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Chandigarh: As India marks the diamond jubilee of its 1965 war with Pakistan, it is worth recalling that much of the conflict was fought with its matériel and military mindset inherited from the British Raj.

India’s armed forces, for their part, entered the campaign with a predominantly British-origin arsenal – Centurions, Shermans, Hunters, Vampires, Lee-Enfields and 25-pounders – supported by doctrines and training systems still rooted in their colonial inheritance. Together, this hardware and inherited operational culture shaped their conduct of the 17-day war from September 5-23, 1965, defining both what could be attempted on the battlefield and how effectively it was executed.

Pakistan, by contrast, had already pivoted sharply towards U.S. military equipment, through its alliances in the fifties with Washington, fielding Pattons, Chaffees, F-86 Sabres, F-104 Starfighters and M-series artillery, among other weaponry. For it, British-origin gear survived mostly in supplementary or back-up roles.

Yet, much like India, its warfighting doctrines, staff procedures and command culture, according to online research and open source documentation, were firmly rooted in British military tradition, from which both the armed forces had sprung, 18 years earlier.

Thus, at one fundamental level, the 1965 war can be evaluated as a study in contrasts and continuities: while one side went to battle largely on British-origin platforms and the other leaned on American military hardware, both militaries remained united in their doctrines, structures and approaches  – still deeply shaped by their common colonial legacy.

Veteran panellists and discussion groups at the recently concluded 9th Military Literature Festival at Chandigarh examined the strategies, sacrifices and operational strains that shaped the 1965 war, widely regarded by analysts and historians as a hard-fought draw, in which both sides demonstrated their strengths and limitations, while continuing to make competing claims of having decisively bested the other.

The three-day festival, which concluded on November 9, offered a lens to revisit the extensive use of British-origin matériel in the 1965 conflict and underscored how intrinsically the colonial mindset continued to shape both armed forces.

In many ways, the genesis of the Indian and Pakistani armed forces was unprecedented and unique: two fully formed, professional militaries carved overnight from a single, sprawling imperial army, representing one of the most audaciously ambitious and arrogant decolonisation experiments.

Also read: Looking Back at the 1965 War, With a More Objective Eye

Created under pressure, executed in haste and never replicated anywhere else before or since, it split its soldiery and officer corps, command hierarchies, equipment and doctrinal systems simultaneously. This unprecedented rupture cast a long shadow and nearly two decades later, when the two militaries confronted each other in 1965, both forces continued to mirror each other in strategy, organisation and operational habits – long after they had begun to arm themselves in entirely different ways.

India, having received the bulk – over 80% – of UK-sourced defence equipment and platforms following the division of military assets at Partition, fielded a formidable mix of British air, armoured, artillery and infantry systems, alongside naval assets in the 1965 war fought across Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat and, earlier, in the Rann of........

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