Hard Bargain

Indeed, these elections were very like a popular acclamation of Indira Gandhi’s leadership. The Congress party swept all the states. As P.N. Dhar conceded, this stunning outcome was “a gift of the victory in the Bangladesh war; they were truly khaki elections.” The political landscape was scythed clean of rivals and opponents. The opposition parties were at once undone and unnerved.

The postwar conference in Shimla showed her capable of managing the peace as well as winning the war. Indira Gandhi was persuaded by Haksar not to impose a punitive peace on Pakistan. Had the Treaty of Versailles, he observed, “not imposed upon Germany humiliating terms of peace, not only the rise of Nazism would have been avoided but also the seeds of the Second World War would not have been sown.” In consequence, the prime minister refrained from pushing President Z.A. Bhutto for a final settlement on Jammu and Kashmir. Instead, she sought the conversion of the extant ceasefire line (from 1949) into a “line of control”, as well as a commitment to settle disputes bilaterally and to avoid using force. The prime minister was averse to making the ceasefire line the permanent international border because she did not want to be seen as giving up territory that India formally claimed. She was content for the line of control gradually to acquire “the characteristics” of a peaceful international border.

The victory against Pakistan and the Shimla agreement also strengthened Indira Gandhi’s hand in dealing with the knottiest problem in Indian politics: Jammu and Kashmir. India’s only Muslim-majority state had acceded to the union under dramatic circumstances months after partition in 1947. Nehru had regarded this as an affirmation of India’s secular identity and had sought to forge a close relationship with the stalwart leader of the Kashmiri Muslims, Sheikh Abdullah. The Kashmiris had been promised a plebiscite on accession to India. Yet both Nehru and Abdullah had resiled from this commitment without openly repudiating it. The state had also been promised substantial autonomy under Article 370 of the Indian constitution. All this had unravelled by 1953. Nehru had dismissed and incarcerated Abdullah, who had remained in and out of prisons for the next decade and a half. Kashmir’s autonomy had been systematically eroded by pliant political leaders willing to bend the knee.

Indira Gandhi had disapproved of Nehru’s harsh treatment of Abdullah. As prime minister she had sought to chart a different course. In the wake of the 1967 elections in Kashmir, hardly free or fair, she had decided to reach out to the Sheikh. Haksar had outlined the framework that would guide the governmen