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Sikkim and the Himalayan Chess Game (2016)
When India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain in 1947, the region’s Princely States – including tiny Sikkim – became pawns in South Asia’s great power politics. At the height of the Indo-Pakistan war, in mid-September 1965, Britain’s ITN broadcast a 15-minute report from what they called ‘another potential starting point for a Third World War’.
The broadcast highlights an often-overlooked international dimension to the 1965 conflict, which caused frantic diplomatic activity involving India, Pakistan, China, the US and the Soviet Union and was, in fact, an important factor in the eventual de-escalation of the crisis. When the main Indo-Pakistan conflict broke out in August 1965, Bhutto, who was increasingly leading the Pakistani decision-making, hoped that Chinese pressure, real or imagined, might squeeze Indian confidence. Both Paris Match and National Geographic tripped over each other to cover the couple’s lavish wedding, which was an extraordinary clash of cultures: ‘Guests in top hats and cutaways mingled with others in fur-flapped caps and knee-length yak-skin boots,’ fawned Time magazine.
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