Bandung Conference (Asian-African Conference)

Bandung Conference (Asian-African Conference)

The Bandung Conference, or Asian-African Conference, attended by 29 primarily newly independent nations, was held in 1955. The Indonesian leader Ahmed Sukarno hosted the conference of so-called Third World nations, most of which had become independent after World War II and were generally poor, agricultural, and economically underdeveloped. They represented over half the world’s population.

India’s leader Jawaharlal Nehru played a key role in the conference that adopted his principles of opposing imperialism and focusing on the development of local economies rather than reliance on either the Western world led by the United States or the Soviet bloc dominated by the Soviet Union. Participants of the conference also raised issues of race, religion, and world peace. Most were, however, authoritarian in their political orientations.


The Chinese prime minister, Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), was another key spokesperson at the conference. Aware of the different political and economic approaches of the participants, Zhou wisely did not push an aggressive communist program and succeeded in establishing ties with other Asian and African leaders. Other leaders at the conference included Kwame Nkrumah, prime minister of the Gold Coast (Ghana); Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese prime minister; and President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.

The nations of North Africa also attended and condemned French imperialism. Nasser spoke about the role of Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism as well as the cause of Palestinian self-determination. Nasser, Nehru, and President Tito of Yugoslavia subsequently became personal friends and exchanged state visits with one another.

gedung merdeka in Bandung

Many of the participants of the Bandung Conference became leaders of the Nonaligned Movement in the early 1960s. The Nonaligned Movement sought to steer a middle or neutral course between the United States and the Soviet Union in the cold war.

Neither superpower endorsed the Nonaligned Movement, although the United States tended to be more hostile to the neutralism of nations seeking to maximize their own benefits rather than adopting policies that mirrored that of either superpower. Many leaders of African and Asian nations attended a conference in both Bandung and Jakarta marking the 50th anniversary of the conference in 2005.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a nationalist party of India. It grew out of a Hindu nationalist organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Organization), which was founded in 1925 by K. B. Hedgewar as a reaction to Muslim fundamentalism. That organization was dedicated to propagating orthodox Hindu religious practices and building Hindu unity.

In 1947 upon independence the Indian subcontinent was divided into two separate states, India and Pakistan. Although most Muslims remained in Pakistan and most Hindus stayed in India, some Muslims lived in India while some Hindus continued living in Pakistan. This situation, along with a territorial dispute over the Kashmir region, created tensions between the two nations.

In 1951 Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS)—a political wing of RSS that grew during the 1950s and 1960s—was established. In 1971 East Pakistan seceded and created a new nation, Bangladesh. The BJS supported the movement for the creation of Bangladesh.


In 1977 the BJS joined the Janata Party, a coalition of opposition parties that defeated Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party in parliamentary elections and formed a government that lasted through the end of 1979, when Gandhi returned to the government.

In 1980 BJS was renamed and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was born. The principles of the BJP are inspired by Hindu nationalism and the main objectives are to build up India as a strong, unified, and prosperous nation.

In 1984 the BJP separated from the RSS; it became the main opposition to the Congress Party. In the 1991 elections the BJP became an effective opposition party winning so many seats that the Congress Party had to govern with a coalition. In 1996 the BJP emerged as the largest party in Parliament.

When parliamentary elections were held in 1998, again the BJP and some opposition parties won the largest number of seats and formed a government. This government lasted only one year but during that time the administration fulfilled an electoral promise and carried out the country’s first nuclear tests, making India a nuclear power. As a consequence, Pakistan also conducted nuclear tests, making both countries nuclear.

The BJP administration faced a new conflict with Pakistan whose soldiers had occupied ground on the Indian side of the line of control demarcated by the United Nations in Kashmir. However, peace was restored in 2001.

Under the BJP government, India’s economy became decentralized and market-oriented with privatizations of government corporations, increasing foreign investment, and the liberalization of trade under World Trade Organization rules. There was improvement in infrastructure and production and the middle class grew. However, there was little improvement for the rural and poor classes.

In February 2002 a series of violent incidents in Gujarat State discredited the BJP government. Many activists and members of the BJP were accused of leading the violence against the Muslim minority in that state. In the 2004 elections the Congress Party coalition won the elections and the BJP became the opposition party.

Indira Gandhi

Indira Gandhi

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (November 19, 1917–October 31, 1984) was the third (1966–77) and sixth (1980–84) prime minister of India and the first woman to hold that office. Her legacy is very complex.

Gandhi was the daughter of the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964). She was a member of the Indian National Congress, a nationalist organization established during British rule in 1885. In the 1930s Gandhi began the Vanara Sena, a movement that consisted of young people who participated in marches and protests to support the independence movement and also distributed nationalist propaganda and illegal materials.

While attending Oxford University, Gandhi met a young Parsee activist and Congress Party member, Feroze Gandhi (1912–60). The two eventually returned to India and were married in 1942. They had two sons, Rajiv (1944–91) and Sanjay (1946–80).


Shortly after their marriage she and Feroze joined Mohandas Gandhi’s (1869–1948) nonviolent action against the British, which landed them in jail. Shortly after independence Gandhi moved to Delhi to aid her father, and Feroze accepted a position in Allahabad as a writer for a Congress Party newspaper.

During India’s first election, Gandhi worked as campaign manager for both her father and her husband. Nehru won the election and became the first prime minister of India; Feroze won a seat in Parliament. Friction between Nehru and Feroze Gandhi caused the couple’s official separation. Feroze Gandhi suffered a heart attack in 1957 and after a brief reconciliation with Indira and their two sons, died in 1960.

Gandhi’s political career took off. She was elected president of the Congress Party in 1960 and subsequently became Nehru’s chief of staff and major political adviser. After her father’s death in 1964, India’s second prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, appointed her minister for information and broadcasting in his cabinet. In this position she became a very popular figure, as she traveled to many non-Hindi-speaking regions and calmed rising violence against the imposing of Hindi as India’s national language.

She also gained popularity when she refused to leave volatile border regions where she was vacationing when the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 broke out. After Prime Minister Shastri died, Gandhi won the election and become the third prime minister. She immediately began successful programs to aid farmers in the production of staple foods.

In 1971 she met her first major crisis when East Pakistan declared independence. Events culminated in another Indo-Pakistani War in 1971. India’s intervention led to the defeat of Pakistani forces and independence for Bangladesh. India detonated a nuclear device and joined the nuclear club in 1974 under her leadership.

The Congress Party, however, suffered schism. One reason was her shifting of power away from the individual states to the central government. She was accused of fraud and was found guilty. Her sentence was removal from office and prohibition from running in elections for six years, which she appealed, thus remaining in office until the appeal could be heard.

She then countered the advice of President Fakhuruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a state of emergency that would give the prime minister and her government unchecked power. On June 26, 1975, the emergency proclamation was ratified by Parliament. Elections were postponed.

The emergency government she led had unlimited power of detention and censorship and persecuted many members of opposing parties. However, the economy flourished, and violence decreased. The emergency ended in 1977, possibly because she believed in her popularity.

She called for elections, was beaten handily by the Janata Party, and stepped down. Her measures in imposing and leading the government during the emergency split the Congress with an offshoot wing called Congress-I supporting her.

The Janata government immediately sought to prosecute the former prime minister for her illegal acts. It reviewed, and the president called for, new elections in 1980, in which the Congress-I won a landslide victory.

Gandhi’s final term as prime minister had to deal with challenges from the Sikh Akal Takht extremist movement, which sought autonomy for Punjab, a state with a Sikh majority. Gandhi countered by ordering the Indian army to raid the Golden Temple in Amritsar, a site holy to Sikhism. The raid resulted in an uproar among the Sikh minority. Two of Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her on October 31, 1984.

Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia S.

Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia S.

Rajiv Ratna Gandhi was the seventh prime minister of India, following in the footsteps of both his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) and his mother, Indira Gandhi (1917–84).

After finishing high school in India, Rajiv, like most children of prominent Indian families, went to England for further education. He attended Imperial College London and Cambridge University. At Cambridge Rajiv met Sonia Maino, an Italian student, and despite opposition from her family she moved to India and the two were married in 1968.

Rajiv and Sonia had two children, Rahul and Priyanka. Rajiv initially showed no interest in politics. He worked as an airline pilot for Indian Airlines. However, after the death of his brother, Sanjay (1946–80), Rajiv was persuaded to enter politics by his mother.


He was criticized for his lack of experience and viewed as merely a successor of a Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. In 1981, Rajiv won the Parliament seat vacated by his brother and became a top adviser to Indira. He became the leader of the Congress Party’s youth movement, the Youth Congress, and won popularity as a young progressive leader.

After Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, President Zail Singh dissolved Parliament, and new elections were held. Rajiv was named president of the Congress Party, which won a landslide, and Rajiv assumed the role of prime minister of India.

Immediately after taking office Rajiv began changing foreign policy to strengthen relations with the United States and distance India from the Soviet Union. He also began to reform governmental quotas, tariffs, taxes, and educational spending policies, extending the opportunity to receive an education to lower-class citizens.

Rajiv also promoted human rights and peace within India and abroad. His policies reconciled disaffected Sikhs in Punjab. He also sent an arbitration and peacekeeping corps to Sri Lanka to mediate between the government and rebels called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). After a treaty was signed, conflict broke out between the Indian forces and the rebels over disarmament. Many Indian soldiers were killed, forcing Rajiv to withdraw his forces.

Rajiv’s image was further tarnished by a scandal involving foreign defense contracts that paid high-ranking Indian officials. He lost the following election. Rajiv, however, remained the president of the Congress Party and the leader of the opposition.

On May 21, 1991, he was assassinated by a suicide bomber from Sri Lanka opposed to his interventions in her country, while he was campaigning for reelection. His death once again united the Congress Party, which regained a majority in Parliament. Sonia, his widow, was urged to enter politics and assume the seat vacated by her husband.

She refused and remained outside of the political arena until shortly before the 1998 elections. She then announced her candidacy for a seat in Parliament, and later she also won the presidency of the Congress Party, now in opposition. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governed India to 2004. In the 2004 elections the Congress Party once again won a majority.

She was unanimously elected as the new prime minister of India but declined due to the controversy surrounding her foreign birth. She in turn appointed former economist Manmohan Singh, the former finance minister, as the first Sikh prime minister of India.

Janata Party

Janata Party

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or Indian People’s Party, is a pro-Hindu Indian political party that formed the main opposition to the Congress Party in postindependence India. It defeated the Congress Party in the 1977 general election. The BJP asserts that the Indian government should follow Hindu principles and values and has been highly critical of the secular policies espoused by the Congress Party.

It has attracted the sympathies of high-caste Hindus and has an electoral stronghold in the northern part of the country. Its success in securing a larger following among the lower castes has not been complete. The fortunes of the party have been linked to the intensity of anti-Muslim feeling in the country, and it has been repeatedly accused of political and religious extremism.

The forerunner of the BJP was the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), or Indian People’s Association, established in 1951 as the political faction of the Hindu paramilitary group Rashtriya Swayamesevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteers Corps) by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. The BJS started to gain support in the northern regions of India in the late 1960s, defeating the Congress Party in the state election in 1967.


Ten years later the leader of the BJS, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, formed, together with other minor political parties, the Janata Party and successfully challenged the premiership of Indira Gandhi. In the general election of 1976, the Janata Party was able to capitalize on the discontent caused by the authoritarian methods of Gandhi and on the corruption charges leveled against her, her family, and government.

The Janata Party won the majority of seats in Parliament and obtained the external support of the communists. Morarji Desai, a veteran fighter for the country’s independence, became prime minister, but the Janata government collapsed in 1979, after only two years, because of factionalism.

After the Desai government collapsed the Janata Party was dissolved, and the BJP was formed under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It started to appeal to the Indian masses in the late 1980s, when it campaigned to build a Hindu temple in an area of Uttar Pradesh considered sacred but already occupied by the Muslim Babri Mosjid mosque.

Bharatiya Janata Party Campaign

The mosque was eventually destroyed in 1992 by organizations that many considered allies of the BJP. The demolition of the mosque caused widespread rioting throughout the nation. Yet the party obtained a surprising electoral victory in 1996, becoming the largest political party in the lower house of Parliament.

In 1998 Vajpayee formed a coalition government, in power for only 13 months. Vajpayee contested the 1999 election, leading the BJP to become the first party of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of parties against the Congress.

Because of this electoral success he was once again appointed prime minister, governing for a full term until 2004, when he unexpectedly lost the general election to the Congress, led by Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, the widow of Indira Gandhi’s son Rajiv.

India

India flag

India became an independent nation on August 15, 1947, with the end of British colonial rule. With a population of 1,095,351,995 (July 2006 estimate), India is the second most populous nation after China. It is the seventh-largest nation in land area in the world, covering 3,287,590 square kilometers. It borders Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, China, Nepal, and Pakistan.

It presents considerable ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity. India has 18 officially recognized languages and about 1,600 dialects. Hindus form 83.5 percent of the total population. After Indonesia, India has the second-largest number of Muslims, who constitute 13 percent of the population.

The partition of the British Empire into India and Pakistan created problems for both countries, a legacy that continues. India faced problems including the merger of princely states, an influx of refugees from Pakistan, communal riots, the division of assets, and war with Pakistan.

The 562 independent princely states were given the choice to merge with either India or Pakistan. Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950), the home minister, was the architect of the merger of these states. Hyderabad and Junagarh were annexed when their rulers did not select the option of merging with India.


War broke out over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, whose ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh (1895–1961), had signed the Instrument of Accession with the governor general of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900–79) on October 26, 1947.

Despite opposition, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) took the matter to the United Nations, which called for a cease-fire on August 13, 1948. It called for a plebiscite to determine the desire of the people of the state.

The hostilities were over by December 31, 1948, and the demarcation line became the Line of Control (LOC) between the two countries. India also was getting ready to prepare a constitution, and B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) was appointed chairperson of the Drafting Committee on August 29, 1947.

On November 26, 1949, the Constituent Assembly adopted the constitution. India became a sovereign democratic republic on January 26, 1950, when the constitution came into effect. Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963) became the first president of India, which adopted a parliamentary form of government.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi

In 1952 the first general elections were held, and the Indian National Congress (INC), under Nehru, formed the government. Nehru left an indelible mark on modern Indian history with his belief in a parliamentary form of democracy, a socialist pattern of society, secularism, equality before the law, and nonalignment.

He believed that India could play a meaningful role at the time of cold war. Imbued with a high dose of idealism, India pursued a dynamic policy in international politics. Acting as intermediary, India contributed to a lessening of tensions by hosting conferences like the Asian Relations Conference in 1947 and the Conference on Indonesia in 1949.

The Bandung Conference (1955) was the high-water mark in Indian diplomacy. India became the chair of the peacekeeping machinery, the International Control Commission, after the end of the First Indochina War (1946–54). Nehru also played a pivotal role in establishing the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.

India had maintained friendly relations with China and signed a friendship treaty in 1954. But there were boundary disputes with China, which resulted in the Sino-Indian War of October 1962. India’s humiliating defeat was a great shock to Nehru, and Indian foreign policy lost its momentum.

A planning commission was set up in 1950 headed by Jawaharlal Nehru. Large sectors of the economy were modernized. The new policies aimed for an increase in agricultural productivity and industrialization within the framework of a socialist pattern of society.

The government engaged itself in manufacturing, railways, aviation, electricity, communication, and infrastructural activities. The Indian Institutes of Technology, In tune with the scientific temperament of Jawaharlal Nehru, research and educational institutions were established. Attempts also were made to change the social sector through legislation in parliament.

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–66) became the next premier. The debacle for India in the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the death of Jawaharlal Nehru prompted Pakistan to wage another war. The Indian army crossed the border, bringing Lahore under Indian artillery fire.

A cease-fire was called by the United Nations on September 22, 1965. The Tashkent Agreement was signed on January 10, 1966, and the cease-fire line (CFL) became the de facto border between the countries.

With the initiation of Indira Gandhi as prime minister, another important era began in contemporary Indian history. Daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, she was prime minister of India twice, between 1966 and 1977 and again from 1980 to 1984.

She unleashed a program of Garibi Hatao (abolish poverty), supported the Indochinese people in the Vietnam War, and moved closer to the Soviet Union with the signing of a 20-year treaty in August 1971. The liberation war in East Pakistan had started, and India was facing problems arising out of the exodus of 10 million refugees to provinces in eastern India. War became inevitable.

On December 3, the air force of Pakistan began preemptive air strikes on eight Indian airfields. The Pakistan army surrendered on December 16 in Dhaka. The Shimla Accords prevented outbreaks of any major conflict between the two countries until 1999.

Scientific development went forward at a tremendous speed with the launch of a satellite into space. In May 1974 India successfully carried out an underground nuclear explosion at Pokhran. The program of the Green Revolution, which utilized new types of seeds, resulted in greater agricultural productivity and self-sufficiency in food production.

There were demonstrations and strikes in protest against inflation and the poor standard of living. Indira Gandhi also was found guilty of violating election laws and she imposed a state of national emergency on June 26, 1975.

Fundamental rights were suspended, censorship was imposed on the press, and opposition leaders were put behind bars. When Gandhi called for elections two years afterward, the Congress Party was badly trounced, and the combined opposition, the Janata Party, came into power.

Morarji Desai (1896–1995), the first non-Congress prime minister of India, headed a coalition that lasted for two years. The mutual bickering among coalition partners and unsolved economic problems witnessed the return of Gandhi to power with a large majority in January 1980.

The rise of militancy in the Punjab was crushed by the Indian security forces, but Gandhi paid with the loss of her life at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. The violence that erupted against the Sikhs created another dark chapter in Indian history.

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–91), the son of Indira Gandhi, was the next prime minister, and he took the country toward economic reforms and expansion of the telecommunication sector and information technology (IT).

India became involved in the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. The Indo–Sri Lankan Peace Accords were signed in 1987, and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was dispatched to Sri Lankan. Rajiv Gandhi was charged with corruption and the Congress lost the elections of November 1989. He was assassinated by a Sri Lankan suicide bomber in 1991.

The history of India since the last decade of the 20th century has been marked by the menace of terrorism, major economic reforms, tackling poverty, tremendous growth in IT, reservation to backward classes, and becoming a nuclear nation.

The Janata Party ministry of Vishwanath Pratap Singh (1931– ) lasted less than a year, but reactions to the affirmative action by his government of reserving jobs and seats in educational institutions for lower classes divided India along caste lines. Politicians like Singh and others jettisoned merit-based awards for the quota system.

Even after more than five decades of reservation, the various governments retained this system. The government of Manmohan Singh (1932– ) reserved seats for lower classes in some of the premier institutions of the country.

India shifted from its decade-old centralized planning model to a market-driven economy and joined the mainstream of globalization on an international level at the time of the Congress ministry of P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004).

Indian workers were sought after in IT fields globally. The educational infrastructure had developed so as to produce one of the world’s largest concentrations of technical personnel.

There had been communal violence between Hindus and Muslims following the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992 over the question of the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram in Ayodhya. Violence again erupted in 2002 after a train fire in Godhra, Gujarat, resulting in the massacre of Hindus and Muslims alike.

Relations with Pakistan deteriorated over Kashmir, which has remained one of the major sources of conflict between the two countries. The conflict assumed dangerous proportions with the specter of a nuclear conflict after the Kargil War of 1999.

Prime Minister Shri Vajpayee and the Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif (1949– ) signed the Lahore Declaration in February 1999 to solve the Kashmir problem. But the fourth war between the two countries began on May 8 and lasted for 73 days.

In spite of the odds, India maintained a democratic system. The country maintains steady economic growth and a reduction in the poverty level. India also is striving for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Indo-Pakistani Wars (Kashmir)

Indo-Pakistani Wars (Kashmir)

After the departure of the British in August 1947, India and Pakistan became successor states. The partition of the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan left a legacy of mutual discord that is felt to the present day. India’s foreign policy after independence was centered around world issues; relations with India dominated Pakistan’s security concerns.

Kashmir remained the major bone of contention between the two countries. The state of Jammu and Kashmir was Muslim-dominated, with Hindus and others constituting about 48 percent of the population. It had boundaries with both India and Pakistan. The ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, vacillated over whether to join India or Pakistan.

Pakistan sponsored an attack on the state on October 22, 1947, leading Hari Singh to sign the Instrument of Accession with the governor-general of independent India, Lord Mountbatten on October 26, 1947. The next day it was accepted by India.


The sovereignty of Kashmir became a source of conflict, as Pakistan did not recognize the merger of its state with India. India agreed to Hari Singh’s request for military assistance after accepting the Instrument of Accession, and thus the first war between India and Pakistan began.

India airlifted reinforcements and deployed the 161st Infantry Brigade into Kashmir. Pakistan had occupied about one-third of the state and named it Azad Kashmir (Free Kashmir). In late December the war turned in favor of Pakistan when it gained control of the Punch, Mirpur, and Jhanger regions. By 1948 a stalemate had developed.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) of India took the matter to the United Nations (UN) despite some opposition in the cabinet, which saw Kashmir as an internal problem of India. The terms of the cease-fire outlined in the UN resolution of August 13, 1948, called for withdrawal of Pakistani troops and the holding of a plebiscite to determine the desire of the Kashmir people.

On December 31, 1948, a cease-fire was declared, and the demarcation line after the end of hostilities became the line of control (LOC) between the two countries. The Kashmir valley, Jammu, and Ladakh came under Indian control, and the state became the only Muslim majority province of secular India. Swat, Gilgat, Hunza, Nagar, and Baltistan constituted Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Continuing Conflict

Neither India nor Pakistan adhered to the August resolutions, and the conflict over Kashmir continued. Pakistan insisted on a plebiscite, while India demanded Pakistan’s withdrawal from territory it controlled (Azad Kashmir). In February the Constituent Assembly of the state of Jammu and Kashmir ratified accession to India, and, after two years, the state became one of the provinces of the Indian Union.

Bombing by India air force

After a boundary agreement between China and Pakistan was negotiated in March 1963, the situation became still more complicated because China gained a large portion of the Trans-Karakoram Tract, ceded by Pakistan. The defeat of India in the 1962 October War by China encouraged Pakistan to enter another round of war.

It was widely believed that hawkish elements in Pakistan began the war so as to snatch an easy victory from a humiliated India after the Sino-Indian War. The second Indo-Pakistan conflict began after a series of border clashes starting in March 1965.

The border skirmishes, which began in the Rann of Kutch region of Gujarat, were contained in June after British mediation. A tribunal gave Pakistan 350 square miles of territory in 1968. The president, Muhammad Ayub Khan (1907–74), ordered Operation Gibraltar in August 1964 and sent infiltrators to Indian-held Kashmir.

The skirmishes between the forces of India and Pakistan began on August 6 and escalated into a large battle nine days later. The Indian army captured the strategic Haji Pir Pass inside Pakistan totalling 710 square miles of Pakistani territory, while Pakistan occupied 210 square miles of Indian territory. The UN Security Council called for a cease-fire on September 22 and the war ended the next day.

A meeting between the prime minister of India, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Ayub Khan was arranged in the city of Tashkent by Soviet premier Alexey Kosygin. Under the Tashkent Agreement of January 10, the armies of both India and Pakistan went back to the positions they had held before August 5. Both agreed to resolve their disputes by peaceful means and not to interfere in each others’ internal affairs.

The Tashkent declaration proved to be a temporary respite in the deteriorating relationship between India and Pakistan. Ayub was blamed for Pakistan’s debacle and Pakistan’s foreign minister, Zulfikar Bhutto, resigned.

Internally, East Pakistan was simmering with discontent; its leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, criticized the government for neglecting the security of East Pakistan at the time of the 1965 war. When East Pakistan declared its independence, the Pakistani army retaliated with brutality against the people of East Pakistan.

Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi declared the support of her government of Bangladesh (the name for independent East Pakistan). Next, India signed a 20 year Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in August 1971 to checkmate either Chinese or U.S. interference in case of a war with Pakistan and gave support to Bangladesh’s revolt.

On December 3 the Pakistani air force began preemptive air strikes against eight airfields in East Pakistan. India retaliated and began an air, land, and sea attack on Pakistani forces in the east, marching toward Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. More than 1 million people in Bangladesh perished before Pakistan’s army surrendered in Dhaka.

Bhutto and Gandhi signed the Shimla Accords on July 2, 1972, by which both countries recognized the line of control (LOC) after the war of 1971. India and Pakistan resolved to refrain from the use of force against each other and to solve disputes bilaterally without third-party mediation.

Starting in the mid-1980s, a sizable number of the people of Kashmir expressed a desire for independence and received support from Pakistan. Human rights abuses by the terrorists and the Indian army drew international attention.

In 1998 both India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests and their relations became more volatile. In spite of this, both prime ministers, Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, signed the Lahore Declaration for solving the Kashmir dispute peacefully.

In February 1999 a war that would last for 73 days began on May 8 on the Kargil ridges, situated about 120 miles from Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir. Both armies had to fight in the inhospitable terrain of the Kargil mountains. On July 14 both India and Pakistan ended military operations without boundary changes.

Jawaharlal Nehru - Indian Leader

Jawaharlal Nehru - Indian Leader

Jawaharlal Nehru came from a distinguished Kashmiri Brahmin family. His father, Motilal Nehru (1861–1931), was a successful lawyer who joined the Indian National Congress (INC), becoming its president in 1920.

The elder Nehru founded a nationalist newspaper named The Independent and was elected to the Indian Legislative Assembly in accordance with the India Act (or Mongatu-Chelmsford Reform of 1919) between 1923 and 1924, and in 1926. He was also the author of the 1918 Nehru Report, which advocated dominion status for India.

Jawaharlal Nehru was educated at Harrow and Cambridge University in England, returning to India in 1912. He had a brief career as a barrister but soon gave up the legal profession and joined the Indian National Congress. He became a follower of Mohandas Gandhi, accompanying him in civil disobedience campaigns for self-government for India and serving many terms in jail.

He rose quickly in the Congress, becoming leader of its left wing, its secretary between 1929 and 1939, and also its president. He used five months of internment in Ahmadnagar Fort in 1944 to write a book titled The Discovery of India that explored India’s cultural heritage.


When freed from prison, he participated in negotiating sessions with British authorities in attempts to find mutually acceptable formulas for advancing India’s quest for independence. Although he condemned the provisions of the India Act of 1935 as totally inadequate, he nevertheless campaigned for the legislative elections that it authorized, winning impressive majorities in all non-Muslim provinces in 1937.

Triumphantly Nehru stated that henceforth there were “only two parties” in India, the British-controlled government and the INC. Such statements motivated Mohammed Ali Jinnah, president of the All India Muslim League (which won in the Muslim majority provinces) to rally Indian Muslims to work toward a separate nation, Pakistan.

World War II shattered hopes of Hindu-Muslim unity. While the Congress refused to cooperate with the British war effort without first achieving independence and ordered all its provincial ministries to resign, the League hailed the day that the order was given as a day of deliverance for Muslims.

League ministries cooperated with British authorities throughout the war and thereby gained valuable governing experience. Nehru spent the war years in jail for leading campaigns of noncooperation, and out of jail negotiating with British missions on the timetable for the transfer of power to Indians. His longest stint in prison was between August 1942 and March 1945.

Nehru with Gandhi

Elections in Britain in 1945 had brought the Labour Party to power. Prime Minister Clement Attlee appointed Louis, Lord Mountbatten, Allied supreme commander in the Southeast Asia war theater, the last viceroy to India to complete the handover of power, set for August 1947.

By that time the Muslim League had become firmly committed to Pakistan, and Gandhi and Nehru were forced to concede to a partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, which was accompanied by communal rioting and large-scale movement of refugees, with countless killed. Nehru became the first prime minister of independent India.

The years between 1947 and 1964, when Nehru was prime minister and the Congress Party held a majority in the Indian parliament, are called the Nehru Era. Economically, Nehru was committed to industrial expansion and adopted many features of the planned economy of communist nations, although he also allowed free enterprise.

He abandoned the Gandhian vision of handicraft industries. India’s neutral stance and leadership among the nonaligned nations resulted in both the Communist and the Western blocs giving large amounts of economic aid to India. Farming remained in private hands, and there was no state-sponsored land distribution to the peasants.

Economic development was stymied by rapid population growth, spurred by medical advances that increased life expectancy. Nehru conceded that India had to run fast in order to stand still because, despite steady gains in gross national product, per capita income showed little growth, and most of the population remained very poor.

Under Nehru (and afterward), India’s main international problem was Pakistan. The two newly independent nations went to war immediately over control of Kashmir, a princely state in the north with a Muslim majority population but ruled by a Hindu prince.

Under the terms of the partition all princely states had to choose to join either India or Pakistan, and the ruler of Kashmir opted to join India, which immediately sent in its military. Pakistani forces also crossed into Kashmir, touching off the first Indo-Pakistani War. A cease-fire under a United Nations mandate went into effect in 1948, but the dispute remained unsettled, and Kashmir remained partitioned in 2006.

A small war in 1961 expelled the Portuguese from their enclave, called Goa, in southwestern coastal India. As a republic, India remained a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Nehru’s foreign policy was aimed at securing Indian leadership among the nonaligned nations in the cold war; most of them were newly independent countries in Asia and Africa.

However, he found his quest for leadership challenged by the People’s Republic of China, which, although communist, also sought to lead the Third World. Nehru’s friendship with China hit a roadblock over Tibet, a Chinese territory that Great Britain had sought to draw into its sphere of influence since the late 19th century.

Tibet had enjoyed autonomy under the weak Chinese republican governments after 1912, which ended when the communist government of China militarily took control of Tibet and began consolidating its power there. A disputed boundary between the two nations remained unresolved, China contending that the McMahon Line drawn by the British in 1914 included 52,000 square miles of Chinese territory in India.

Relations were exacerbated when a failed Tibetan revolt against China led to the flight of the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, to India, which gave him and his followers political asylum. A brief war broke out between India and China (September–November 1962) in which the Indian army was decisively defeated. The victorious Chinese army, however, did not advance beyond the area in dispute. The war was a severe blow to Nehru’s prestige.

Lal Bahadur Shastri

Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indian prime minister at the time of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, was born on October 2, 1901, at Mughalsarai, Uttar Pradesh. Shastri graduated from Kashi Vidya Peeth in Varanasi in 1926, attaining the degree of shastri (equivalent to a bachelor’s degree).

His surname, Shastri, was taken by him from this degree. He was attracted to the freedom movement while at school and participated in the noncooperation and civil disobedience movements launched by Mohandas K. Gandhi.

After India’s independence Shastri became the home minister of Uttar Pradesh state. He then joined politics on the national level, became the general secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in 1951, under Jawaharlal Nehru as president, and became a close confidant of Nehru.

Shastri was a humble man and tolerant of opposing viewpoints, but never wavered from his convictions. He resigned as railway minister after an accident near Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu, taking responsibility for the event. Shastri was a very capable organizer of the Congress Party and contributed to the success of his party in general elections.


After Nehru’s death on May 27, 1964, party stalwarts favored the noncontroversial Shastri as his successor as prime minister. As prime minister, he tried to solve the rising problem of food shortage in the country and worked to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry.

Shastri showed strong determination and iron will in his dealings with Pakistan. These had been bad since independence. But the second Indo-Pakistani Wars began during Shastri’s premiership. India had been humiliated in the Sino-Indian War of 1962, and Pakistan exploited the situation by fomenting trouble on the western border of India. Shastri made diplomatic efforts to solve the problem but failed.

The conflict began in the Rann of Kutch region in Gujarat in March 1965 when Pakistani infiltrators entered Kashmir. The war was a stalemate. The United Nations Security Council called for a cease-fire on September 22. Then a meeting of the premiers of India and Pakistan, arranged by Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin, took place in the city of Tashkent.

The Tashkent Agreement was signed by Shastri and Pakistani president Ayub Khan on January 10, 1966. It restored normal relations between India and Pakistan. Both armies went back to the positions they had held before the war, and the cease-fire line became the de facto border between the two countries.

Shastri suffered a heart attack and died the next day. A grateful nation awarded him with the highest honor, Bharat Ratna, posthumously. Shastri had left an indelible mark in Indian politics because of his leadership quality, honesty, and steadfast determination.