At the height of the Indo-Pakistan war, in mid-September 1965, Britain’s ITN broadcast a 15-minute report from what they called ‘another potential starting point for a Third World War’. The images were not of Indian and Pakistani soldiers in disputed Kashmir. Instead, the dramatic footage showed Indian and Chinese soldiers 14,000 feet up on the other side of the Himalayas, on either side of the border between the Kingdom of Sikkim (an Indian protectorate perched between Nepal and Bhutan) and Chinese-occupied Tibet.
The broadcast highlights an often-overlooked international dimension to the 1965 conflict, which caused frantic diplomatic activity involving India, Pakistan, China, the US and the Soviet Union and was, in fact, an important factor in the eventual de-escalation of the crisis.
Kashmir, the largest of the 600 Princely States of British India, which became the main theatre of the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, had been a running sore between the two countries for nearly two decades. At Partition in 1947 the question of the Princely States’ future loomed large. All ran their own affairs under individual agreements with the British. Official policy was to allow the ruler of each to determine whether the Princely State would join India or Pakistan. For most it was a simple decision. For Kashmir, it was not. The Hindu Maharaja, Hari Singh, ruled a majority Muslim population. India’s leaders presumed Singh would decide to join India. Pakistan’s leaders argued that the Muslim population should join Pakistan. Singh, fearing the socialist Nehru’s India almost as much as he did the prospect of joining Jinnah’s Pakistan, considered a third option: asserting independence, harbouring dreams of creating a Switzerland of Asia.
Reality jolted Singh out of his reverie. When Kashmiri Muslims began to flee to Pakistan (principally to avoid punitive taxes), Pakistani Pathans crossed back into Kashmir to ‘liberate’ its people from their Hindu ruler. A bloody conflict broke out. Nehru sent military support to Singh – on the condition that he accede to India.
The Indians sought to internationalise the issue, taking it to the newly formed United Nations in early 1948. The UN commission to New Delhi and Karachi advocated a plebiscite in Kashmir. As the fighting continued, relations between Pakistan and India deteriorated. Positions became entrenched. Nehru (whose family originated from Kashmir) reneged on the idea of a plebiscite. The Kashmir operation was vital to prove the subcontinent could rise above communalism. It was, he said, ‘a fight for the freedom of India’.
A fragile UN-promoted ceasefire line in 1949 left India in control of the lion’s share of the state, including the vital ‘Vale of Kashmir’. Pakistan settled in to its position as the aggrieved party. As Pakistan and India found their feet during the 1950s, the Kashmir issue festered in the background.
Meanwhile, to the north, the People’s Republic of China was consolidating its de facto control of Tibet, which it had invaded in 1950. Nehru dreamed of a Pan-Asian entente between China and India. But after the Dalai Lama’s flight to India in 1959, such hopes faded. Worried by such developments, the Indians attempted to assert control in two disputed areas of the Sino-Indian border. The result was the short, sharp 1962 Sino-Indian conflict. The Chinese, who had repulsed Indian advances and moved deep into Indian territory, were regarded as victors.
Pakistan’s new president, Ayub Khan, who had assumed power in a coup in 1959, watched these developments with interest. India’s military had appeared unprepared and blundering during the 1962 war. Khan and his new foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, sensed an opportunity to enlist Chinese support in pushing their claims in Kashmir.
The ageing Nehru, desperate to leave a positive legacy for Kashmir, agreed to negotiations with Pakistan; historians have often pondered the counterfactual question: what would have happened if Nehru’s death had not cut short negotiations in June 1964?
Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, by Raphaël Verwilghen. Catholic University of Leuven. Public Domain.
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