After spending six years as an infantry officer in the Indian Army, Srinath Raghavan took to a life in academia. Clearly, India's most important military historian, he has published three valuable books: War and Peace in Modern India and 1971, A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, apart from editing a stellar collection of the legendary historian Sarvepalli Gopal's essays, The Collected Essays: Imperialists, Nationalists, Democrats.

His latest book, India's War: The Making of Modern South Asia is a fascinating assessment of India's participation in World War II where 2.5 million Indian soldiers fought in different theatres of conflict. A Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, one of New Delhi's leading think-tanks, Dr Raghavan was formerly a lecturer at King's College, London.

In an e-mail interview with Archana Masih/Rediff.com, he discusses why India's contribution in the Second World War has been ignored by historians, and what India needs to do to become a pivot for Asian security. Read

Image: Marshal of the Air Force Arjan Singh, then a flight lieutenant, with pilots of No 1 Squadron by a Hawker Hurricane aircraft in World War II in Burma. Photograph: Kind courtesy Imperial War Museum/Wikipedia.org