In the spring of 1965, a salt marsh became an unlikely battlefield. Pakistan moved first. Under the codename Operation Desert Hawk, its army deployed US-supplied Patton tanks across the flat, blistering expanse of the Rann of Kutch and struck Indian posts in April. The ground favoured the attacker: Pakistan’s supply lines were short, the marsh was easier to reach from the Sindh side than from Gujarat, and the timing was chosen, in part, to test a new and untried Indian prime minister.

The Rann is a punishing place to fight over, and an even harder place to own outright. For much of the year, it disappears under shallow water; for the rest, it is salt crust, soft mud, and thin grass, home to wild asses and almost no permanent population. That emptiness mattered for the legal dispute that followed. With no towns, no tax rolls, and no settled administration to point to as obvious proof of ownership, neither side could rely on the usual markers of sovereignty. The case would largely be won or lost on paper. The venue that ultimately settled it, three years later, was not the marsh but a hall in Geneva, lined with old maps and bound volumes of evidence.

Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had no appetite for a prolonged war over low-value........

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