage for India was its seasoned and experienced political leadership who had spent decades struggling against the Raj and had spent years behind bars.' 'Not a single prominent leader of the Muslim League spent one day in jail.' 'Gandhiji, Nehru and Sardar Patel were intelligent, shrewd men with their hands on the popular pulse.'
'Pakistan's recent utterances and tendency to use pinpricks to try our patience appear reminiscent of 1965. We are a strong nation, emerging stronger,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'Pakistan is full of 'religious entrepreneurs' like Hafeez Saeed who poison the minds of the young so that they can be motivated to become terrorists. They work in concert with the rulers of Pakistan. It is a private-public partnership.'
'The US-India relationship is in a different league altogether,' Obama administration officials tell Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com in Washington, DC.
'Modi has entered blunderland as he does not understand the army. He has actually meddled with the army, which is much more damaging than the ignorance of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.' 'People had an impression that the BJP was different. Now it has been made very, very, plain that it is not.' 'Look at the contrast in the behaviour of the prime minister. When they burnt buses in Gujarat for an unjust demand, the prime minister addressed them in Gujarati while the army veterans were on relay hunger strike for the 74th day on that day, but no word on this from the PM.'
'He was believed to finish his own work in an hour and spend the remainder of the time walking from one office to another, sitting down with the harried junior staff and helping them sort out the problems they were working on.'
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's sage advice remains as relevant today as it was during his lifetime, says Vivek Gumaste.
On the title page of the Top Secret Report, Henderson-Brooks quotes the Chinese tactician Sun Tzu: 'Know yourself, know your enemy: A hundred battles, a hundred victories', says Claude Arpi, highlighting where the Indian Army and government failed to counter the Chinese attack in 1962.
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