Toward the end of the 19th century, battered by the great rebellion of 1857, Imperial Britain set about laying social foundations for a loyal native military. The tool it chose for this social engineering was a system of new irrigation canals running across then-arid Punjab, creating what were called ‘Canal Colonies.’ In 1912, 10 per cent of colonised land in British-ruled India was reserved for the military.
Pakistan denied to the people of POK the same fundamental right to determine their future, which they appeared to champion for the people of J&K. The original Jammu and Kashmir geographical area, which was controlled by the last Maharaja, Hari Singh, at the time of his accession to India, was much bigger than what India is holding now. It had PoK in addition to Shaksgam Valley and Aksai Chin. Pakistan teaches that Maharaja of Kashmir, Hari Singh, decided to sign Treaty of Accession with India because Indian Army went in Kashmir. Implying that the Indian Army took Kashmir by force, which is completely baseless. Hari Singh, the last Maharaja of Kashmir, had decided to remain independent. On 12th August 1947 he sent a telegram to the heads of India and Pakistan asking for the existing arrangements between the Kashmir state and British India (now India and Pakistan) to continue. During Partition, a large number of Hindus and Sikhs from Rawalpindi and Sialkot started arriving since March 1947, bringing "harrowing stories of Muslim atrocities in West Punjab". In response, an estimated 20,000–100,000 Muslims were massacred and others driven away to West Punjab. Meanwhile, many Hindus and Sikhs refugees from Jhelum, on and after 25 November 1947 gathered in Mirpur for shelter and protection were killed by the Pakistani troops and tribesmen. "A 'greatly shocked' Sardar Ibrahim, the then president of Azad Kashmir, painfully confirmed that Hindus were 'disposed of' in Mirpur in November 1947. The raiders killed 10,000 of the captives along the way and abducted 5,000 women. The death toll was estimated to be over 20,000. Many Hindus and Sikhs from Muzaffarabad and Mirpur that survived the raids became displaced within the former princely state. During the WW-II, over 60,000 Muslims from the Poonch and Mirpur districts enrolled in the British Indian Army. Punjab was held by the Unionists, and the NWFP by Indian National Congress. Undeterred, the Muslim League decided to bring down both the governments, with the help of its militia. 500 hostile tribesmen in green and khaki uniforms entered Poonch, and they were joined by 200–300 Sattis from Kahuta and Murree. Their purpose appeared to be to loot the Hindu and Sikh minorities in the district. These efforts exacerbated Hindu-Sikh-Muslim communal tensions in the two provinces. The trauma was especially acute in the Hazara district, a Muslim League stronghold, which directly bordered the Poonch and Muzaffarabad districts. Communal fires were set ablaze in Multan, Rawalpindi, Amritsar and Lahore, spreading to Campbellpur, Murree, Taxila and Attock in Punjab. The rigorous restriction on the movement of goods and men between Pakistan and Poonch also generated shortages, causing prices to skyrocket. The State troops in Poonch ran out of rations and demanded the local populace to provide their supplies. When the populace eventually declared their inability to do so, the Revenue Minister of the State came down to Poonch to collect the tax arrears. Rebellious militias gathered in the Palandri–Nowshera–Anantnag area, attacking the state troops and their supply trucks. The state troops were at this time thinly spread escorting refugees between India and Pakistan. About 10,000 Poonchies gathered mainly to air grievances regarding high prices, and wanted to pass through the town of Bagh. The local officials at Bagh barred them from entering the town. Then the protesters surrounded the town. The army opened fire on the crowds. Reinforcements of State troops were sent from Srinagar, which dispersed the protesters. A local zamindar (landlord), is said to have led an attack on a police-cum-military post in Dhirkot and captured it. The event then led the Maharaja to unleash the full force of his Dogra troops on the population. Pakistani point of view on Kashmir is that Kashmir can't be in India, and belong to Pakistan since Kashmir has a Muslim majority (side note: minority Hindus have been either killed or terrorised out of Indian Kashmir and forced to live like refugees in the country). India, even with Hindu majority and having a so-called pro-Hindu Party one of the two national Party, is a secular nation. This is not because India has Muslim majority states like Kashmir, but due to the fact that, India has the second-highest Muslims in the World, even more Muslims choose India as their country rather than in entire Pakistan. Just because the so-called pro-Hindu Party was elected to power, it doesn't make the India on the ground, any closer to becoming a Hindu-rashtra, since the Indian Constitution remains secular unlike Islamic Republic of Pakistan's Constitution which is Islamic. The so-called pro-Hindu Party is in power in several Christian-majority states in the Northeast, and counts among its vote bank several Muslim groups. At the same time, it has lost elections in Hindu-majority states. Pakistan came into existence when the All-India Muslim League Party and the (pro-Hindu) RSS forced the bloody Partition of India (6 million ordinary Hindus & Muslims lost their lives) on the basis of the two-nation theory, as soon as the British rule ended. Even after the Partition, more Muslims choose to stay in India rather than go to Pakistan. The reality is (accepted by Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan) that any modern nation that calls itself ‘Islamic’, is a form of blasphemy because, the true 'Islamic state' existed only during the time of the Holy Prophet. No other piece of land can ever claim to be Islamic in nature. Hence, no Arab country in the Middle-East, where Islam was born, calls itself an ‘Islamic’ state. After the Holy Prophet passed away, in the absence of his guidance, what emerged were Caliphates or Sultanates or Emirates who never enforced or embraced Sharia law. However, Pakistan believes, since Pakistan is an Islamic nation and they believe that it also means India can't be a secular nation, whether the Indian Constitution, its people etc spells it out or not. This is both emotionally and strategically convenient argument for the Pakistan Army to sell to Pakistani citizens. Since Pakistan doesn't accept that India is secular, the Pakistan Army believes that it has no other cards to play to put pressure on India, so its state-sponsored terrorism is completely justified when used against India. The ends completely justify the means. Without cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, Pakistan Army feels that peace would prevail in Kashmir. At which point, India would feel no need to forgo or relinquish Kashmir in return for peace with Pakistan. And with nuclear weapons, Pakistan Army can feel assured that India will not retaliate back. Pakistan Army has shown no sign of accountability, even though its terrorism strategy against India, since 1980s, has radicalized their own citizens, which has led to low per capita income in the country. How effective has Indian Army been against Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in the last three decades? How long will India Army continue doing CI ops? Can Indian Army's cold-start doctrine resolve the ongoing proxy war by Pakistan Army under a Nuclear umbrella? Why has Indian leadership not been able to change the behaviour of Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi General Headquarters (GHQ)? Indian and Pakistan's politicians and bureaucrats (civilian leadership) have not realized that Pakistan Army's strategic use of state-sponsored proxies, started in Pakistan's inception in 1947 in J&K, and it only turned worse after the Indo-Pak War of 1971. Pakistan's principal national policy is creating state-sponsored proxies (under nuclear umbrella) to bring India to the table and push India to compromise it territorial integrity, mainly in the Kashmir valley, with the end result being something similar to how East & West Pakistan was divided into two independent nations (birth of Bangladesh). This would not only clear the strategic positions for future invasions from the North (also loosen the ties between the diverse regions of India) but turn Pakistan as the most dominant power in the region due to its strategic location. It would be as significant as the U.S. giving up its territorial control of Alaska. In 1987, two years after martial law in Pakistan was lifted, ISI was already pumping in, weapons and ammunition into the Kashmir Valley that was enough to arm two Infantry Divisions worth of irregulars. When the war began, we were reacting to a total 'surprise situation' created by Pakistan. Indian PM Vajpayee told Pakistan's PM Nawaz Sharif: 'Aapne pith men chhura ghonp diya' (You have stabbed me in the back). The Kargil War ensued for 74 (or 85) days at a cost of more than a thousand casualties on each side. 145 Pakistani Army soldiers killed in 1999 lie till this day in the icy heights of northern J&K. It took the Indian Army, two divisions plus additional artillery and infantry units worth another division under command, and extensive employment of air power to evict 3,000 - 3,500 enemy troops deployed in platoon-sized posts. However, Pakistan itself didn't suffer any serious repercussions in this campaign. One of the lessons learnt by India from the Kargil War then was that there can be no substitute for reconnaissance and surveillance. The Kargil Review Committee report also mentions that the war could perhaps have been avoided if troops had been stationed there, but also notes that had troops been stationed there all year round would "enabled Pakistan to bleed India" economically. It was failure of surveillance over 160 km when Kargil occurred. Local technical intel can flag movements, it's the final validation that counts. India was not aware over one and half to two months. We lacked surveillance equipment, helicopters were also not able to detect enemies. We were entirely dependent on foot patrol. Patrols along the LoC, in sectors such as Kupwara and Uri, have dense forests, making detection difficult. Routine helicopter surveillance, which was minimal in the months preceding the intrusion, was of little use because the Cheetah helicopters used for the purpose vibrated too much for accurate visual sighting. There was (also) Intelligence failure, as there was absolutely no awareness that Pakistan Army was preparing for it. Both the IB & RAW had specifically discussed the possibility of such an engagement and ruled out the possibility. It flew in the face of available evidence such as provided by a Skardu-based informant, had in turn briefed superiors of the training of personnel for such an intrusion. This resulted in wrong tactics adopted by the Indian Army in the initial days of Kargil conflict (in which we lost 527 soldiers). So the tactics adopted was of anti-insurgency. There was a single artery of road for supply chain. While Pakistan used deception and surprise in the initial phase to occupy a large number of unoccupied heights overlooking the Srinagar-Leh Axis, it was unable to sustain its troops logistically. “To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.” ― Sun Tzu. The USSR had always, over two centuries, threatened to move south through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to reach the warm waters of the Arabian Sea (Indian Ocean). This had been the threat the British always feared as they ruled the world through their colonies. Afghanistan was a no-go because the British had failed to conquer it despite three wars. The last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, was sent to India to hand back power, was an unwitting pawn, manipulated by Winston Churchill as part of a plan “War Cabinet – Post-Hostilies Planning” to breaking-off India in order to keep Britain’s interests, for example, to keep influence over the key Pakistan warm water port, which is strategically placed by the Suez Canal and the oil supplies in the Persian Gulf. To draw the actual lines for the splitting up of colonial India into two separate new nations, Cyril John Radcliffe, a British lawyer from London who had never been east of France, was brought in a month before the actual transfer of powers. Winston Churchill was worried that if he handed India back as promised, they were handing the whole of Asia to the communists. Churchill warned Pakistan's first Governor-General Muhammad Jinnah that they should not meet in public before the partition and more, and should write to each other under fake names. It's clear Churchill and Jinnah discussing things they didn't want anybody else to know about. Partition is central to modern identity in the Indian subcontinent, as the Holocaust is to identity among Jews, branded painfully onto the regional consciousness by memories of almost unimaginable violence. The riots and growing violence between different religious groups in India may have been orchestrated to convince Lord Louis Mountbatten that the only option was to divide India. In Punjab and Bengal—provinces abutting India’s borders with West and East Pakistan, respectively—the carnage was especially intense, with massacres, arson, forced conversions, mass abductions, and savage sexual violence. These are the same regions that saw mass conversions among the peasants from Hinduism to Islamic mysticism. A Sunni Muslim weaver from Bengal would have had far more in common in his language, his outlook, and his fondness for fish with one of his Hindu colleagues than he would with a Karachi Shia or a Pashtun Sufi from the North-West Frontier. The British official thought the transfer of power would need 5 years but due to the rising communal riots, the last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, had agreed to complete the transfer of power in 4 months. This is how India and Pakistan gained their independence from Britain in mid-August 1947, it was a twin birth - the secular India and the Muslim-dominated Pakistan. Arguably the most contentious issue is the status of Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Indian state in the Himalayan foothills. Jinnah placed Pakistan firmly in the western camp, in contrast to Jawaharlal Nehru, who took a position of nuance. The Eisenhower administration responded by flooding Pakistan with US weaponry and assistance. Under the US’ Marshall Plan, military assistance was granted to all countries that were against the USSR. The hesitant, often elliptical, Indian requests for similar assistance were ignored on the grounds that Pakistan was now a “treaty ally”, which India declined to be. After Independence, Pakistan still had a British Commander-in-Chief of its Army till 1951. The Pakistan Army is an “India-centric institution.” Pakistan was not like other countries that raise an army to deal with threats they face; it had inherited a large army that needed a threat if it was to be maintained. The Pakistani military's institutional interest that it would have to effectively control the country by being able to get the lion's share of its resources, which is why it encouraged Pakistan's evolution as a national security state, living in constant fear of being overrun by an India. As state building and survival became synonymous with the ‘war effort,’ the civilian leadership diverted scarce resources from development to defense and abdicated its responsibility of oversight over the military, thereby allowing the generals a virtual free hand over internal organizational affairs and national security management. The Pakistan Army has, time and again, led its people to humiliation but manages to retain power over them— by depriving them of education and keeping them religiously caged. And with Islamisation of the force, they believed that god himself had sanctioned their victory, both, in life and death. "In the 73-year-old history of Pakistan, not a single PM was allowed to complete his full term. On average, every dictator ruled for 9 years while every PM could stay in office for only 2 years on an average. The reality is that in Pakistan, there is either martial law or a parallel government functions which is more powerful than the existing government." "The longest-serving prime minister of Pakistan, Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, who had disputes with three successive army chiefs." Pakistan Army has studied the art of asymmetric warfare well. ISI has the privilege of being created, trained and patronised by the CIA. It has generated an unethical force of terrorists that it calls a strategic asset. The jihadis are enticed from poor families with religious motivation to conduct acts of terror. The lines were blurred between war and politics, soldier and civilian, peace and conflict, and boundaries vanished — the goal was to challenge a superior force through long-term covert and proxy operations, which has exemplified the conflict between cultural and religious ideologies, haves and have-nots, capitalists and socialists, and the emergence of non-State actors. The use of terror has been well stated in the book Quranic Concept of War by Brigadier S.K. Malik. Pakistan has denied to the people of this region the same fundamental right to determine their future, which they appeared to champion for the people of J&K. Pakistan claims the northern part of the region, and three initial wars the two nations fought over the area—in 1947–48, 1965 and 1971—failed to resolve the dispute. The Simla Agreement, signed after the 1971 conflict, stipulated that neither country would attempt to alter the cease-fire line, dubbed the Line of Control, and neither party has expressed a real interest in converting that temporary boundary into a permanent border. What is unique for J&K state is that even though it is a Muslim majority state, its population numbering 93 lakh is mainly concentrated in Kashmir valley in an area which is just 32% of the entire area of J&K. The balance 60 lakh population comprising Hindus and Buddhists are in Jammu and Ladakh regions respectively in the remaining 68% area. Kargil was the unfinished operation of the Siachen loss of 1984. In 1984, RAW intercepted vital information which showed that Pakistan was planning an incursion in the Siachen glacier. This information helped the Army in pre-determining Pakistan’s actions and to launch Operation Meghdoot to take control of Siachen Glacier before Pakistan could launch any operation. It resulted in Indian domination of all major peaks in Siachen. General Jehangir Karamat had stressed publicly the re-creation of National Security Council (instead of Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) which the Prime minister chaired). Many in Pakistan became surprised of Sharif's moved since the dismissal of four-star general was never happened before. In 1999, Nawaz Sharif later dismissed Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Fasih Bokhari to promote General Pervez Musharraf to chairman joint chiefs. He also failed to recognize that despite his heavy mandate, it was not advisable for him to dismiss two army chiefs in less than a year. By early 1999 it seemed India and Pakistan were well on their way to improving their relationship. Nearly three decades had passed since their last direct war, and despite a Pakistan-backed insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and nuclear weapons tests by both countries in 1998, it appeared Islamabad was ready to discuss with New Delhi a bilateral solution to the Kashmir issue. But not all concerned parties supported a negotiated settlement, least of all the Pakistani army, which decided to act—covertly. "Operation Al-Badar" was the name given to Pakistan's infiltration. It seems the Pakistan Army’s fears of a future Indian invasion stemmed from the heavy artillery fire-assaults launched by then Indian PM I K Gujral against the Neelam Valley in 1997. Members of the Pakistani Army, dressed in civilian clothes, had crossed the Line of Control and had made their way to the top of key mountain peaks on the Indian side. The objective of was to cut off the link between Kashmir and Ladakh by hitting National Highway No.1 (NH 1) and cause Indian forces to withdraw from the Siachen. Details of the LoC incursion plans were not shared with even the entire leadership of the Pakistan Army, and least of all the Pakistan Navy & Air Force. Allegedly, Pakistani Army's intention was to pre-empt any possibility of the capture of prominent features like the Haji Pir Pass and the Bugina Bulge by the Indian forces (that were deployed since Operation Meghdoot to defend the Siachen area); and by using new-generation weapons like Krasnopol-M and shoulder-launched bunker-bursting LAWs that was being field evaluated by the Indian Army in eastern Ladakh. It was an attempt to exploit the nuclear card, that led to the clique misplaced assurance that the international community would quickly move in to compel a ceasefire which would allow Pakistan to retain the Kargil heights and threaten India’s northern defences. The leadership also thought that the Indian army lacked the stomach to take losses; hence, India would settle for peace on Pakistan’s terms. Indeed, once the full scope of the Pakistani operation became known, India’s military and diplomatic strategists initially could not believe that the Pakistan army would not have anticipated a full Indian response to evict it from posts that threatened the lifeline of its northern defences. Over several weeks preceding the start of the Kargil War, the Pakistani Army surreptitiously launched Operation Badr (“full moon” in Arabic), sending soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry Regiment into 8 to 10 km inside the Indian side of the LoC across four contiguously located sub sectors – Mushkoh Valley (adjacent to the 11,500 Zoji La), Dras, Kargil and Batalik (adjoining the Siachen glacier) – and occupied more than vacant Indian outposts overlooking the country’s main supply route National Highway No.1 (NH 1) connecting Srinagar to Leh (in a phased infiltration across a 90-mile front). From the observation posts, Pakistan Army had a clear view to target it, inflicting heavy casualties. The ammunition dump of the Indian Army was also destroyed. The overall strategy was brilliant, but failed because of the basic presumption that they were the best fighting army in Asia. In early May, shepherds in the Kargil district, on the Indian side of the Line of Control, informed the local Indian brigade commander of heavily armed men atop the ridges. The first Army patrol sent to investigate was attacked and met with casualties (four killed and five wounded). Lieutenant Saurabh Kalia and his five-man patrol went to investigate, but vanished; it was later determined they had been captured and tortured to death. A second patrol went missing; an IAF helicopter followed by a Canberra reconnaissance aircraft were damaged in Pakistani rocket fire; and an attempt to dislodge the Pakistanis from a key peak (Point 5353) was repulsed. As reports of additional ambushes poured in, and local Indian units proved unable to evict the infiltrators, New Delhi approved Operation Vijay (“victory” in Hindi), initiating the redeployment of nearly 30,000 troops to Kargil. But the Indian soldiers who rapidly deployed from the lower altitude and hot clime of the Kashmir Valley were physically unprepared for the thin mountain air and single-digit temperatures. Furthermore, they had scant intelligence about enemy positions or strength, and the inhospitable terrain along the Line of Control hindered movement and resupply. Thus, these early responding units suffered terribly. Pinned down on exposed mountainsides, some assault teams went days without food or water, subsisting on snow and cigarettes. When the army called up 1st Battalion, Naga Regiment, which had fared poorly in its initial assaults, six of its officers went on sick call. By 25th May, i.e. a day before the start of air strikes, 29 Indian soldiers had either been killed or gone missing and another 30 wounded. But the Army still did not know the full extent of the intrusions, their number and identity (whether Pakistani Army or militants as they were claiming). It was not the brightest moment for the country, who had 28 years earlier (1971) soundly defeated and dismembered Pakistan. With the battleground ranging between 14,000 and 18,000 feet, the 85-day limited Kargil War between India and Pakistan turned out to be the world’s highest elevation air and land war during which the Army fired a staggering 250,000 artillery shells (average 5,000 a day), a scale unprecedented since World War-II. Pakistan SAM shot down two Indian MiGs bombers intruding LoC on 26 May 1999. Sqn Ldr. Ahuja body was handed over to India. He was shot twice-once through the ear by his Pakistani captors. IAF changed their operational technique after their jets were shot down and used Jaguars and Mirage 2000 fighter jets. The IAF, did some brilliant innovations including unprecedented high altitude night operations in moonlight, ended up flying 7,631 sorties (average 40 a day) including 1,730 missions by 60 fighter aircraft that dropped about 500 bombs including, for the first time, laser guided bombs. The 18th Battalion, Grenadiers Regiment, had initiated operations to recapture Tololing on May 22. As its companies made their way up the exposed slopes, heavy and coordinated Pakistani mortar and artillery fire stopped them cold. The grenadiers conducted three more assaults in vain, suffering more than 150 casualties. Two Mi-17 helicopter missions would be able to bring down firepower and inflicting damage on those pinhead targets at 15,000-18,000 feet, that were almost impossible to be picked up by non-precision weapons fired by fighter strikes. Pakistan had shoulder-fired Stinger MANPADS. Each Mi-17, firing protective flares (CMDS), disgorged its 57 mm rockets in salvo mode – all 128 of them. Before the enemy soldier could put his head up, the next Mi-17 came in and fired its 128 rockets – and the next and the next. The commanding officer, 39-year-old Lt. Col. Magod Basappa Ravindranath, was an experienced veteran with three prior deployments. He focused their efforts on the knowledge that successful mountain operations hinged on three elements: altitude acclimatization, flexible assault tactics and a sound logistical support plan. The soldiers also ensured their small arms—a mix of 7.62 mm AK-series assault rifles and new, domestically produced 5.56 mm INSAS rifles—were properly zeroed for the thin mountain air. All four companies ran mock assaults on nearby peaks, emphasizing flexible small-unit tactics against fixed enemy positions. Shortly after the regiment’s arrival, brigade headquarters ordered Ravindranath to recapture Tololing, a dominant peak looming 16,000 feet over National Highway 1 scarcely 3 miles northwest of town. Pakistani positions atop Tololing represented the deepest point of the Badr incursion, and Indian commanders counted on Ravindranath to establish a foothold from which the army could launch subsequent operations. After linking up with the exhausted grenadiers, Ravindranath led his command team on extensive reconnaissance on June 5–6. Ravindranath elected to send two companies up each spur—one attacking, the other in reserve—to split the Pakistanis’ attention. By this time, the 120 artillery guns had arrived in Dras and would support the assault, a crucial support element previously unavailable to the grenadiers. Ammunition and water supply points on each axis of advance, and on the nights before the attack; rations and medical supplies up the steep gradient in an exhausting, seven-hour climb to the bases. Pakistani forces on Point 4590 detected the Indians’ approach and engaged the attackers with machine gun and mortar fire. Saxena led the company forward, sprinting from boulder to boulder, until his men had closed to within 100 yards of the nearest Pakistani positions. Unable to advance farther, they sheltered behind a line of boulders and kept firing uphill, waiting for an opportunity. Meanwhile, to the southeast, came Company C, which had started its advance 30 minutes after Company D. As the men climbed, the two leading platoons noticed the Pakistanis appeared to scurrying west to face Saxena’s attack. Seizing on their inattention, one of Company C’s platoons rushed forward and splitting the Pakistani-held terrain. The alarmed Pakistanis began spraying automatic fire to scatter the attackers. As the men of the leading section scrambled forward, they failed to notice a well-concealed bunker on their flank; its machine gun killed all of them. Major Gupta, on standby with the reserve platoon, led his men up the right side of the spur. The platoon’s progress was marked by bitter close-quarters fighting. Amid the confusion, Gupta and a Pakistani nearly collided in the darkness and, standing barely 6 feet apart, killed one another. By 2:30 a.m. the platoons had finally cleared the bunkers. Over the next hour, Pakistani soldiers fiercely counterattacked Company C on Tololing Top and Area Flat, trying to throw back the Indians before they could consolidate their positions. The Indians repulsed each attempt, but desperation set in as the company’s casualties mounted, and its ammunition ran low. Ravindranath rushed a platoon from Company B to reinforce C. But confusion still reigned in the darkness. As Tomar awaited reinforcements, one of his NCOs pointed to a trio of unidentified men climbing toward their position. Both parties paused, anxiously trying to identify the other in the dim starlight. The NCO called out to them—only to realize they were Pakistani soldiers. As the men of Company B approached, Pakistani forces launched three more counterattacks in quick succession. The Indians held and by the third attempt had eliminated all resistance. Before anyone could celebrate, however, the commando detachment radioed reports of Pakistani reinforcements rushing south toward the summit from Point 5140. The Indians immediately called in accurate artillery strikes along the Hump, stopping the surge. Ravindranath then led Company B to reinforce the summit. The punishing task would claim the lives of three more officers and 10 soldiers and wound another 52 men. India’s victory lies in recovering territory lost due to its incompetence, this came at a high human cost: 527 soldiers (including six airmen) killed and 1,363 wounded (many maimed for life). When compared to duration and geographical spread, the Army proportionately lost more soldiers in the over two-month war than in the 14-month 1947-48 war, in which 1,103 soldiers were killed. The IAF lost three aircraft – a MiG 27M to engine failure and a MiG-21 and Mi-17 helicopter each to Pakistani missiles. Some deft diplomacy led to an unusual public support by the US and all major countries for the Indian position vis-à-vis a diplomatically isolated Pakistan. Islamabad’s, rather Rawalpindi’s (headquarters of the Pakistani Army), ‘success’ lay in internationalising the Kashmir issue; exposing the Indian Army and intelligence agencies, respectively, for their lack of preparedness and incompetence; and continuing their proxy war in J&K. Overall the otherwise militarily well executed intrusions by Pakistan, who for the first few weeks succeeded in misleading the Indian Army and intelligence agencies, reflected badly on the security apparatus of a country considered a regional power with the world’s third-largest army. Three days after the war ended, the government on 29th July 1999 constituted the Kargil Review Committee (KRC) headed by K. Subrahmanyam to examine the sequence of events and make recommendations for the future. The Aviation Research Centre or ARC, which earlier formed part of India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), was elevated to a separate agency known as the National Technical Reconnaissance Organisation (NTRO). Border management is now based on the one-border, one-force principle. The government created the Strategic Forces Command entrusted with nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, a tri-services Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), a Defence Procurement Board and a system of a holistic 15-year Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan (LTIPP). India now has better resolution (one metre) satellites to detect intrusions, while large portions of the LoC have been fenced with barbed wire and sensors. The Army has since truncated the geographical jurisdiction of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps and raised 14 Corps in Leh to exclusively cater for the Ladakh region that faces the armies of two countries – China and Pakistan. J&K now has three Corps – numbers 14, for Ladakh, 15, for the Valley and Nagrota-based 16, for the Jammu-Poonch region. Notwithstanding the measures taken, successive Indian governments at the Centre are yet to effectively address these basic issues that characterised the Kargil War:
Since both Indian and Pakistani military institutions spring from the same parent, both nations continue to employ the pedagogy they inherited from the British Commonwealth model. Both nation's military institutions are army-centric in their focus and teach an outdated ground doctrine that virtually all Western students thought was more suited to World War II than a 21st century battlefield. Both nation's military institutions are highly deficient in inculcating an appreciation for the roles of intelligence and combined arms OP with closed air-support. And that is ironical, for a Tri-service institution, supposedly committed to inculcating "jointmanship" in all three services. Only 3 people knows just what the Kargil Review Committee (KRC) report, submitted to PM Atal Behari Vajpayee, has found. Censorship-at-source is a wholly new phenomenon. Perhaps because it could embarrass the Government with the findings of inexcusable errors by Army top brass and senior intelligence personnel. While over a dozen junior officers now face various forms of military proceedings for their supposed failures during the Kargil war of 1999, not one senior command-level figure has had to suffer the consequences of glaring errors of judgment. Indian Army's internal inquiry by Lieutenant General A R K Reddy, about the Kargil war of 1999, held Brigadier Surinder Singh, his controversial superior, 3 Infantry Division commander Major-General V.S. Budhwar, and Colonel Pushpinder Oberoi, commander of one of the battalions of LoC, responsible for errors. There were three battalions under Brigade Surinder Singh to patrol 150km of the LoC in the Kargil sector. The termination of his services under Rule 19 order charged Brigade Surinder Singh with having leaked classified documents to the media; and of having vacated a forward post, the Bajrang Post of Point 5299 metres, in the Kaksar sub-sector without authorisation, which is routinely vacated in winter in the area. This provision enables the Chief of the Army Staff to remove officers from service, where a "trial by court martial is inexpedient and/or impractical". Notable was the fact that Brigadier Surinder Singh's superiors all thought he was an excellent officer - until their own high-level command failures during the Kargil war began to emerge. It also found, embarrassingly, that his superiors had authorised the decision, and were informed of it. Frontline magazine published excerpts from several Army intelligence and 121 Brigade documents, showing that Surinder Singh had repeatedly pointed to deteriorating security conditions in Kargil and his worry about the forward movement of Pakistan troops. However, the Army Chief ensured that Surinder Singh would get to keep his pension and retirement benefits despite being sacked. As American scholar Steven Cohen later remarked, 1986-87 was India’s last chance to fight a conventional war with Pakistan. The Pakistan-sponsored militant uprising in J&K in 1990, the Kargil War, the terror attack on parliament (2001) and in Mumbai (2008) were other provocations. But then a full-scale conventional war between India and Pakistan seems difficult with Islamabad possessing nuclear weapons. The covert Pakistani intrusion into Indian-controlled Kashmir that was the casus belli laid bare a gaping hole in India’s nationwide real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability that had allowed the incursion to go undetected for many days. In India, the overall policy to evict Pakistan from Kargil was fashioned by Vajpayee, external affairs minister Jaswant Singh and national security advisor Brajesh Mishra. Not once did they or the cabinet committee on security harbour any doubt that Pakistan would have to be pushed across the LOC. They brought to bear all elements of military and diplomatic power to achieve this objective while signalling that unlike Pakistan, India was a responsible nuclear power. Pakistan and the world had to be shown that the army was committed to the military task whatever the cost — and the army and the air force delivered well. The diplomatic task was to conclusively show that the Pakistani army had violated the LOC. All in all, once the surprise of Kargil was absorbed, India acted clinically and professionally and the political leadership displayed outstanding statesmanship. "Ever since 2019, Pulwama crisis, though, General Bajwa has reined in terrorism, leading to a significant decline in terrorism in Kashmir. Emissaries for the Pakistan Army chief and India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval are believed to have held back-channel negotiations to prevent the two countries from lurching into a conflict neither want." It is hardly a coincidence that Chinese heightened activities along the Sino-India border in 1999 happened when India was fighting a war with Pakistan in Kargil. Moreover, even as China maintained a fairly neutral posture during the 1999 Kargil war, it had sent the PLA director of the Department of Armament to Islamabad to help Pakistan with its critical deficiencies in conventional armament, ammunition and equipment. Similarly, during Operation Parakram, the 10-month-long military stand-off between India and Pakistan, the PLA maintained pressure, especially in the eastern sector, to ensure that India found it difficult to divert more forces from the eastern front towards Pakistan.
Kashmiri identity, actually, included both Muslims and the Hindus who were forced from the valley. By the mid 16th century, Hindu influence in the courts and role of the Hindu priests had declined as Muslim missionaries immigrated into Kashmir from Central Asia and Persia, and Persian replaced Sanskrit as the official language. Interestingly, a letter written to Jinnah by his secretary, Khursheed Husain, from Srinagar in 1945 made it crystal clear, for in it, he advised Jinnah not to accept the J&K Muslim Conference’s offer to join the Muslim League because the Kashmiris practised ‘a strange form of Islam, worshipping saints and relics, that drove a coach and four through all the tenets that orthodox Muslims considered most sacred’. Kashmiris, he concluded, would need ‘a long period of re-education’ before they became fit to be included in the ranks of true Muslims.
The Hunza or Burusho : The Hunza / the Burusho people inhabit the Hunza Valley and neighboring Valleys in the extreme North of the state. They speak the Burushaski language which as a language has not been identified with any language Group. The Hunzai now mostly follow different schools of Islam. The Baltis : The Baltis are the inhabitants of the Baltistan and are of Tibetan origin with Dardic admix. Their language is Balti, which is a part of the Tibetan language Group. Infact it has the greatest similarity to old Tibetan. The Baltis follow Islam. The Ladakhis : The Ladakhis are the inhabitants of the Ladakh region and are of Tibetan descent. The Ladakhi language is from the Tibetan family. Ladakhis are Buddhists as well as Muslim. The Kargilis or Purigpas : The Kargilis / the Purigpas as they are called inhabit the Western part of Ladakh at the crossroads with Baltistan and Kashmir. Their language Purigi is a dialect of Balti and as such they are also a part of the Tibetan family. Purigis are mostly Muslim. The Bakarwals : The Bakarwals and their close cousins the Gujjars are traditionally nomadic pastoral people who inhabited the foothills of the Himalayas and moved to the Mountains in the Summers with their livestock. They (Gujjars or Bakarwals) form the majority in the Poonch Rajouri region and spread among the Jammu Division and in Kashmir as well. They follow Islam. The Dogras or “Duggar”: The traditional dwellers of the Jammu region or the “Duggar” as the region was known. They live in the foothills of Jammu and are spread into Himachal Pradesh as well. The Dogras speak the Dogri language which is from the Western Pahari Group of languages. The Dogras are mostly Hindu though a significant number converted to Islam and were referred to as Chibalis. The Potohari or Pahari : The Potohari / Pahari are the most Punjabic people of Jammu and Kashmir and live across the Potohar Plateau which stretches well beyond Rawalpindi. They are in sizeable numbers in Poonch. Their language Pahari-Pothwari belongs to the Lhanda Family of Punjabi. They are majorly Muslim but there is a strong Hindu minority as well. The Kashmiri : The people of the Kashmir area found mostly in the Kashmir Valley. They are the biggest Indegenous Group of people in the state. They speak Kashmiri language which belongs to the Dardic family of languages. Kashmiris are mostly Muslim though a small minority of Kashmiri Hindus also exists. The Gilgiti or Dards : The Gilgiti or the Dards are the inhabitants of the vast Gilgit Valley in the North West of the state. They speak the Shina language. They (Dards) are also found in other areas of the state like Gurez and Drass where they have said to have migrated from Gilgit. They follow Islam though a few follow Buddhism as well in Ladakh.
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