Thoughts on the Wars with Pakistan in 1947 and 65

 

Indian fought 2 wars with Pakistan within the first 20 years of the retirement of the British from India.  I have to use the word retirement because the British were too exhausted after fighting Hitler and just threw the towel and went away. This India was embroiled in two wars, one can see three if we can count the Kutch incident also.

All three wars which India fought with Pakistan bring out one aspect. We can summarize them  as

a) Never took the initiative for total victory

b) Never followed the principles of war and fought to our strength.

In 1947 when the Indian army was sent to Kashmir already two months had elapsed and the Pakistan raiders had almost reached Srinagar.  As a counterpoise to the Pakistani attack in Kashmir, the Indian army should have opened a front and occupied as much area as possible in East Pakistan which was at that time totally defenseless but the Indians did nothing like that, and Nehru and the party were just sitting on the haunches. The army is also responsible because I am not aware of any army general at that time suggesting an invasion of East Pakistan and capturing some area as a bargaining chip for Kashmir.

The same thing happened in 1965 and the Pakistanis were even able to bomb the Indian Air Force Base and KalaiKunda and destroy 12 planes close to Kolkata. The Indian general staff did not suggest to the political leadership to occupy East Pakistan which at that time again what a totally defenseless region.

One can, unfortunately, use the word stupidity of both the political leadership and so so-called generals of the Indian army who really had no concept of what is Clausewitz or Sun Tzu and never made any suggestions to the government. In any case, the political leadership was weak and lacked strategic sense and the result is that India is like  Gulliver tied to the stake. Who is to blame for it?

The nation as a whole has to take the blame because of the peculiar psyche of the Hindu not to take the initiative and fight; Perhaps this was due to the fact that Hindus were ruled by the Muslims for 900 years.