On the evening of 9 January, the talks appeared to have failed, as both sides were unwilling to take their respective levels. Morning newspapers in India – on 10 January – sent messages from Indian correspondents to Pms Entourage in Tashkent: Inder Malhotra (statesman), Krishan Bhatta (Hindustan Times), Dev Murarka (Indian Express), Kuldip Nayyar (UNI) and G.K. Reddy (Times of India). They all reported a virtual failure of the talks. While India`s Malhotra said, „Mr. Kosygin was desperately trying to save the talks from total failure and collapse.” Bhatia said: „Unless there is a miracle, the Tashkent conference should end tomorrow with an unequivocal disagreement between Prime Minister Shastri and Pakistani President Ayub Khan.” But the miracle happened. At lunchtime on 10 January, with the resolute efforts of Kosygin, supported by his dynamic Foreign Minister Andrej Gromyko, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Ayub Khan, despite the strong reservations of his Foreign Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, signed the historic declaration that brought peace to the subcontinent, albeit temporarily. But this was the story of Indo-Pakistani relations. News of the success in Tashkent was applauded in the country, but there were also hostile voices, including Jana Sangh and the socialist parties. In his biography Lal Bahadur Shastri: A Life of Truth in Politics, C.P. Srivastava, who was a joint secretary to the Prime Minister and accompanied him to Tashkent, recorded a phone call between Venkataraman (PS in Delhi) and Sahai (PM`s PA in Tashkent): „While Venkataraman was still on the phone, the Prime Minister asked Sahai to know the reaction.
Sahai asked venkataraman that „the statement was generally well accepted, except Atal Behari Vajpayee (Jana Sangh) and S.N. Dwivedy (PSP)”. Indeed, Jana Sangh, who called the agreement a „betrayal”, had planned to welcome the Prime Minister with black flags at Palam airport (now Indira Gandhi). But that shouldn`t be the case. With his death, Lal Bahadur became a martyr for the cause of Indo-Pakistan friendship, as did Mahatma less than two decades earlier, for the cause of Hindu Muslim unity. Along with other parliamentarians, Vajpayee and Dwivedy Shastri paid tribute to his great success in promoting peace between the two neighbours. The first Indo-Pakistan War, known as the First Kashmir War (October 22, 1947-January 5, 1949), took place shortly after the independence of India and Pakistan. A ceasefire agreement has led to the establishment of the Line of Control (LOC) as the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. In India, the people also criticized the agreement because the Pakistani president and the Indian prime minister did not sign a guerrilla pact in Kashmir. After the day of this declaration, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur died on the day of a sudden heart attack.
After him, no one accepted this statement, and it was ignored by the next government. The agreement was criticized in India because it contained no war pact or renouncement of guerrilla warfare in Kashmir. After the signing of the agreement, Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri mysteriously died in Tashkent. [3] Shasti`s sudden death led to persistent conspiracy theories that he was poisoned. [7] The Indian government refused to downgrade a report on his death claiming that it could harm foreign relations, cause disruption in the country and a violation of parliamentary privileges. [7] The declaration at the time merely ended hostilities between India and Pakistan, but it left the issue of Kashmir between the two, and neither side had reached an agreement to date. Discussions began on 3 January 1966 in Tashkent with Kosygin, who met Shastri and Ayub, first separately before subsequent summits.
