1965 war
See also
Most of the entries listed below are still evolving. They are still about individual battles, not the war as a whole.
However, the entries about the navies of the two countries have been taken from their own official histories and at least their authors consider them complete--and, more or less, they are. The entry about the Indian Navy, in particular, is book-length.
1965 War: Indian accounts-The Indian Air Force
1965 War: journalists’ and writers’ accounts-1
1965 War: Pakistani accounts-1
1965 War: Pakistani accounts-2
1965 War: The air forces of India and Pakistan
1965 War: The role of the Indian Navy Book-length
1965 War: The role of the Pakistan Navy
1965 War: The role of third-countries I.e. China
1965 War: Third-country accounts The New York Times and TIME
There is a lot of repetition and padding in the pages listed above.
Once Indpaedia.com is formally launched (in late 2013 or 2014) we will request readers to make these pages crisper, editing out repetition and opinions; and also contribute fresh materials.
The impact of the 1965 war on Indo-Pak sports
The Times of India, Aug 31 2015
Ronojoy Sen
1965: The year India, Pakistan began sparring in sports
The war dramatically changed cordial sporting links. Thereafter, aftershocks of every skirmish were felt in stadiums on both sides Before 1965, India and Paki stan had squared off on the playing field on several oc casions. Despite the bitter ness of the Partition, most of the encounters in cricket, hockey and football were held in a cordial atmosphere though there were intimations of the high stakes involved.It was in 1952 that India had the opportunity to play Pakistan for the first time on the cricket field. Abdul Hafeez Kardar, who had represented the undivided Indian side in the 1946 tour of England, led the Pakistan team. An Oxford Blue in cricket, Kardar had, according to Ramachandra Guha, a “deep commitment to the idea of Pakistan“ and would later become a prominent politician. The first Test match between the two neighbours was played in Delhi and inaugurated by President Rajendra Prasad. The series was played in good spirit though Hindu groups tried to disrupt the matches. In Nagpur, where Pakistan played a match, the president of the Hindu Mahasabha, N B Khare, announced that his party would stage protests outside the stadium. In a preemptive move Khare was arrested prompting the Pakistani paper, Dawn, to proclaim that the Hindu leader had been “bowled out.“ The stands were packed for all the matches, early indica tions of the passions generated by India-Pakistan contests.
Three years later, India went to Pakistan for a five-Test tour. A dull draw in the first Test at Dhaka was a sign of the safety-first cricket that was to follow resulting in all Test matches ending in a draw. Wis den described the cricket as “two boxers tentatively sparring for an opening.“
But the lack of excitement on the field was compensated by the enthusiasm off it. For the third Test match in Lahore, 10,000 Indians crossed the border at Wagah every day and returned by evening. Dawn called it the “biggest mass migration across the frontier since the Partition.“ However, there were reports of a heated exchange between Kardar and India's captain, Vinoo Mankad, at a banquet, which at the time was not reported.
In the 1950s, both India and Pakistan were not considered among the top teams in cricket. In hockey, however, the situation was quite different with India having won the Olympic gold medal every time since the 1928 Games.Though the Indian and Pakistani national sides had not played each other after Independence, the Punjab Police team had toured Pakistan to play their counterparts, the west Punjab Police, in 1955. In Lahore, banners were put up welcoming the “friends from neighbouring India“ and according to official estimates, some 60,000 Indians were expected to cross the border to wit ness the matches. India and Pakistan's national teams first played against each other on the hockey field in the final of , the 1956 Olympic Games with India wint ning by a solitary goal.
India and Pakistan renewed their t cricketing rivalry in 1961-62. The crick et was as dull as the previous series with all five Tests as well as 15 first-class matches ending in a draw, a dubious record of sorts. According to Wisden, “the chief aim of the contestants ap peared to be to uphold national prestige by avoiding defeat.“ The bonhomie of the two earlier series had evaporated to some extent with Indian batsman Abbas Ali Baig receiving threat letters that accused him of deliberately playing poorly .
In football, too, there was contact between India and Pakistan. India won the Asian Quadrangular Tournament -involving India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Burma -four times in succession from 1952 to 1955. It was in the inaugural tournament in Colombo that India first met Pakistan on the football field and played out a goalless draw. Both countries had equal points at the end of the tournament and were declared joint winners.Pakistani sides playing in India were not uncommon in the 1950s with Lahore's Raiders Football Club winning a sensational match against Mohun Bagan in the 1952 Rovers Cup. The talent scouts of the Calcutta football clubs, then the best in India, even looked to Pakistan for players. At the first Quadrangular, Pakistani forward Masood Fakhri caught the attention of the Calcutta clubs. The next year, East Bengal recruited him. Fakhri, however, played for only two seasons for East Bengal before moving to Mohammedan Sporting in 1955.
The free movement of Pakistani players to India was a reminder of the friendly ties between the two neighbours in the 1950s. Things changed dramatically after the 1965 war. Bilateral sporting contact stopped between the two countries though they continued to play each other in international competitions like the Asian Games and Olympics. Commentator A F S Talyarkhan wrote in 1968 that “test cricket may help cement ties between India and Pakistan.“ The next year, Pakistan's delegate to the International Hockey Federation, A I S Dara, who had also played for India in the 1936 Olympics, said a hockey Test series between India and Pakistan could be played provided “the political climate in India allowed it.“ Eventually , the first sporting contact on the Indian subcontinent after the 1965 war was not in cricket or hockey , but in tennis.Pakistan travelled to an unlikely venue, Patna, to play a Davis Cup tie in 1970. India, represented by Jaidip Mukherjea, Premjit Lall and Vijay Amritraj, won easily . However, in 1971, when the two countries fought another war, Pakistan gave a walkover to India in the Davis Cup by refusing to play on “political grounds.“ The same year, India played Pakistan in the inaugural hockey World Cup in Spain and lost in the semi-final. The tournament was, however, marred by an Indian protest over a map engraved on the cup showing Kashmir as part of Pakistan.
While India continued to play Pakistan in international tournaments, the first bilateral contests on the subcontinent in both cricket and hockey were held only in 1978 bringing a semblance of normalcy back to a frayed relationship.
When Pakistani troops had ‘entered’Jammu City!
Dr Rajesh Bhat , When Pakistani troops had ‘entered’Jammu City! "Daily Excelsior" 18/10/2015
It was an early and breezy morning of September 7, 1965 when Pakistani troops had entered Jammu city!
Sounds unbelievable, especially to those who are witness tothe Indo-Pak war of 1965 and also to all patriots conscious of the heroic deeds,might and capabilities of brave Indian Jawans that such a thing must never happen even in future.
But that is what thePakistani media had claimed and disseminated amongstits anxious citizens and also to their troops in a vain bid to lift their sagging morale.Not only that…. the enemy media had those days even spread rumours of having “bombarded” South Delhi and having captured some villages of Kashmir and Punjab, bordering Pakistan. Through these misdeeds, they could only make a laughing stock of themselves.
The monitoring of Radio Pakistan during 1965 war had interesting things to reveal! Its morning news on September 6, 1965 was based on the opening lines like: “ our fighters today shot down two enemy super-connies near Agra…..” Another false news was broadcast next day which began like this: “ our forces have entered Jammu and are about to move in Gumat area”… The evening bulletin on the same day had claimed that “ Pakistani troops were about to capture some prominent cities of Punjab…..”.
Although such stuff from across the border was aimed at creating chaos and confusion among the masses, All India Radio was, however, there to counter Radio Pakistan, which had earned the name of “Radio Jhootistan” for its notoriety.
Former Union Deputy Minister of Information and Broadcasting in Lal Bahadur Shastri’s Cabinet, C R Pattabhiraman in his transcribed radio talk, broadcast over All India Radio, Delhi in October 1965 recalls how Radio Pakistan had shamelessly claimed that her “ planes had reduced South Delhi to ashes and damaged Jamana Bridge”. The former Minister also makes a mention of Radio Pakistan’s rabid propaganda when it had spread rumoursthat “ cars in Delhi were stranded for want of petrol”.
Radio Pakistan’s anti-India stance was a part of “Operation Gibraltar”. (1965 war was code-named by the enemy). Under this plan, some Pakistani soldiers, who had initially been infiltrated into Jammu and Kashmir for kicking up violence and subversion, were guided by Radio Pakistan’s coded messages. Four infiltrators who were captured by the Indian security forces in the upper reaches of Jammu and Kashmir had later described the whole plan of “Operation Gibraltar” in a broadcast on All India Radio on August 8, 1965. This has a mention in a foreword written for Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s book “The First Round, Indo-Pakistan War 1965” by Altaf Gauhar, the then Pakistan’s Secretary of Information and Broadcasting.
The captured infiltrators had revealed the enemy plan of initiating terror and arson in Jammu and Kashmir and to destroy bridges, communications and government property. After a few days of large scale damage, a plan was to announce over an underground radio Station
“Sada-e-Hurriyat Jammu and Kashmir” (Voice of Kashmir) that the people of Kashmir had raised in revolt. In due course, after describing the “success of the people’s uprising”, this radio station (operated from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) would “announce the formation of a National Government in Jammu and Kashmir.”
Such kind of anti-India propaganda was in fact not something new from Radio Pakistan. Former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Syed Mir Qasim in his autobiography (My Life and Times, New Delhi: Allied Publications) also makes a mention of strong and malicious anti-India propaganda over Radio Pakistan.
It was not only Radio Pakistan involved in anti-India propaganda but a section of Pakistani print media was equally the culprit in fanning the disinformation campaign. `The Pakistan Times’ in one of its issues of September 1965 had headlined a news item: “ Jammu city was cut off from rest of State. Mujahideen on town’s outskirts”. The same paper had also published a main lead under the heading “Pitches battles in Srinagar. Indian battalion near Baramulla wiped out”. There wasnot an iota of truth in these blatant lies.
As a sentinel guarding the Indian interests, All India Radio had to introduce a series of counter-propaganda programmes to instill confidence amongst people by unmasking “Radio Jhootistan”. AIR Stations of Delhi, Jallandhar, Jammu and Srinagar were among the front runners to fight the 1965 propaganda war and at the same time raising the morale of the security forces by playing the patriotic numbers.
The story of Indo-Pak war of 1965 is now 50 years old but the Nation continues to suffer till date at the hands of Pakistan’s proxy war. And their media propaganda is part of this proxy war, which is showing signs of escalation every moment.
