It is said that Indians pass off myth for history, while the Chinese mythologise their history. It is not surprising that both subcontinental cousins share the trait when it comes to the 1965 India-Pakistan war.
Pakistan
has long celebrated September 6 as Defence of Pakistan (Yaum-e-Difa)
Day. This was the day when, it says, it defended itself against the
Indian Army that had been launched on three axes towards Lahore.
For this
myth to take life, they gloss over Operation Gibraltar, the attack on
Kashmir by thousands of irregulars on August 5, and Operation Grand Slam
of September 1 where Pakistan’s six armoured divisions came close to
cutting the highway connecting Jammu to Poonch.
The Indian myths are only being unveiled now, when the government has decided on a large-scale celebration of the event.
A
celebration implies an achievement, but truth be told, the Indian
performance during the 1965 war was just a shade better than that of
Pakistan. And in that was our victory.
This
is what the commander of the main effort, Lt Gen Harbakhsh, had to say
about the main thrust to Lahore that faltered on day one itself, largely
due to incompetent leadership of the division and its brigades.
Surprise attack
On
September 6, XI Corps launched a surprise attack at 4am, which led to
the crossing of the Ichhogil canal and the capture of the Bata shoe
factory on the outskirts of Lahore by 11am. But the senior commanders
could not cope with the situation, and ordered a withdrawal to the east
bank of the canal by that evening.
Despite
XI Corps capturing some 140 sq miles of land, and crippling Pakistan’s
1st armoured division at Khem Karan, Singh says it was “a sickening
repetition of command failures leading the sacrifice of a series of
cheap victories.”
The
performance of India’s premier I Corps, built around the 1st armoured
division, was no less disappointing. I Corps captured 200 sq miles of
territory and destroyed a great deal of Pakistani armour. But it did not
deliver what it was meant to — a decisive battlefield victory.
“With the exception of a few minor successes… the operational performance was virtually a catalogue of lost victories.”
Singh praised the performance of units like the Poona Horse, but was harsh in his judgment of the higher commanders.
Harbakhsh’s
third corps - the XV Corps, which then, as now, looks after Kashmir -
fared better. It gained an unambiguous victory in capturing the Haji Pir
Pass and in defeating Operation Gibraltar. However, it was battered by
the surprise attack launched by Pakistan in the Chamb sector on
September 1.
India
also launched an offensive in the Rajasthan sector with a view of tying
down Pakistani forces in Sind. But the plan was poorly conceived and
executed. There was no joint planning, leave alone coordination, between
the air force and the army. This led to the Lahore fiasco when
Pakistani air strikes disrupted the Indian offensive on September 6.
Despite
seeing action on September 1 in Chamb, the IAF was unprepared for the
strike on September 6 when the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) destroyed 13
aircraft in a raid on Pathankot, including two new MiG-21s.
Similar
raids found the IAF station Kalaikunda in the east unawares, leading to
the destruction of eight aircraft on the ground.
Shoddy intelligence
Intelligence
was equally shoddy. India failed to pick up the fact that the
Pakistanis had surreptitiously raised an additional armoured division,
and the IAF could not locate PAF aircraft in East Pakistan.
There
are, of course, bigger questions. Indian accounts claim that there was
no plan to capture Lahore. If not, then why were three divisions thrown
at it?
And
if the plan was to just carry out shallow attrition attacks, it nearly
came a cropper in Khem Karan when Pakistan launched its 1st armoured
division in a bid to reach the Beas bridge that would have cut off
Amritsar. Fortunately, they were trapped at Asal Uttar and defeated.
Biggest blunder
Perhaps
the biggest blunder India made was to terminate the war when it did by
accepting the UN mandated ceasefire on September 22nd, which also
happened to be the date in which the Chinese ultimatum expired.
While
these were important considerations, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri
wanted to know from Army chief JN Chaudhuri whether India could gain
any great victory if it continued to fight.
In
his typically offhand style, the general declared that India had run
out of ammunition and it would be okay to accept the ceasefire. But
later it was found out that only 14 per cent of the front line
ammunition had been used and the number of tanks India still had was
double that of Pakistan.
We
can still be proud of the bravery and grit of our fighting men in 1965,
but we can only pray that the higher management of our armed forces has
improved.
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