The fiftieth anniversary of the 1965 Indo-Pak war

The year 2015 mars a special event. It is the fiftieth anniversary of the military battle of the Indo-Pak war that took place in the year 1965. While India celebrates this event as a mark of victory against its rival Pakistan, the opponent too commemorates this day as Pakistan’s defence day. This is due to the fact that India failed to unilaterally win the war against its rival. Therefore, India should introspect rather than celebrate the event while saluting the sacrifices made by our defence forces, as suggested by an eminent foreign relations expert.

One of the major failures in the 1965 war was in the area of intelligence. That said, close on the heels of 1962 Indo-China war, the 1965 war too witnessed a surprise attack by Pakistan. New Delhi was taken by surprise when it learnt that Pakistan had launched an offensive against India along the Rann of Kachchh in its western frontier. Although India launched a spectacular counter-offensive strategy, the inability to deal with strategic intelligence in the first place was a notable failure of its intelligence network.

Second,India lacked strategic planning for the war. It was along the International Boundary(IB) line in Punjab that India captured some areas of the Lahore district in Pakistan.Similarly, India forces captured the Hajipir pass along the ceasefire line in Jammu and Kashmir. Later,in the Tashkent agreement that materialized on the insistence of UN, USA and USSR, India had to forego all its claims and possessions. It is natural for India to follow the policy of ‘non-aggression’ and thus give up the occupied territories during war. However, India failed to pursue the case with strategic view-point and deal with Pakistan firmly in the Taskent meeting in 1966, that was mediated by a third party.

It is notable that India managed to outsmart Pakistan while the Kashmir issue came up at the UNSC meeting in 1965. According to a prominent diplomat who was posted at a member of India’s permanent mission at the UN, India staged a walkout protesting against the speech delivered by the then Prime Minister of Pakistan at the UNSC meeting. This led to the members of the UNSC refraining from discussing the ‘Kashmir issue’ for decades after the war. It is evident from the fact that between 1948 and 1965, UNSC passed 23 resolutions on Kashmir issue. On the contrary, UNSC passed only one resolution after 1965 when it called for respecting the ceasefire line after the Bangladesh war in 1971