Beyond the Lines: An Autobiography

by Kuldip Nayar

  Meanwhile, New Delhi intensified its diplomatic initiative to garner foreign opinion against the infiltration from Pakistan. B.K. Nehru met US Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and explained, as did other Indian envoys in the countries to which they were accredited, that Pakistani army officers were leading ‘massive infiltration’ in gross violation of the ceasefire line. Rawalpindi claimed that no Pakistani soldier was involved. Kewal Singh, Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, met Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who said it was only an ‘uprising’ in Jammu & Kashmir.

  The UN secretary general, to whom India complained, described the situation as a ‘dangerous threat to peace’ but did nothing beyond summoning Lt-Gen. R.H. Nimmo, head of the UN military observers’ group in Kashmir, for consultation. His interpretation was that the ceasefire agreement applied only to the armed forces on either side, not to civilians, armed or unarmed. However, in a subsequent report, he did confirm that armed Pakistani infiltrators had crossed the ceasefire line in an attempt to destroy strategic communication targets.

  Shastri was surprised to receive a letter from Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, who did not side with India. Kosygin wrote (4 September) that ‘the rights and wrongs of the present situation were hardly of any importance at the moment … The main efforts should be concentrated on the immediate termination of military operations and stop tanks and silence the guns.’ His letter equated New Delhi with Rawalpindi and blamed both the countries for playing into the hands of ‘American imperialism’. Indeed, Moscow’s tilt towards India had ended.

  General J.N. Chaudhuri, then chief of the army staff, told me:

  After 5 May 1965, I was working out the appropriate moves to attack Pakistan if and when it attacked Kashmir. The day Pakistan moved its regular troops, infantry and armour into the Jammu sector, I was in Kashmir. As I was coming back, in the plane to Delhi, the Director of Military Operations who was in the aircraft with me started writing out the required signals to go to the formations concerned. On landing he sent them out and I immediately went to see the Defence Minister who formally confirmed my action. I then informed the Prime Minister.

  Disappointed, Shastri was now on the side of the hawks who maintained that Pakistan must be taught a lesson. Rawalpindi had launched a massive attack on 1 September in the Akhnur–Jammu sector by crossing the ceasefire line. Two days later, on 3 September, Shastri ordered the Indian army to cross the international border and march into Pakistan. The actual attack came on 6 September, and would have come a day earlier had not the Indian air force wanted to pound the ‘enemy’ bases first. It hardly did so. The Pakistan air force attacked Pathankot airport on the afternoon of 6 September and destroyed thirteen Indian planes.

  After the war, I asked Shastri who gave the specific order to cross the international boundary. ‘I did,’ he said. According to Shastri, Chaudhuri and others were taken aback when he asked them to march into Pakistan. Harbaksh Singh told me that the army could never forget ‘this tallest decision by the shortest man’.

  In 1966, a few days before Nehru’s birth anniversary (14 November), when I met Indira Gandhi, I asked her who took the decision to march into Pakistan? She said: ‘We, the Cabinet Committee on Defence did when the army commanders told us that it was necessary to engage Pakistan forces elsewhere to relieve pressure on Jammu & Kashmir. Shastri accepted the advice of the army commanders.’ I asked what her father would have done. ‘He would have also gone by the advice of the army commander,’ said Indira Gandhi. I am sure that Nehru, a stickler for the rights and wrongs in the world affairs, would not have crossed the international border.

  Some critics think that Shastri, who was ‘diminutive physically and otherwise’, wanted to do something extraordinary to add to his stature and, therefore, went to war against Pakistan. His explanation was however that the war was forced on him. It is true that the action against Pakistan made him a hero. Before the war, I would hear titters from the audience at cinema halls when his picture appeared on the screen. His image soared after the war.

  The fact was that Shastri had very little choice. He had to open a second front in Pakistan to relieve pressure on Indian troops greatly outnumbered and out-positioned in the Chhamb sector and the Poonch–Rajouri and the Jammu–Srinagar roads. The only link with the Valley was threatened. If the road had been cut, all Indian forces in Jammu & Kashmir would have been isolated: Indian units were operating in difficult terrain in that area and could only use light tanks while Pakistan was in a position to move in its heavy ones.

  ‘I want to reach Lahore before they enter Kashmir,’ Shastri told Gen. Chaudhuri. Plans to attack Pakistan already existed because at the time of the Kutch confrontation the two countries had almost reached the point of war. In fact, a few days earlier, Gen. Chaudhuri had told Lt. Gen. Harbaksh Singh, as he confirmed to me, that India should be ready to attack Pakistan across the international border within 48 hours because of the pressure on it to take Chhamb. This was exactly what happened.

  Lt. Gen. Harbaksh Singh was clear that India must move towards Pakistan if the latter ever ‘marched’ on Kashmir. Therefore, when Chhamb was attacked, and in the process Pakistan crossed nearly a quarter of a mile of international border, he repeated Nehru’s warning that any attack on Kashmir was an attack on India. Harbaksh Singh’s argument was weighty, particularly when it was difficult to hold Kashmir because of the way Pakistani forces were advancing in the Chhamb sector.

  ‘Operation Riddle’, a three-pronged attack on Pakistan was mounted from Amritsar, Ferozepur, and Gurdaspur, and two days later, on 8 September, the Sialkot front was opened. Sialkot was the base from where Pakistan had planned its attack on the Chhamb sector. They, however, did not have an armoured division. General Tikka Khan, Pakistan’s army commander, told me that they were able to hoodwink the Indian army through field phone conversations that Indians intercepted, indicating that the armoured division was positioned at Sialkot. ‘But this was not true. You could just have walked in,’ he said.

  Harbaksh Singh told me that Gen. Chaudhuri wanted him to withdraw the forces behind the Beas for better defence but he refused. When I checked with Chaudhuri, he said that he was not the kind of general who would brook disobedience. The explanation probably was that Chaudhuri ‘wanted’ Harbaksh to withdraw but never ordered him to do so.

  It was really a border war because the theatre of hostilities did not go beyond 15 miles on each side; India occupied 470 sq. miles of Pakistan’s territory and 270 sq. miles of Pakistani-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Pakistan’s gain of Indian territory was to the extent of 210 sq. miles The Indian forces did not disturb East Pakistan because what they had sought to achieve in the western region was already beyond their capacity.

  I must confess that most of my insight into the 1965 war was based on Harbaksh Singh’s report which he sent to the Statesman to be published when I was its resident editor. I used some of it in my book, Distant Neighbours, a book on India–Pakistan relations. He approached eminent lawyer Nani Palkhivala to sue me. Palkhivala told him that he did not wish to take up the brief because ‘both of you are my friends’ and advised him to make up with me. Thereafter, Harbaksh Singh did not speak to me for five years.

  When the two sides stopped fighting, both had exhausted most of their ammunition. For Pakistanis it was a jehad against Kafir Hindus. One example was that of a wounded young Pakistani officer, captured in the Ferozepur sector, who refused to accept blood transfusion, saying: ‘I would rather die than accept the blood of a Kafir.’ That officer died, but there were instances of jawans on both sides being looked after by soldiers from the villages to which they had belonged prior to Partition.

  Once at a seminar I asked Gen. Chaudhuri why India’s advance was so slow. His said that India wanted to destroy Pakistan’s armour; not to occupy territory. Subsequently, Air Marshal Arjan Singh reiterated that India essentially fought a war of attrition; what really mattered was the extent of damage inflicted on Pakistan’s armed forces. Harbaksh Singh also told me
that the decision taken before attacking Pakistan was not to take Lahore. ‘That was not our military aim.’

  Gen. Chaudhuri confirmed that the Indian army never wanted to occupy Lahore. He was aware that Lahore was well defended and that a great many Indian troops would be tied up in the occupation of the city which by itself would have achieved little. Later, he said during a discussion with journalists, that the occupation of Lahore would have meant feeding a civilian population of almost one million.

  The real reason for not going into Lahore was the fear of street fighting for which the Pakistan government had prepared the population: ‘Fight with doors, windows, sticks, knives, or whatever you can find,’ was the call to the streets of Lahore and the people responded to it. The fact that India was unable to capture Lahore led other countries to believe that the war was a draw.

  During the war Shastri used RSS volunteers to regulate traffic in Delhi. The organization approached him and he saw no harm in posting its men at different points. This, however, conveyed a wrong message to Muslims who were already feeling insecure. In fact, Muslims became suspect in the eyes of many Hindus as soon as the tension with Pakistan rose over the Rann of Kutch. It got aggravated after the 1965 war.

  The limited war was over on 23 September. Four days later, Shastri said to the disgruntled soldiers in the Ferozepur sector that he had to agree to the ceasefire because of foreign pressure, particularly from the US upon whom India depended for food and economic aid. Surprisingly, he did not mention the Soviet Union which also wanted us to end the war.

  Those were the days when Washington began reconsidering its policy on Kashmir and had second thoughts about whether a plebiscite would be the correct solution to the problem. The US now believed that India and Pakistan must reach a solution between themselves and that outside interference would not help. More recently in November 2010, President Barack Obama declared the same stand in public.

  India’s war with Pakistan made one thing clear to all: India did not consider Kashmir a disputed territory but an integral part of the country. Nehru’s 1952 New Year message had come true: ‘If Pakistan by mistake invades Kashmir, we will not only meet them in Kashmir but it will be a full-scale war between India and Pakistan.’ This made people like Jayaprakash Narayan change their stand on Kashmir completely. He used to say that the future of Kashmir was to be determined by discussions among New Delhi, Srinagar, and Islamabad. Now he issued a statement to announce that Pakistan had lost its locus standi in Kashmir and that the parties to the dispute were Delhi and the people of Kashmir.

  The two foreign powers which sullied their reputations in India’s eyes during the 21-day war with Pakistan were the UK and China, particularly the former. Shastri had gone to the extent of hailing the Commonwealth as ‘an association which can help to further peace and friendship amongst nations’. This was in line with what Nehru told the state chief ministers when India accepted membership of the Commonwealth: ‘It was desirable to maintain some form of association with the UK and the Commonwealth because this seemed to me advantageous, both from the national point of view and that of world peace at large.’

  Here, however, was Harold Wilson of Britian, the hub of the Commonwealth, accepting Islamabad’s version and saying in a prepared statement on 6 September 1965 that ‘he felt deeply concerned, especially at the news that Indian forces have today attacked Pakistani territory across the international frontiers in the Punjab’. While Shastri criticized London privately, Indira Gandhi attacked it publicly: ‘One of the strange quirks of the contemporary scene is that countries who are pledged to democracy and freedom so often lend their support to dictatorships and to censure freedom.’

  As regards China, it first sent a note that Indian troops had violated the Tibet–Sikkim border. Subsequently, on 18 September, it issued an ultimatum that New Delhi should either dismantle its 56 military installations in Sikkim within the next three days or face ‘grave consequences’. The ultimatum rattled New Delhi and Shastri did fear an attack from China. However, after shelling some posts in Sikkim and Ladakh, the Chinese gave up their game of bluff with the claim that India had itself demolished the military structures in question.

  Peking’s behaviour was strange because Shastri had heard only a few months earlier from Edgar Fauré, a former prime minister of France, after a visit to China, that he thought conditions existed for ‘fruitful talks’ between India and China.

  Shastri was worried but felt reassured after India’s chargé d’affairs, Jagat Mehta, a distinguished foreign service officer, sent a three-page telegram from Peking to argue why China would not attack India. Shastri congratulated him after the ceasefire for his correct reading.

  The US gave an assurance to Shastri that it would not allow India to go under. Between themselves, Washington and London reportedly discussed plans to provide India with air cover in the event of China attacking so that the IAF would be free to strike Chinese targets: Nehru too had requested air cover towards the end of the Sino–India war in 1962. Shastri told me that Nehru had written letters to President John F. Kennedy seeking air cover.

  One of Nehru’s letters: ‘begged for US help not just in “our fight for survival” but for “the survival of freedom and independence in this subcontinent and the rest of Asia”.’

  The Soviet Union had always favoured bilateral talks, and Kosygin successfully brought the two sides together across the table in Tashkent after the UN Security Council failed to get them to withdraw their forces from each other’s territory. The US had tried to host such a meeting but Shastri was not enthusiastic about their involvement. To Ayub Khan, Kosygin wrote that Tashkent was famous for its pullao; to Shastri, a vegetarian, Kosygin’s invitation spoke of the historic background of the town.

  India’s initial reaction was unfavourable and a cable was sent to T.N. Kaul, then India’s ambassador to the USSR, to communicate a refusal to Moscow. He did not forward the reply and instead sent a long cable to Delhi requesting the prime minister to reconsider the decision against the background of the Soviet support on Kashmir and the fact that Moscow was staking its prestige in proposing such a conference. The Indian cabinet thereafter reconsidered its earlier decision and asked the ambassador to accept the proposal.

  Pakistan’s inside information was that India would refuse, but when it sent its acceptance, Rawalpindi had no choice but to agree. Shastri justified his acceptance to newspaper editors by arguing that he would try to retain Hajipir and Tithwal, the vantage positions in Kashmir which India had captured during the war. The best thing, he said, would be to have a conference in order to persuade Pakistan to commit itself to ‘certain things’ in exchange for withdrawal from the territory India had occupied. I felt he was preparing the country for a withdrawal from Hajipir and Tithwal, the posts which India was extremely keen on retaining as they were important for the control of Kashmir.

  Before leaving for Tashkent, Shastri asked his finance minister, T.T. Krishnamachari to resign, suspecting that he had made fun of him behind his back. Of greater concern for Shastri was that TTK and Indira Gandhi had formed a united front.

  This was not the first time that TTK was obliged to leave the cabinet. Seven years earlier he had resigned following certain questionable transactions undertaken by the Life Insurance Corporation, a public sector undertaking that had allegedly taken orders from him. At that time Nehru had told his colleagues that TTK had to leave because ‘the minister must shoulder the responsibility for any decision or action of his secretary’. Nehru had then written to the state chief ministers to praise TTK’s ‘great ability and perseverance’, adding that ‘his leaving us had been a great blow to me and to our Government’.

  TTK’s exit from the Shastri government was also said to be because of pressure from the US. The story that went around was that President Lyndon B. Johnson got rid of two ministers in the subcontinent: TTK from India and Bhutto from Pakistan, both anti-American. When I asked Bhutto if he was crowded out by Ayub Khan at Johnson’s
insistence, his reply was:

  I am one of the few politicians who have staged a comeback after having been eliminated by both great powers [US, USSR]. Poor Krishna Menon alienated one of them and he never could effect a recovery.

  After TTK’s resignation, Indira Gandhi observed that it was only matter of time before she too would be crowded out under pressure. According to a senior Congress leader, Dinesh Singh, then very close to her, she even spoke in terms of settling down in the UK and inquired about the cost of living there and the royalty that the books written by Nehru earned. Indira Gandhi realized that Shastri had gained new strength and was receiving a hero’s welcome wherever he went. He even introduced a new salutation, Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan (victory to the soldier; victory to the farmer) which went down very well with the masses.

  When Shastri went to Tashkent he took along with him two plane-loads of journalists and told me that those from the English language press were bound to oppose him but those from the vernacular press would right the balance. He expected me to help him strike this balance.

  Shastri was well aware that he would have to vacate Hajipir and Tithwal. The Security Council’s unanimous resolution (20 September 1965) called upon India and Pakistan to withdraw ‘all armed personnel back to the positions held by them before 5 August 1965’, and both the US and Russia were insistent it be implemented. How long would he be able to withstand the pressure from them given India’s dependence on both of them?

  From the very outset of the Tashkent Conference (beginning 4 January 1966) it was clear that Pakistan’s aim was to revive the question of Kashmir and India’s to avoid it. In his inaugural speech at Tashkent, where I was present, Ayub Khan said that he would sign a no-war pact with India once the ‘basic problem’, meaning Kashmir, was resolved. Shastri did not oppose a no-war pact, which he said would help ‘improve the totality of relations between India and Pakistan’.