Mahatma Gandhi criss-crossed the Indian subcontinent campaigning for the end of British colonial rule over the land — and then was assassinated. Not by the British: they jailed him, negotiated him, attempted to marginalize him, but would not make him a martyr. Gandhi was taken out by one of his own: a radical, a supremely disillusioned Indian, who thought Gandhi paid too little attention to the greater enemy on the land: Muslims. In the end, the colony was split up into two mutually hostile camps: the Muslim-majority Pakistan and the Hindu-majority India.

On this day, September 22, in 1965 the second Indo-Pakistan conflict ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire. The war was initiated by Pakistan, who read (quite incorrectly, as it turned out) in India’s defeat in the war with China in 1962 India’s unwillingness to defend the disputed Kashmir region.

The armies squared off near the “line of control” in Kashmir, with neither one gaining much of an advantage. The war had become one of attrition, which India was better suited to win. Pakistan’s relatively heavy losses — nearly 4,000 men and a great deal of equipment — was a rude awakening for their supposed military prowess. At the same time, with the U.N. blaming Pakistan for starting the war and the U.S. unhappy with both sides, Pakistan decided to cultivate closer ties with the Soviet Union.