Abstract
I will deal in this essay with the Second Kashmir War, which was a war between India and Pakistan in 1965. We will see how we can interpret the causes and the origins of the war, and the way it was ended and solved. I chose to use two different theories to interpret the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965: the realist theory and the idealist theory.First I would like to remind the historical context of this conflict and why it is called the Second Kashmir war. This war occurred between April 1965 and September 1965 in the region called Kashmir, located on the northern border of India and Pakistan in the Himalayan Mountains. Kashmir is divided between the Indian and the Pakistani states since the First Kashmir war, which followed the partition of the British empire of India in 1947 and lasted until 1949. This conflict opposed India and Pakistan on the question of the belonging of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Jammu and Kashmir was a princely state, inhabited mainly by Muslims, that was the reason why the Pakistani leaders claimed that it should be part of their state. But the maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh was Hindu, and after a quite long period of hesitations he decided that his state should join the Indian union, even though it was mainly composed of Muslim inhabitants. Pakistan decided to invade Jammu and Kashmir and the Indian army retaliated. The fight lasted two years, and after three resolutions of the UN Security Council the protagonists finally agreed on a ceasefire which took place in 1949. At the end of the First Kashmir war 65% of Jammu and Kashmir was under Indian control, and the rest was controlled by Pakistan; both parts were separated by the so-called Line of Control.
