The 1965 Indo-Pak war ended with a negotiated ceasefire, leaving the Pakistani leadership with plenty of space to manipulate facts and manoeuvre public opinion into deluding themselves that they had won the war.
The fact of the matter is that despite of element of surprise and the advantage afforded by making the first strike, equipped with the latest state of the art weapons and heavy artillery (supplied gratis by America), pakistan still couldn't not defeat India conclusively; and rather found itself in the rather embarrassing situation of having lost almost thrice the territory they managed to capture (and had it not been for the timely ceasefire, their territorial, personnel and material losses would have been considerably higher).
The advantages pakistan enjoyed were further compounded by corresponding weaknesses in India's ability to wage a war, most notable amongst these being:
1. India was still recovering from a humiliating defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian war.
2. India was in the process of overhauling its military equipment and hardware and training officers and soldiers
3. Indian infantry and air force were still stuck with older varieties of tanks and planes, handing pakistan a straight advantage (by virtue of pakistan possessing American supplied sabre aircraft and patton tanks)
4. India had to first negate and then overcome the element of surprise, in a war they were unprepared and ill-equipped for.
5. Indian political leadership was not the most decisive, bold or even realistic (best exemplified by Nehru and his 'I have instructed the Indian army to throw them out' remark on the Chinese intrusions in the 1962 war)
In spite of all the above, pakistan still claimed victory and their history textbooks teach children of the 'glorious victory', which the general public, in their deluded, celebrates every year (rather like a rat which has had to run to its hole but still believes it has bested the cat).
Now, a Pakistani scholar has at last accepted reality and urged his fellow pakistanis to accept facts and face the truth, rather than fooling themselves into believing that victory was theirs.
This honest Pakistani gentleman has accepted that pakistan lost the war - an assertion which is backed by most neutral accounts of the war, all of whom concur that pakistan was completely on the backfoot in the final stages of the war and that they were struggling to hold on to their territory, for which they had to take assistance from China and open backdoor diplomatic channels to request the americans to pressurise India for a ceasefire (failing which pakistans defeat would have been certain and total).
For those who are interested, the link to the article is given below (note also that this link of from an UAE newspaper, which ceteris paribus would be inclined to support the Pakistani viewpoint).
http://gulfnews.com/news/asia/pakistan/pakistan-lost-terribly-in-the-1965-war-with-india-1.1578642
A final note - this proves that the BJP government was justified in recently celebrating the 50th anniversary of the war to mark a great victory, contrary to claims by certain 'liberal intellectuals' that the war was a stalemate.
The fact of the matter is that despite of element of surprise and the advantage afforded by making the first strike, equipped with the latest state of the art weapons and heavy artillery (supplied gratis by America), pakistan still couldn't not defeat India conclusively; and rather found itself in the rather embarrassing situation of having lost almost thrice the territory they managed to capture (and had it not been for the timely ceasefire, their territorial, personnel and material losses would have been considerably higher).
The advantages pakistan enjoyed were further compounded by corresponding weaknesses in India's ability to wage a war, most notable amongst these being:
1. India was still recovering from a humiliating defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian war.
2. India was in the process of overhauling its military equipment and hardware and training officers and soldiers
3. Indian infantry and air force were still stuck with older varieties of tanks and planes, handing pakistan a straight advantage (by virtue of pakistan possessing American supplied sabre aircraft and patton tanks)
4. India had to first negate and then overcome the element of surprise, in a war they were unprepared and ill-equipped for.
5. Indian political leadership was not the most decisive, bold or even realistic (best exemplified by Nehru and his 'I have instructed the Indian army to throw them out' remark on the Chinese intrusions in the 1962 war)
In spite of all the above, pakistan still claimed victory and their history textbooks teach children of the 'glorious victory', which the general public, in their deluded, celebrates every year (rather like a rat which has had to run to its hole but still believes it has bested the cat).
Now, a Pakistani scholar has at last accepted reality and urged his fellow pakistanis to accept facts and face the truth, rather than fooling themselves into believing that victory was theirs.
This honest Pakistani gentleman has accepted that pakistan lost the war - an assertion which is backed by most neutral accounts of the war, all of whom concur that pakistan was completely on the backfoot in the final stages of the war and that they were struggling to hold on to their territory, for which they had to take assistance from China and open backdoor diplomatic channels to request the americans to pressurise India for a ceasefire (failing which pakistans defeat would have been certain and total).
For those who are interested, the link to the article is given below (note also that this link of from an UAE newspaper, which ceteris paribus would be inclined to support the Pakistani viewpoint).
http://gulfnews.com/news/asia/pakistan/pakistan-lost-terribly-in-the-1965-war-with-india-1.1578642
A final note - this proves that the BJP government was justified in recently celebrating the 50th anniversary of the war to mark a great victory, contrary to claims by certain 'liberal intellectuals' that the war was a stalemate.
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