Decisive win in 1965 war: Parrikar

The then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and army officers atop a captured Pakistani tank

India delivered a telling blow to Pakistan across the Western front, added Army Chief General Dalbir Singh.

Presenting a new narrative of the India Pakistan war of 1965, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Tuesday said Pakistan made some “misplaced assumptions and wrong calculations” and it was a “decisive victory” for India though sceptics call it a draw.

“Many sceptics call the outcome a draw, but I disagree. My impression is it was a decisive victory to India,” Mr. Parrikar said at a seminar on the occasion of the golden jubilee celebrations of the 1965 war.
Speaking on the occasion Army Chief General Dalbir Singh said that India had delivered a “telling blow” to Pakistan across the Western front.

As part of the commemoration, two books on the war supported by the Army and the air Force were launched by Vice President Hamid Ansari.

The book, 1965, Turning the Tide: How India Won the War, is the effort of the Army’s think tank, Centre for Land Warfare Studies and has been written by defence analyst Nitin Gokhale. The second book, The duels of the Himalayan eagle: The first Indo-Pak war, was written By Air Marshal (retd.) Bharat Kumar and supported by the Air Force.

Mr. Parrikar said that 1965 war did not receive due “attention and analysis” and called for inclusion of the books in school education.

Veterans and experts while agreeing that India had an upper hand, however, differed on the view that it was a victory.

Major Chandrakant Singh, a decorated veteran agreed that India had an “upper hand” but felt that no one had won. “The Pakistani’s were definitely defeated in their aim of cutting off Kashmir but it is not a victory for India. However, credit must be given to our Generals and jawans for taking on the modern equipment that Pakistan had,” he said.

On a similar note Srinath Raghavan, Senior Fellow at Centre for Policy Research said the key was how the victory was defined.

“As we do not have access to most of the documents, the official history is the best source available. Official historians are clear that this war is not the kind of victory that it is being made out and mistakes were made both in strategic and operational realms,” he said.