India is looking back unflinchingly at the 1965 war

It seems India has come of age and it is looking back unflinchingly at the 1965 India-Pakistan war. While the Henderson Brooks Report about the 1962 India-China war, which was a debacle, still remains under wraps, the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Indian Army have got two separate histories out about the 1965 war. Frankly, history of war is not an established discipline in the Indian universities and there are no acknowledged war historians in the country. But the IAF and the Army have gone ahead with their respective history projects with a certain bravado. The IAF history, with the evocative title, The Duels of the Himalayan Eagle: The First Indo-Pak Air War, was written by Air Marshal (retired) Bharat Kumar, who was a young fighter pilot in 1965. He seems to have done the best he could, poring over official records as well squadron diaries and personal interviews with the veterans. The Army’s history of the 1965 war, on the other hand, has been written by veteran journalist and defence analyst Nitin Gokhale, and is titled, 1965, Turning The Tide: How India Won The War. 

There are interesting differences in tone and conclusions between the two histories. The IAF account arrives at a cautious conclusion, saying that the war was a stalemate, and no side can claim outright victory. And it quietly rejects the Pakistan claim of victory on the simple count of lost aircraft: India’s 59 (out of a total of 560) to Pakistan’s 43 (out of 186). Kumar’s history has also looked at the many disadvantages that the IAF faced, including lack of coordination between the IAF and the Army, as well as lack of proper intelligence. Gokhale’s narrative seems emphatic in its thesis that the Indian Army had not only won the war by thwarting Pakistan’s goal of wresting Kashmir from India, but the country had inflicted “unacceptable losses” on Pakistan’s military and which had consequences for the “politico-military structure”. 

(Archive) A picture dated September 1, 1965 shows a street seen in Srinagar, Kashmir where everyday life goes on during the Second Indo-Pakistani War, known as the Second Kashmir War, over the disputed regions of Jammu and Kashmir. AFP PHOTO

Even as the nation observes the 50th anniversary of the 1965 war with solemnity and pride — the underlying jingoism that the right-wing elements want to drum up can be ignored — it is a reaffirmation that India’s military can defend its territory and even capture enemy territory. But wars cannot be waged without end, and many of the modern wars do not always end in a clear victory or defeat to either side. Most of the time wars are followed by peace conferences. That is indeed the larger lesson of contemporary conflicts. 

The 1965 war is also a clear sign to Pakistan that it cannot hope to solve the Kashmir question through force. It might appear that after the 1998 nuclear test explosions by the two countries, conventional war of the kind that was fought in 1965 has become irrelevant. But it is not so. Pakistan continues to wage covert war through infiltration and the terrorist networks. And there might come a moment, as it had in 1965, that covert war will escalate into an open, conventional war. Pakistan also believes, rather irrationally, that it can use nuclear arsenal as a bargaining chip.

While Kumar and Gokhale should be acknowledged as pioneers, these two histories should lead to other research tracts on the subject. There is a need to use information from the Pakistan side to know what was going on in the minds of Pakistan’s political rulers and military commanders. A proper history of the 1965 war requires that each side needs to supplement the information of the other. It might sound hopelessly utopian to suggest that India and Pakistan need to work on a joint history of their wars in 1947, 1965 and 1971. It will help in arriving at a sober assessment of each other’s military capabilities and prove the imperatives of peace in the region.