At the recently-concluded 23rd SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Summit) meeting in Islamabad, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar kept the focus on terrorism, extremism and separatism while his brief exchanges with Pakistan counterpart Muhammad Ishaq Dar at the reception were hailed as the “first thaw” in IndoPak relations which have remained diplomatically stressed, stubbornly frozen and violently gridlocked.

When the Indian ministerial team commented that “the atmospherics were good,” it seems an opportune moment to peer through the broken bridges of diplomacy between the two neighbours, who suffered the horrors of Partition and then a series of wars, entrenching international powers in the sub-continent amidst a continuing arms-race.

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In an editorial titled ‘Drums of War’, National Herald, dated 12 September 1965, underlined: “The peace which India sought to widen and maintain has been shattered again. It may have been a false peace, after the slumber of centuries not a live peace but a smokey smugness of the spirit. If it was so, it had to be shattered. But India was alive to the realities of the world and was working to make peace more than the absen – ce of war. She had gone through the intense agony of partition and the perils which a newly free nation faces in an uncertain world and plunged into the endless adventure of nation-building.

There were challenges of poverty, illiteracy and the enervating influences of two hundred years of foreign rule to meet with energy and enthusiasm. Pakistan has disturbed the even tenor of that life, soon after China made it clear that she could be a long-term menace on the northern frontier. Pakistan has always been an unfriendly neighbour, unreconciled to the consequences of partition. But even she would not have unleashed massive aggression against India without the encouragement given to her by China. Behind Ayub’s Mussolini’s front, the Machiavellian mind of Bhutto was working dangerously.”

M Chalapathi Rau, National Herald’s iconic editor, made the editorial ring with relevance: “It is tragic that Pakistan should have become the agency for compelling India to shake off her ancient lethargies and to subject her people to the discipline of war instead of the discipline of development. It is a tragedy for India and a tragedy for Pakistan, the two same racial stocks and the same cultural strains, but divided forcibly into two nations in a bitter moment of separation.

The two succession states, with their separate nationalities, could have lived as friendly neighbours, if there had been an ounce of statesmanship in Pakistan to match the abundant goodwill which Indian leaders were prepared to extend. Kashmir was the great divide. It became an intractable problem when Pakistan let loose raiders and supported them with troops in 1947…Seventeen years after that aggression of 1948, Pakistan has repeated it on a much larger scale. There was no justification for it. Pakistan’s idea was to annex Kashmir by force; India had to defend it. Pakistan had to escalate the war to save herself from the predicament of a short end to a long-prepared aggression, and India has had to enlarge the fronts.”

In 1965, July through October were cruel months witness to the ‘monsoon war’ spreading across the India-Pakistan border. Military movements were matched by representations at the United Nations by the two nations. In Parliament, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a no-confidence mo – tion even as he was bracing up to the challenges of war. Eye-catching are media headlines of 27 August 1965: ‘No-Trust motion defeated: PM warns of prolonged trouble in Kashmir’.

According to the National Herald, the Lok Sabha rejected by an overwhelming majority of 318 votes to 66 a no-confidence motion against the Government headed by Prime Minister Shastri. The voting came after MR Masani (Swatantra Party) mover of the motion, replied to the debate. In his reply, the PM said that the nation had to be prepared for a grim and prolonged struggle against Pakistan in Kashmir. Mr Shastri wanted that the capture of certain posts by our security forces across the ceasefire line should not create a sense of complacency.

“The situation,” he said, “is much more difficult and much more grave. The trouble in Kashmir would not be a shortened affair. Therefore, we have to prepare our country to meet this situation. Any help or support from any quarter, even those who oppose us, would be most welcome.” Strongly deprecating the violent demonstrations in several parts of the country, Mr Shastri said while India was engaged in a grim struggle with Pakistan, it was essential that nothing should be done which would help the enemy. The Government would not put up with any kind of violence at that juncture, he declared. Win – ding up the debate, MR Masani asserted that he was completely unconvinced with Government arguments in defense of their economic and foreign policies.

At a time when even Communist countries, notably the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, were abandoning controls, regimentation and excessive state monopoly in favour of encouraging free enterprise, India was moving in the opposite direction, he declared. Replying to criticism that he had thought it fit to bring the motion when the country was facing serious external dangers, Mr Masani said it was his duty at this hour of peril to pinpoint the defects in the economy so as to save the ‘collapsing domestic front’ to stren gthen the defence effort.

On Pakistani infiltration into Kashmir, he pledged his party’s fullest support to the Government in any measure they may take. He said his party stood for retaliation. Voices outside Parliament were equally strong and profound as the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) with doyens like Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, SM Joshi and Anan tram Jaiswal at the helm, called for a ‘flexible approach’ to settling India’s disputes with Pakistan to enable the two countries to develop common defence and foreign policies, common citizenship and common market.

The resolution, adopted at a special session of SSP in New Delhi, referred to Indian security forces crossing the line of cease-fire: “The committee would welcome this step if it presages the inauguration of a new policy with regard to Pakistan and a firm determination to liquidate the aggression and not just a clever manoeuvre to silence criticism. In deciding India’s policy towards Pakistan, the Government should not pay any attention to the reaction of foreign powers and pressures.”

The resolution “appealed to Hindus and Muslims to forge an enduring solidarity and reunite the partitioned land.” Under the Defence of India Rules, large-scale arrests of SSP workers in Bihar, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal was condemned. State units were asked to organise demonstrations and hunger-marches from September 15 against the government’s food policy. Jayaprakash Narayan, considered the tallest of socialist leaders of his generation, also spoke against the indiscriminate use of Defence of India Rules.

In Calcutta, just before his departure to Manila to accept the prestigious Magsaysay Peace Award, Jaya prakash said, “I feel very perturbed over the manner in which DIR is being used to deal with civic disturbances which the normal law of the land could have taken care of… all I would say is that the reasons so far given out by the Government of India for a sweeping action taken against the left communists are not convincing enough.”

Trouble was brewing in Uttar Pradesh as Congress legislators wrote en masse to party president K Kamaraj seeking permission to resign; Kamalapati Tripathi, heading the UP Congress Committee, was in constant touch with both Kamaraj and PM Shastri, never divulging the legislators’ real grievances in public.

Sucheta Kripalani, while being the first woman chief minister of an Indian state, was negotiating through political turbulence during those months, shuttling between Kamaraj and Tripathi, dutifully keeping the Prime Minister informed. To say these were testing times for Shastri would be a gross understatement. The media coverage in those months ~ be it National Herald, The Statesman, Hindustan Times, The Times of India, Indian Express or The Hindu was justifiably patriotic but balanced in giving international news and events their due importance.

In fact, the United States aggression in VietNam was consistently on the front pages, editorial and news pages of the dailies. Unsparing in the outrage against US bombings, it was reported that Giant B-52 jets of the United States Strategic Air Command bombed the Viet-Cong guerilla jungle stronghold of ‘War Zone’, about 30 miles north of Saigon. It was the 11th raid on Viet-Cong targets by the huge strato-fortresses. Meanwhile North Viet-Nam said the United States was doomed to a ‘humiliating defeat’.

Pravda, the Soviet Communist Party newspaper, accused the US of committing genocide in Viet-Nam, of waging a ‘war of terror’ against the Viet-Namese people. “This is a real genocide, a crying violation of the principles of international law and of the standards of humanity and ethics. This is a crime against mankind,” Pravda said. The divide between nations in 1965, or now in 2024, seems to be bridged by barbaric hostilities, destruction and hatred.

(The writer is a researcher author on history and heritage issues and a former deputy curator of Pradhanmantri Sangrahalay)