Historic tashkent talks

ALTAF GAUHAR was Field-Marshal Ayub Khan’s information secretary, closest confidant, and biographer, indeed alter ego. It is he who had recorded that on September 6, 1965 when Indian troops entered the Lahore sector, the Pakistani “most surprised” was Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s first military ruler. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his cohorts had evidently convinced him that the 1965 War would remain “confined” to Jammu and Kashmir because Indians would never dare to march into Pakistan’s mainland.

Equally authentic is Gauhar’s description of the morning a few days before the ceasefire when Ayub and he were alone in the president’s office.

With a map in front of him, Ayub was gleefully telling his acolyte that Pakistan’s Patton tanks were about to make a breakthrough at Khemkaran from where they would drive straight to Delhi. At that precise moment, the president’s military secretary came in and “shouted” that the Indians had cut the banks of a canal that was not shown on Pakistani maps. “For Pakistan the war was over.” The question was: what next?

Even in the very early days of the war, the Soviet prime minister, Alexei Kosygin, had invited both Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then prime minister of India, and Pakistan’s president Ayub Khan to meet at Tashkent - then a Soviet city in Central Asia and now the capital of the independent republic of Uzbekistan - for talks. Both countries agreed to accept the Soviet good offices after initial hesitation. On January 3, 1966, Shastri and Ayub arrived in Tashkent. Kosygin met them separately, and formal talks began the next day. The two South Asian leaders and their Soviet hosts had six days to show results, for Shastri was to leave for Kabul on January 11. The going was tough. Pakistan’s priority was Kashmir and Kashmir alone. For India, a No-War pact was the only starting point for resolving all other issues. So complete was the deadlock that on the evening of December 9, at their daily briefings, both India and Pakistan announced that Tashkent talks were on the brink of collapse.

G. K. Reddy of The Times of India, Krishan Bhatia of Hindustan Times and I, then working for The Statesman, were competitors, of course, but we were also great friends. We used to wait until all three of us had finished filing our dispatches before going for dinner. That night the process took more time than usual. By then we were very tired and decided to retire to our rooms.

Just before changing and getting into bed, it occurred to me that there was something wrong. I argued with myself that Tashkent talks could not fail. The Soviet Union’s stakes in the success of their first attempt at mediation in South Asia were too high. So, forgetting much-needed sleep I jumped into one of the cars the Soviet hosts had placed at our disposal round the clock and went to Shashtri’s villa to find that all lights were on and there was brisk activity. The prime minister and the core of his delegation were in his room. Other members of the delegation and Indian embassy officials were in the crowded anteroom. K. Shankar Bajpai, South Block’s expert on Pakistan, and a dear friend, was among them. I asked him what was cooking. He answered he would be able to tell only later. As I learned subsequently, what had happened was that for a brief moment Foreign Secretary C. S. Jha had come out of the prime minister’s room and discussed some point with General P. P.

Kumaramangalam, at the end of which he muttered, “then we can sign it.” “Sir, sign what?” Bajpai asked. Jha’s reply: “I will tell you later.” A short walk through a garden led to the hotel where the Indian delegation was put up. More convinced than before that some kind of an agreement was in the works, I hurried to the room of Riki Jaipaul, deputy chief of mission at our Moscow embassy, who was conspicuous by his absence from the PM’s anteroom. Sure enough he wasn’t there either. However, his wife, Sheila - a classmate, incidentally, of Indira Gandhi – kindly told me that he had gone to meet Gromyko, then the Soviet foreign minister. Back to the villa I picked up the phone and managed to change the opening paragraph to the effect that Kosygin looked like having rescued the talks from collapse by his Herculean efforts. The next morning the good news was all over the town.

The Tashkent declaration, meeting the minimum aspirations of India and Pakistan, was signed at 4 p.m. local time. It was one of the most festive occasions I have witnessed. Many people, Indians, Russians and Uzbeks, told me that Shastri looked pleased and was greeting everyone with a firm handshake.

However, when the Prime Minister returned to his villa and spoke to his family, he received a jolt. His family members told him that they agreed with those vehemently criticising him for having given back Haji Pir, a strategically important mountain pass in Jammu and Kashmir that the Indian Army had captured after suffering heavy casualties. Unfortunately, during the interval between the ceasefire and the Tashkent Talks, Shastri had over-committed himself never to vacate Haji Pir.

Initially he stuck to this stand. But, Kosygin very gently told him that India was a party to the UN Security resolution demanding that both India and Pakistan should return to each other whatever territorial gains they might have made during the war. If India remained adamant on keeping Haji Pir, not only would Tashkent talks fail but also the matter would go back to the Security Council. And if the council decided to take any corrective measure, the Soviet Union, despite its friendship with India, would have to go along with the UNSC decision.

Against this backdrop the PM’s top advisers panicked because of the adverse reaction to the return of Haji Pir back home. Five of them – L. K. Jha, PM’s Secretary; C. S, Jha, foreign secretary; L. P. Singh, home secretary; Ambassador T. N. Kaul; and C. P. Srivastava, PM’s joint secretary and confidant – arrived at our hotel. They pleaded with Reddy, Bhatia, Rangaswamy of The Hindu and me that we should only report the contents of the declaration and make no comment. We refused.

A couple of hours later the triumph of statesmanship at Tashkent was followed by the tragedy of Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death. Even in the midst of grief what happened was bizarre beyond belief. When Indian Prime Minister dies his government goes with him. A new prime minister has to be sworn in immediately. So the first task of the top officials on the spot was to inform President Radhakharishan that the PM had passed away.

L. P. Singh’s attempt to get through to the president via the Rashtrapati Bhavan exchange proved infuriatingly frustrating. Whereupon Gen.

Kumaramangalam took the phone and called the Operations Room at the Army Headquarters, and identified himself to the duty officer, a Major Tandon.

Before he could proceed, Tandon laughed and said: “If you are Gen. K. then I am Queen of Sheba,” and put the phone down. The General called the major again and admonished him in the barrack room language.

Meanwhile, L. P. Singh, using another phone had woken up Cabinet Secretary Dharma Vira in Delhi, who drove to Rashtrapati Bhavan immediately to break the sad news to the president.