How ’65 lost to OROP

India planned to observe the 50th anniversary of the India-Pakistan War of 1965 with a massive programme of ceremonial, professional and socio-cultural programmes, but, ironically, the proposed celebrations were drowned out by the strident One Rank One Pension protests at Jantar Mantar and the euphoria after the demand was accepted by the government. In the process, the country was treated at one stage to the ugly and unedifying spectacle of the Delhi Police attempting to physically hustle the soldier-protestors out of Jantar Mantar.

This is indeed a pity and a shame because many of the veterans closely involved in the OROP demonstrations were distinguished participants in the 1965 operations, and many of them had been decorated for gallantry. Thankfully, the statement by defence minister Manohar Parrikar, conveying acceptance of OROP by the government, brought matters to a somewhat more even keel and, hopefully, will result in the discovery of some acceptable middle path.

What was less palatable, however, was the threat to boycott the official government functions in commemoration of the 1965 Indo-Pak War by some amongst the veterans, perhaps emotionally supercharged by the heat, the continuous physical and mental strain, and the constant media drumbeats of 24x7 coverage. In jostling for public attention, the OROP agitation and the war of 1965 have been on collision course, divergent and sometimes discordant, in which the remembrance of the 1965 war lost out to OROP by a wide margin, with expression of national pride in the country’s armed forces and their performance in the war of 1965 being labelled as jingoistic warmongering. This is sad.

OROP and the 1965 war are two separate issues and should have been kept separate. The over-emotive response of even a section amongst them did no honour either to the protesting veterans themselves, or to the memory of their comrades who had fallen in the 1965 conflict. The gathering of heroes at Jantar Mantar should have exercised more restraint. The defence forces have, of course, held their own days of remembrance of that conflict with full gusto. Veterans flocked back to their units, animatedly reminiscing about their own times and war experiences to fresh faced young soldiers at Sainik Sammelans and community bara khanas.

Fifty years is a long distance down memory lane, and it bears repetition and re-telling that 1965 was indeed a harsh year for India. It is also important to remember that Pakistan’s military designs vis-à-vis India have remained constant and unaltered, single-mindedly fixated upon the annexation and incorporation of Jammu and Kashmir as part of the unfinished business of Partition.

The Indo-Pak War of 1965 was not one, single, concentrated episode, but a combination of several separate phases, some of which commenced as far back as 1963-64, such as the mysterious disappearance of the sacred relic Moe-e-Muqaddas from its custodians at the Hazratbal Shrine, and its equally mysterious reappearance shortly thereafter, which unleashed an upsurge of communal violence and anti-Indian rioting in downtown Srinagar, converting the rabbit’s warren of the slums into an urban battleground rivaling Algiers. For the record, the perpetrators of that provocative incident remain officially untraceable even to this day though it carried the fingerprints of the Pakistan Army and its covert warfare wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence.

Elsewhere, too, incidents multiplied during that fateful year. In April 1965, the Pakistan Army launched “Operation Desert Hawk” in the bleak salt deserts of the Rann of Kutch, a probing thrust across latitude 24° North, the Indo-Pakistan boundary in the region, undemarcated at that time. The operation was spearheaded by 51st Infantry Brigade of the Pakistan Army, and M47 Patton tanks of 24 Cavalry aimed to draw the armoured reserves of the Indian Army into this isolated region, and away from Jammu and Kashmir which was to be Pakistan’s point of main effort.

In May 1965 came the occupation of Point 13620 and the Black Rocks region of Kargil, by Pakistani paramilitary forces disguised as tribal infiltrators, who had to be evicted at some cost by 4 Rajput of the Indian Army. This was followed in August 1965 by Pakistan’s main strategic thrust, “Operation Gibraltar”, a massive trans-LC infiltration of mujaheddin forces into the Kashmir Valley at the time of Id to link up with separatists in Srinagar, concurrently with “Operation Grand Slam”, an armoured offensive into the Chamb region, to secure Akhnoor, and cut off the entire Rajouri-Poonch region from the rest of Jammu and Kashmir, to be masticated and digested at leisure thereafter. It was a masterly plan, but it failed.

It failed because India under its diminutive, newly-appointed Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, did the unthinkable — it crossed the international border, into Pakistan’s Punjab, taking the war into the enemy’s heartland. “Operation Gibraltar” collapsed into a rabble of fleeing infiltrators, ruthlessly chased down by relentless hunter killer teams of the Indian Army. It set the pattern for the hunter killer operations against infiltrators being conducted in Jammu and Kashmir today.

OROP is important, but so is the 50th anniversary of the India-Pakistan War of 1965. One should not have been seen as conflicting with the other. The historical legacy of the Indo-Pak War of 1965 is a matter of honour, an accomplishment to be cherished and preserved for future generations of Indians. It is considered fashionable in the current environment to refer to the outcome of the Indo-Pak War of 1965 as a “draw”. It was far from being one. In terms of achieving its national aims, Pakistan was a clear loser because it failed in its objective of separating Kashmir from India through military force. On the other hand, and by the same token, India was the clear winner. It successfully defended its territory, and ensured that Kashmir remained a part of India.

The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament