Shock and Reconciliation? The Case of India–Pakistan, 1962–63

Abstract

This paper examines the interstate reconciliation between India and Pakistan after the shock of Sino-Indian War of 1962. The post-1962 war political-security equations, particularly at the regional level, gave rise to a situation that necessitated India’s reconciliatory negotiations with Pakistan over Kashmir. Though the rival parties engaged in a six-round political dialogue, the process ended up in a deadlock followed by spirals of armed clashes that culminated in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. The paper shows that this reconciliation process proved counterproductive because it was imposed from outside and the principal parties, in a window-driven haste and under the political-strategic constraints, could not mutually agree on to reconcile their political differences and settle the territorial dispute over Kashmir.

DECLARATION OF INTEREST

There are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 According to Major General D.K. Palit, who was then the Director Military Operations and had been assigned the task to prepare five concession maps while keeping the military logistic in mind, India’s maximum territorial concession to Pakistan was approximately “3500 square kilometers” (i.e. 1,351 square miles) along the CFL from the north of Zojila to the west of Baramulla to Jhangar in the southwest (Palit 1991, 371).

2 For definition and an elaborate understanding of the concept, ‘complex rivalry,’ see Mohan (2022, 60–69).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Surinder Mohan

Surinder Mohan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Strategic and Regional Studies, University of Jammu, India. Dr. Mohan holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Delhi and is the author of Complex Rivalry: The Dynamics of India-Pakistan Conflict (University of Michigan Press, 2022). E-mail: [email protected]