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PEOPLE
Yuvraj Singhs
new innings

BOOKS & IDEAS

Valmik Thapar on wildlife
conservation

THE GOOD LIFE

Traditional dishes get a
quirky makeover

SPORTS
Are top batsmen retiring early
due to superior bowling?

15 AUGUST 2015

A COUNTRY

AT WAR

Fifty years ago, India and Pakistan fought a short but

bloody war. Veenu Sandhu finds out how Sainik
Samachar, the defence ministrys journal, reported it

PHOTOS: COURTESY SAINIK SAMACHAR

ak troops on the run. Fleeing raiders

exterminated. Pakistani soldiers utterly
demoralised. The headlines in Sainik
Samachar left nothing to the imagination.
As India waged a furious battle on its
western front, the official publication of the defence
ministry worked hard to ensure that morale stayed high and
Indias image remained one of glory.
A fascinating narrative of the war unfolds in the
yellowing pages of the 1965 editions of SainikSamachar, a
journal of the Indian armed forces that was born in 1909 and
is today published in 13 languages every fortnight.
While the war was on, SainikSamachar was brought out
every week. Words like loyal, united, glorious and
brave leaped out of its pages as the publication scripted a
narrative that exalted the achievements of India at war. It
captured every significant speech of (then) President
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur
Shastri, Defence Minister Yashwantrao Balwantrao Chavan,
and Information & Broadcasting Minister Indira Gandhi.
Niceties were discarded and it openly called Pakistan
the cunning aggressor. Every little report that even
remotely hinted that a certain assault might have found
India on the backfoot was aggressively countered. And
every tiny slip by Pakistan was celebrated.
It drew attention to how the nation stood as one in this
testing time, with film stars like Balraj Sahni, Sunil Dutt and
Mala Sinha going all out to keep the soldiers pepped up.
It tapped into news agency and newspaper reports,
reprinting dispatches from the front, splashing on its pages
pictures of captured infiltrators, tanks and ammunition,
and published letters and documents to show that the
infiltration was orchestrated not by civilians but by the
Pakistan government under Operation Gibraltar.
It was the first draft of the history of the 1965 war.
Carefully bound old editions of SainikSamachar are kept in
high-security North Block. Old issues of the magazine,
dated and bound in the same shade of red, line the shelves
of a grey steel and glass cupboard.
Rummaging through the shelf, the heart skips a beat on
realising that while the January-June editions are available,
the critical July-December collection is missing it was
during this period, from August 5 to September 22, that the
war was fought.
A helpful employee finally finds the collection tucked
away in one corner. Some of the pages have come loose and
there are notings on others. The cover pages of some war
editions have record copy scribbled on them. These are
treasures, says Hasibur Rahman, the magazines editor-inchief. We dont allow these copies to go out of this office.

Balraj Sahni recording Vividh Bharatis Jayamala

programme for the armed forces in the studio of All
India Radio, Delhi. It was aired on October 16, 1965

(Anti-clockwise from left) Indira Gandhi in a bunker;

Defence Minister Y B Chavan with jawans in the Khem
Karan sector; captured Pakistani officers Captain
Mohammad Sajjad and Captain Ghulum Hussain; Prime
Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in front of a knocked out
Pakistani Patton tank somewhere in the Lahore sector

n its edition of May 9, SainikSamachar carried the first

report of hostilities between the two neighbours. It was
called Pak Aggression on Kutch-Sind Border: Jawan Shows
His Mettle.
Staking claim to large parts of the Rann of Kutch,
Pakistani forces intruded in massive strength in April 1965.
The police pickets this time had something much more
formidable on their hands than smugglers, innocent
stragglers or unwary patrolmen, SainikSamachar said.
Pakistans plan was to take India by surprise and
get it to concede the disputed 3,500
square miles of the region. The
forces came with

Patton tanks and 106 mm recoilless guns.

Drawing from a report by a special correspondent of The
Hindu, the journal soon proclaimed: The Pakistani gamble
in Kutch has failed. It quoted this dispatch of the
correspondent from the Rann of Kutch: A visit to the
operational area dispels from ones mind any wrong notion

or apprehension that Pakistan has taken complete control

possession of any area of particular length or breadth.
Lauding the armed police force manning the pickets,
the report said: The heroic defence of the Central Reserve
Police, inflicting heavy casualties on them in the very first
attack was a bad blow to Pakistan. That event, which took
place on the night of April 9 when CRPFs Sardar Post in
Kutch came under heavy shelling, is today celebrated as
Valour Day by the paramilitary force.

Therewere,however,reportsthatIndiasufferedan
initialsetbackandfellbackintheBiarBetandPoint84
sectorsofKutch.SainikSamacharcounteredthis
vehementlyinanarticletitledJawanfoilsPakistansplans.
Attheborder,theRannofKutchisoverlookedbyarim-like
formation100feetto150feethigh.Attackingforcesatthe
heightareinanimmeasurablesuperiorposition,itsaid.
Pakistan, it added, whipped up worldwide political
propaganda that the Indian army had been disgraced in
battle. This is not true With the odds so heavy against
them, the forces could only employ attrition tactics This
has been accomplished and the enemy has suffered heavy
casualties. Speaking about the aggression in Kutch,
Defence Minister Chavan informed Lok Sabha on April 26
that the morale of our people and the forces is high and
they are determined to resist any affront to our sovereignty
and territorial integrity at any cost.
To buttress the point, SainikSamachar carried a small
agency report on the same page as Chavans Lok Sabha
statement. Servicemen throughout the country have made
requests to Army Headquarters here that they be posted
along the Kutch-Sind border There is said to be
unprecedented enthusiasm to go to the front to roll back
the Pakistani aggressors.
This spirit was reiterated in an interview done by the
Press Trust of India with the commanding officer of a
battalion stationed in Kutch of course, he wasnt named.
We swatted them like flies, nearly 150 of them were down,
killed or wounded, he said.
ThePakistanis,addedthereport,weretakenabackby
Indianfirepowerandthrewinmoretanks,sixofwhichwent
upinflames.Anotherreporttalkedaboutabravelieutenant
colonelandhisequallycourageoussecond-lieutenantson
whofoughtshoulder-to-shoulderinKutch.
And then there were reports, almost hilarious, of
inaccurate shelling by Pakistan artillery: Pakistani shells,
more often than not, pounded the sand of the Rann of Kutch
and incidentally helped to dig up the earth which our
Jawans subsequently used for bunkers.
In Kutch, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson finally
succeeded in persuading the warring countries to end
hostilities and resolve the dispute. Pakistan would
eventually get 910 square km of the Rann of Kutch against
its claim of 9,100 square km.
> CONTINUED

ON PAGE 8

IMAGING: AJAY MOHANTY