Man who could have brought India, Pakistan together’: When Pak military dictator praised Lal Bahadur Shastri

During his short stint as India’s prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri proved many a stalwart of politics and diplomacy wrong. The war with Pakistan in 1965 was the highlight of his 19-month tenure as prime minister. During this period, he had a captivating relationship with then Pakistan’s military dictator Ayub Khan.

Ayub Khan, a 6 feet 2 inches tall field marshal, had dismissed Lal Bahadur Shastri, a 5 feet 2 inches tall diminutive politician, as ‘nobody’ as he canceled his plan to visit New Delhi after the death of India’s first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964. He apparently said ‘who is there [in India] to talk to?’

Ayub Khan was known to judge leaders by their physical appearance and Lal Bahadur Shastri was thin and short. This physique led some in India to believe that he would not be able to fill in the shoes of Nehru, a stalwart in Indian politics. But Shastri outmaneuvered not only his detractors within the Congress party but also world leaders who took him lightly.

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After Ayub Khan canceled his India visit, Lal Bahadur Shashtri decided to pay a visit to Pakistan, on an official invitation, to signal that he was not afraid of a field marshal. On his way back from the Cairo summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1964, Shastri stopped in Karachi to meet Ayub Khan, who was still not impressed with the Indian prime minister.

Ayub Khan was now planning to take Kashmir by force assuming that India was a weak country after Nehru and especially under the leadership of Shastri. To make sure that Pakistan had an upper hand in the planned invasion, Ayub Khan prevailed upon the US President Lyndon Johnson to withdraw the invitation that he had extended to Lal Bahadur Shastri for a visit in 1965.

Pakistan wanted to ensure that the US was not seen getting close to India when its army planned to take Kashmir by force. Shastri took the US’s decision personally as his media advisor Kuldeep Nayar wrote later. When Shastri visited Canada the same year, Lyndon Johnson invited him to Washington DC for a stopover chat. Shastri rejected the invitation.