A retired Army General of the Indian Army has said that after India’s defeat in the 1962 China war, an ’emboldened Pakistan’ tried to take Kashmir by force in order to settle its political problems by ‘military action’.
In his latest book “Drummers Call”, Lt Gen N S Brar (retd), writes that it was the ‘Battle of Asal Uttar’ that defined the 1965 war between India and Pakistan.
Fought in early September, the battle of Asal Uttar (meaning fitting reply) was one of the largest tank battles fought during the 1965 war, which ultimately ended with the ‘decisive victory’ for India.
“Post India’s humilation in 1962, when Pakistan made incursions into Kutch in April-May 1965, India agreed to a delineation of the Kutch border by a three-member international tribunal. This emboldened Pakistan to attempt to take Kashmir by force,” Brar writes in his anthology published by ‘The Browser’.
“The Pakistan Army, boosted by its qualitative and quantitative superiority in artillery and armour, and believing the post-1962 expanded Indian Army to be ill-trained and ill-equipped to stand against them, considered it a very opportune time to settle its political problems with India by military action,” he notes.
As per the book, buoyed by its sophisticated American weaponry, the Pakistan Army, on September 8, entered into Indian territory and captured the Indian town of Khem Karan 5 kilometres from the International Border.
