Blunder in official advertisements - say Indian Army was afraid of Pakistan in 1965

Staff correspondent, August 22, 2015

The Modi Government’s ambitious plan to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of 1965 War, in which India scored a victory over Pakistan, has backfired.

Two high-profile full-page advertisements issued on Thursday are ridden with blunders and suggest that Pakistanemerged winner.

A full-page Hindi advertisement bafflingly declares that an Indian infantry division responded to a Pakistani attack with “fear”.

The advertisement perhaps wanted to use the word " datkar" (valiantly) but erroneously opted for "darkar" (with fear) to describe the response of the Indian Army to Pakistani aggression, reports The New Indian Express.

At the battle of Asal Uttar, India destroyed 100 Pakistani tanks between September 8 and 10, 1965. This was one of the largest battles in the war, which altered the scale in India’s favour.

But the English version of the ad published in select dailies rewrote history and said Pakistan’s offensive destroyed 100 Indian tanks.

As the ad stated: "...Pakistan's 1st armoured division pushed an offensive towards Khem Karan and by 10 September nearly 100 tanks lay destroyed in what is now known as the Battleof Asal Uttar."

The New Indian Express, which reported on the bumbling Indian ad campaign said the ads had been approved by the office of the Additional Director General, Public Information of the Army headquarters.

A concerned official blamed the media houses for the erroneous ads, an explanation, which was dismissed by other government sources.

The Telegraph reports that India’s self-defeating ad campaign was picked by Pakistani media and went viral among that country’s social media users as well.

"… Indiahas rewritten the entire history of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war and virtually handed over victory to Pakistan," wrote The Express Tribune, an English daily published in Lahore.

Islamabad’s Naaz Haque posted on his Facebook: "Finally, the Indian government admits what the Indians wont... that their army is scared of Pakistani army."

The Indian Government has a dubious record of issuing negligent ads. Four years ago, an Indian Navy ad had showed the image of Pakistani aircraft.