By IANS
New Delhi : Official histories could soon be written about the three wars the Indian armed forces have fought since Independence, with Defence Minister A.K. Antony Wednesday favouring the penning of these accounts.
“I am sure the proposal will serve a useful purpose,” he said at a function here to release a coffee table book on the Indian Army.
“The ministry will extend all support to the endeavour,” he added.
Antony’s statement came in response to a suggestion from the Indian Army chief, Gen. J.J. Singh,that the official histories of the 1962 war with China and the 1965 and 1971 conflicts with Pakistan should be written.
“There were some lapses in 1962 and 1965 because of which we didn’t fare very well. We scored a decisive victory in 1971. We need to write the official histories of these conflicts so that the public can be better informed,” Gen. Singh said during his address at the function.
In this context, Gen. Singh pointed to the seminal work of Gen. Gul Hasan, the Pakistani Army’s chief of general staff during the 1971 conflict, that laid threadbare the reasons for its defeat and the creation of Bangladesh out of what was then East Pakistan.
“Everyone should read this book. It’s a lucid account of what went wrong with the Pakistani Army,” Gen. Singh stressed.
Gen Singh, surprisingly, did not mention two other conflicts: in 1948 when Pakistani army regulars with so-called tribals attempted to invade the Kashmir Valley, and in 1999 when Pakistani troops occupied the heights in the Kargil region of the state.
There have been a plethora of books by civilians and retired defence officers but no definitive histories of the three conflicts. This has resulted in immense confusion among the general public about the true course of the wars and the lessons that had been learnt from them.
This is because civilian writers do not have access to official information and have to rely on third party sources, leading to a slant one way or the other, in their works.
As for the books written by military officers, these either tend to focus only on the successes achieved or gloss over the failures.
This has led to a situation in which the definitive account of the 1962 conflict has been written not by an Indian, but by British journalist Neville Maxwell.
The book, titled “India’s China War”, was initially banned in India because it was apparently based on the report of an official probe into the conflict that revealed glaring lapses on the part of the political and military establishments.
However, no similar books have been written on the 1965 and 1971 conflicts.