Indo-Pakistan Wars, three wars (1947-1948, 1965, and 1971) fought between India and Pakistan since their creation in 1947, following British withdrawal from South Asia.

First Indo-Pakistan War

The first war was fought over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which had been a notionally independent monarchy in British India. The terms of the British withdrawal had stipulated that such "princely states" were to join either India or Pakistan, according to certain guidelines. The first of these was that states with predominantly Muslim populations would accede to Pakistan, and states with predominantly Hindu populations would accede to India. The second was that states were to accede to the emerging country with which they shared a border. Kashmir had a primarily Muslim population and shared borders with both India and Pakistan. At first the monarch of Kashmir had refused to accede to either state. As the maharaja vacillated, a rebellion broke out in the western part of Kashmir. Hoping to take advantage of this rebellion to force the monarch to accede to Pakistan, the Pakistani leadership sent in regular troops disguised as local tribesmen. In order to obtain India's assistance to quell the rebellion and fend off the invaders, the maharaja agreed to India's terms: he acceded to India by signing the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947, and Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, the leader of the largest secular and popular organization in the state, approved the accession to India. Shortly after Kashmir's accession, Indian troops landed in Srìnagar and blocked the advance of the invading forces. Fighting continued through early 1948. Mediation by the United Nations brought the war to a close on January 1, 1949. The total number of battle deaths was around 1,500.

The second Indo-Pakistan war was also fought over Kashmir. It began on August 14, 1965. In January 1965, Pakistani military forces had made a series of illegal border crossings along the Rann of Kutch in the Indian state of Gujarat. As the region was of no great strategic significance, the Indian military response was not vigorous. The Pakistani military leadership concluded from this seemingly weak response that it was possible to forcibly wrest Kashmir from India.

Widespread disturbances had broken out in the Kashmir valley following the theft of a sacred relic, the Moe-e-Moqdas, from the Hazaratbal mosque in Srìnagar, the winter capital of Kashmir, in December 1963. Protests against Indian rule had reinforced the Pakistani belief that local Kashmiris would support a Pakistani invasion. As they had in 1947, the Pakistani military began infiltrating guerrilla forces, disguised as local tribesmen, into the Kashmir valley beginning in June 1965. These infiltrators were supposed to link up with Kashmiris disaffected with Indian rule and foment a full-fledged rebellion within the state. Then the Pakistani army would invade the Kashmir valley and seize it in a short, swift operation.

To the surprise of the Pakistanis, however, the local Kashmiris turned in the infiltrators to the Indian authorities. Despite this, the Pakistani leadership continued infiltration efforts throughout the summer of 1965. As the Indian authorities moved to seal the border, a number of skirmishes took place in August along the Ceasefire Line, the de facto border established after the 1947-1948 war in Kashmir. On September 1, 1965, the Pakistan army launched a major assault on Kashmir; a second, on September 5, penetrated 14 miles into Indian territory. To relieve pressure on the Kashmir front, Indian forces counter-attacked in the Punjab, near the Pakistani city of Lahore, and they crossed the international border. By mid-September 1965, the war had reached a stalemate. On September 20, the United Nations Security Council called for a ceasefire, to which both sides agreed by September 22.

This second war was costlier in terms of both personnel and material than the 1947-1948 conflict. India suffered about 3,000 casualties and Pakistan about 3,800. Following the imposition of the ceasefire, the Indian prime minister met with the Pakistani president in the Central Asian city of Tashkent on January 4, 1966, to negotiate a settlement. Although both sides made important territorial concessions in returning to the borders, the underlying causes of the Kashmir dispute were never resolved. The dispute continues to this day.

The third war between India and Pakistan began after a civil war in the East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) province of Pakistan over the demand for regional autonomy. In December 1970, Pakistan had held nationwide elections. In East Pakistan, a locally based political party, the Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won an overwhelming majority of the parliamentary seats available. In the western part of Pakistan, the Pakistan People's Party of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto won the bulk of the parliamentary seats. Negotiations on power sharing between the two wings of Pakistan broke down by February 1971, after both sides had taken rigid stances. The growing political turmoil in East Pakistan produced increasing demands for regional autonomy.

On March 26, the Pakistani army began a crackdown on Dacca (now Dhaka), the capital of East Pakistan. Although estimates of casualties vary, it is widely held that well over 100,000 Bengali students, intellectuals, and professionals were systematically killed in the first several days of this military crackdown. Unprecedented numbers of refugees began to flood from East Pakistan into the neighbouring Indian state of West Bengal. By about mid-May 1971, the refugee population had climbed to around 9.8 million.

Faced with an extraordinary refugee burden, India made several diplomatic attempts to arrange a return of the refugees to East Pakistan. These attempts all failed. A group of Indian statesmen successfully argued that it would be cheaper to fight another war with Pakistan than to absorb almost 10 million refugees into India's already bloated population. Accordingly, Prime Minster Indira Gandhi fashioned a strategy designed to accomplish two objectives: the return of the refugees and the creation of a new state in East Pakistan.

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