The five-day India-Pakistan summit concluded with great success on the evening of July 2, 1972, with the signing of an agreement between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistani President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Simla.
The signing ceremony took place at 12.40 am in the Durbar Hall of Himachal Bhawan.
The agreement was reached after tough negotiations between the two sides, which had stalled due to a failure to agree on the composition of the Kashmir issue. Prime Ministers Gandhi and Bhutto met twice earlier in the day and a compromise was finally reached. The final meeting took place after a dinner hosted by the Pakistani President in memory of Prime Minister Gandhi.
The agreement, which lays out guidelines for lasting peace and normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan, will be unveiled simultaneously in Shimla and Islamabad.
According to the agreement, India and Pakistan agreed to resolve all their mutual problems bilaterally. They also agreed to renounce the use of force to resolve disputes between the two countries.
How the agreement was reached
After the special dinner, the two leaders held talks for 10 minutes each.
Key aides from both sides were then called in. Later, members of the Union Cabinet’s Political Affairs Committee, including Finance Minister YB Chavan, Agriculture Minister Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram and External Affairs Minister Swaran Singh, who were also present at the dinner, held discussions.
Bad weather
Gandhi then decided to finalise the agreement.
According to sources, India has agreed to withdraw its troops from occupied areas on the Western Front except Jammu and Kashmir.
The signing ceremony was observed by members of the Political Committee of the Federal Council.
The waiting reporters were delighted that the agreement had been successfully concluded and cheered Prime Minister Bhutto.
Gandhi and Bhutto said the agreement would mark a “new beginning” in India-Pakistan relations and both expressed satisfaction with the outcome.
Talks hit a deadlock
India sought to meet Pakistan’s demands “to some extent” by revising the draft it had previously submitted for consideration. The new draft was approved at a meeting of the Political Affairs Committee of the Federal Cabinet and submitted to Bhutto by PN Haksar, the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, and TN Kaul, the Foreign Minister. It was subsequently considered at a meeting of the Prime Minister and key aides to the Pakistani President, but no agreement was reached.
At the end of a series of talks with the prime minister in the afternoon, President Bhutto expressed hope at a press conference that an agreement would emerge from his final meeting with Prime Minister Gandhi. He acknowledged that progress had been delayed due to failure to reach an agreement on the Kashmir issue. “We are at an impasse, but there is some hope of success,” the Pakistani president said in response to a question, without providing further details.
By the time Bhutto sat down to press conference, the overall impression of the summit was that “we have not succeeded, but we have not failed either,” but, he added signifying, “that may change after the after-dinner talks.”
He asserted that the dialogue itself is a big step towards normalizing relations with India. The two countries need to get rid of the subjective biases of the last 25 years in order to effectively deal with the objective factors. The dialogue has begun and is an achievement in itself, he asserted.
“Both countries, especially Pakistan, have suffered losses by closing their doors on each other. At least Pakistan has no intention of closing its doors,” he said. He also expressed hope that Gandhi had spoken about “a series of summits” during a meeting with Pakistani journalists.
On the issue of Kashmir, Pakistan has insisted on the principle of self-determination while India has its own stand, he said, stressing that the gap between the two countries’ views could be bridged through talks and declared Pakistan’s readiness to negotiate.
Historic Agreement
The dramatic last-minute agreement reached by Gandhi and Bhutto answered the prayers of millions of people in India and Pakistan who yearn for peace. It marks a landmark change in India-Pakistan relations and reflects the statesmanship shown by both the President and the Prime Minister in dealing with the highly complex issues that have divided the two countries for the past 25 years.
The Simla Agreement represented a major victory for the subcontinent’s 700 million people and heralded new hope.
