War myths: how Pakistan spun tales of divine miracles after its 1965 defeat

The dawn of September 6, 1965 marked a major turning point in the India-Pakistan war. Soldiers of the Indian Army crossed the international border and marched straight toward the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Sialkot. The aim of the attack was not to permanently occupy these cities, but to force the Pakistani army, which was pressuring the Jammu and Kashmir front, to pull back. But India's sudden and forceful offensive left the Pakistani army completely shaken, and instead of real fighting, a flood of fabricated stories and rumours broke out there.

As the sound of Indian guns and tanks began to be heard at the outskirts of Lahore and Sialkot, an atmosphere of fear spread across Pakistan. Once it became clear that no solid line of defence remained at the military level, Pakistan's rulers and clerics began fabricating stories of religious miracles to keep up the sagging morale of the people. These stories were not meant merely for entertainment, they were a large scale military propaganda effort designed to hide the crushing defeat of the Pakistani army.

As the Indian army advanced toward Lahore, a rumour spread on its streets. A local cleric known as "Chup Shah", who observed silence, is said to have suddenly come out onto the street and declared loudly that Allah would perform a miracle and that victory would be theirs. Later, once its strategic objective was achieved, the Indian army vacated the Lahore area, since occupying the city of Lahore was never India's political intention. But Pakistan called this the "miracle of Allah" and falsely claimed victory for itself. At the same time, the Indian army was mounting a heavy assault in the Sialkot sector. When it became impossible to stop the Indian army, a rumour was spread there that hundreds of horsemen in pure white clothes, carrying glinting swords, were roaming the city. It was claimed that these horsemen were not human but messengers of Allah who had appeared from the unknown and were heading straight to the battlefield for jihad.

These false stories were openly amplified by local Urdu newspapers in Pakistan. According to a letter published in one Urdu daily, two people in the city of Medina in Saudi Arabia are said to have had the same dream on the same night, in which they saw the Prophet riding a horse. When asked where he was going, the newspaper reported his reply as, "I am going to Pakistan for jihad." Alongside this, extremely far-fetched claims were also printed in the names of Indian soldiers captured during the war. Indian soldiers captured in the Sialkot and Khemkaran sectors were quoted as saying that they were stunned to see horsemen in red and white clothes on the battlefield, because an extraordinary light was emanating from their swords. Such stories were printed in a thorough attempt to mislead the Pakistani public and cover up the defeat of their own army.

Pakistani propaganda did not stop there. When the Indian Air Force bombed the city of Multan, it was claimed that three elderly men present there caught live bombs falling from Indian aircraft with their bare hands and threw them away. A bomb dropped by India that fell on a petrol tank at an airbase in Peshawar but did not explode was also declared a divine miracle. The most talked-about and most fabricated story among all of these was about a young Indian pilot, later an Air Marshal, K. C. Cariappa. During the 1965 war, Cariappa's aircraft was shot down and Pakistan took him prisoner of war. Around this incident, Pakistan fabricated a story that Cariappa had come to blow up the only bridge on the Ravi river, but while flying over the bridge he saw six different bridges instead of one, got confused as a result, and his aircraft was shot down.

All these fanciful stories, rumours and imaginary claims were of no use whatsoever to the Pakistani army on the actual battlefield. By the time the ceasefire was declared, the Indian army had established strong positions right up to the outskirts of Lahore and Sialkot. During this war, India had taken control of a large area of Pakistani territory and inflicted heavy losses on Pakistan.

A great historical irony today is that the villages the Indian army had captured outside Lahore in the 1965 war are now part of the metropolis of Lahore. Notably, at the very spot where the Indian army had struck in 1965, the Pakistani military's "Defence Housing Authority" (DHA) is today developing luxury plots for its officers. This game of rumours, woven to hide the 1965 defeat, is still regarded as a laughable chapter in Pakistan's military history.