HISTORY IS A TOOL IN THE HANDS OF THE POWERFUL

NEW DELHI: Pakistan has long claimed victory over India in the 1965 war, celebrating September 6 as the 'Defence of Pakistan Day', when most objective assessments have held that the war ended more or less in a draw.

India was always more realistic, with its official war history recording that the 1965 war was more of a stalemate than anything else. Military gains were also lost on the negotiating table.

But with the Modi government deciding to celebrate the 1965 war as a "great victory" on its 50th anniversary, with even a "commemorative carnival" being planned, a new reader-friendly history of the war unabashedly concludes: "India won the war."