Just two months after the British left and both countries became independent, India and Pakistan had their first war—this was over the Kashmir region. Armed groups from Pakistan entered Kashmir, which was then under the rule of a Hindu monarch, in an attempt to seize it.
The ruler of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, asked India for military support. India agreed, but only if Singh would formally join Kashmir to India by signing a legal document. He accepted the condition. The fighting stopped in 1948, and a ceasefire was put in place on January 1, 1949, giving both India and Pakistan control over different parts of Kashmir.
In 1965, border skirmishes between the two nations escalated into another full-scale war. Pakistani troops crossed the ceasefire line into the Indian side of Kashmir, while Indian forces responded by entering Pakistan’s Lahore and launching offensives. The war caused thousands of deaths on both sides and eventually ended following a UN Security Council resolution.
By 1971, both countries were involved in another armed conflict—this time concerning East Pakistan. Indian forces supported the liberation of the region, which eventually became the independent nation of Bangladesh. A year later, in 1972, India and Pakistan signed the Simla Agreement, which established the Line of Control (LoC)—the unofficial boundary that currently divides Kashmir.
The most recent war occurred in 1999 when Pakistani soldiers crossed the LoC into the Kargil region, part of Indian-administered Kashmir. Indian troops engaged them in fierce battles in the snowy mountains of Ladakh and eventually pushed them back.
Altogether, the two nuclear-armed nations have fought four wars—three of which were centered on the Kashmir issue.
