The partition of British India in August 1947 created two new states: India and Pakistan.
- The leader: India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, held that job from 1947 until his death in 1964.
- Why it matters: his foreign policy shaped how the two new neighbours would treat each other for decades.
Nehru's foreign policy in one line: Nehru tried to keep India neutral in the Cold War (non-alignment) while treating Pakistan as India's most dangerous rival, mainly over the disputed region of Kashmir.
Kashmir was a princely state with a Hindu ruler (Maharaja Hari Singh) but a Muslim majority population. In October 1947, Pakistani-backed tribal fighters invaded Kashmir. Hari Singh acceded to India in exchange for military help, and Indian troops pushed the invaders back. The dispute over who should control Kashmir was never resolved — it became the single biggest source of India-Pakistan conflict for the rest of the 20th century.
- Non-alignment — Nehru's policy of not joining either the US or Soviet bloc during the Cold War, while still accepting aid from both
- Kashmir dispute — the unresolved argument over which country should rule the Muslim-majority princely state of Kashmir
- Instrument of Accession — the legal document Hari Singh signed in October 1947 joining Kashmir to India
- United Nations involvement — India took the Kashmir dispute to the UN in 1948, which called for a ceasefire and a plebiscite (vote) that never happened
Why the plebiscite never happened: India argued it had already won the vote of Kashmir's leaders through accession, so a new plebiscite was unnecessary. Pakistan disagreed. Both sides simply held onto the territory they controlled when the fighting stopped — a Line of Control Line of Control rather than a settled border.
This first clash over Kashmir in 1947–48 set the pattern: India and Pakistan would fight three more wars by 1971, and Kashmir would remain the trigger for two of them.
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War 1: 1947–48 (Kashmir)
As covered in section 1, this war began when Pakistani-backed tribesmen invaded Kashmir and ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire in January 1949. Result: India kept about two-thirds of Kashmir (including the Kashmir Valley); Pakistan kept the rest, calling it Azad ('Free') Kashmir.
War 2: 1965 (Kashmir again)
In August 1965, Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar Operation Gibraltar, sending soldiers disguised as locals into Indian Kashmir hoping to trigger a rebellion against Indian rule. The uprising did not happen; instead, India retaliated by attacking across the international border towards Lahore. Five weeks of fighting produced no real territorial change.
How the 1965 war ended: The Tashkent Agreement (January 1966), brokered by the Soviet Union, restored the pre-war borders. Indian PM Lal Bahadur Shastri died suddenly the night it was signed — bringing Indira Gandhi to power soon after.
War 3: 1971 (Bangladesh's birth)
This war was different: its cause was not Kashmir but a civil war inside Pakistan itself. East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh) resented being ruled from West Pakistan — different language (Bengali vs Urdu), different culture, and West Pakistan taking most political power and economic investment.
| Cause | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1970 election result ignored | Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League won a majority of Pakistan's parliament, but West Pakistan's leaders refused to let him become prime minister |
| Operation Searchlight (March 1971) | The Pakistani army launched a brutal crackdown on East Pakistan, killing many civilians and students and sparking a refugee crisis |
| Refugee crisis | Roughly 10 million refugees fled into India, straining Indian resources and public opinion |
| Indian intervention (December 1971) | India sent troops to support the Bengali independence fighters (the Mukti Bahini) against the Pakistani army |
The war lasted less than two weeks once India intervened directly. On 16 December 1971, the Pakistani army surrendered at Dhaka — around 90,000 soldiers were taken prisoner, the largest surrender since the Second World War. Bangladesh became an independent country.
Results of the 1971 war: Pakistan lost more than half its population and all of its eastern territory. India's regional power grew enormously. The Simla Agreement (1972) between India and Pakistan converted the Kashmir ceasefire line into the Line of Control and committed both sides to solving disputes bilaterally.
1947–48
War over Kashmir accession; ends in ceasefire and a divided Kashmir
1965
Pakistan's failed infiltration (Operation Gibraltar) over Kashmir; Tashkent Agreement restores borders
1971
Civil war in Pakistan draws in India; Bangladesh wins independence; Simla Agreement follows
Kashmir, Kashmir, Bangladesh — the third war was the one that redrew the map.
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Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, became prime minister in 1966. Her time in power combined real achievements with a serious attack on Indian democracy itself.
- Her dominance: she dominated Indian politics from 1966 until her assassination in 1984.
- One break: a short gap out of office, 1977–1980.
- Green Revolution — new high-yield crop varieties, fertilisers and irrigation from the late 1960s made India largely self-sufficient in food grain
- 1971 war victory — winning the Bangladesh war (see section 2) made her hugely popular and gave India new regional dominance
- Nationalisation — Indira Gandhi nationalised India's major banks (1969) and the coal industry, expanding state control of the economy
- Nuclear test (1974) — India tested its first nuclear device, 'Smiling Buddha', announcing itself as a nuclear-capable power
The Emergency (1975–1977): After a court ruled her 1971 election victory invalid, Indira Gandhi declared a State of Emergency State of Emergency: she jailed opposition politicians, censored the press, and ruled largely by decree for 21 months. It remains the most serious break in India's democratic record since independence. She lost the 1977 election that followed, but returned to power in 1980.
Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984 by her own Sikh bodyguards, in revenge for her order to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar (Operation Blue Star) to remove armed Sikh separatists. Her son, Rajiv Gandhi, became prime minister immediately afterwards.
- Rajiv Gandhi (1984–1989) — India's youngest PM; pushed economic liberalisation and modernisation, especially in telecommunications and computing
- Anti-Sikh riots (1984) — thousands of Sikhs were killed in riots following his mother's assassination, a dark stain on his early premiership
- Bofors scandal — corruption allegations over a Swedish arms deal badly damaged his government and contributed to his 1989 election defeat
- Assassination (1991) — Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber linked to Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger militants (see the Sri Lanka civil war in the second half of this topic)
P.V. Narasimha Rao, prime minister from 1991–1996, faced an economic crisis: India was almost out of foreign currency reserves. His government, with finance minister Manmohan Singh, launched sweeping economic liberalisation economic liberalisation in 1991 — cutting tariffs, welcoming foreign investment, and ending decades of tightly controlled 'License Raj' economics.
Linking the leaders: A strong Paper 3 answer does not just describe each leader — it shows change over time: Nehru's state-planned economy, Indira Gandhi's nationalisation and Emergency, then a decisive turn to liberalisation under Rao in 1991. That shift is one of the most testable developments in modern India.