Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Tashkent and the likelihood that he will meet Pakistan President Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of a summit on his current tour, are a useful reminder of the last time Central Asia played host to major Indo-Pak discussions. It’s been 49 years the war between the neighbours in 1965, and though the clash over the state of Jammu and Kashmir didn’t resolve the dispute, it did force engagement between the two super-powers of the time, the Soviet Union and the United States.

Dennis Kux in his book India and the United States: Estranged Democracies describes how the 1965 war left both India and Pakistan with a high number of casualties. "With the loss of twenty aircraft, 200 tanks, and 3,800 troops, Pakistan seemed to have gain nothing from a conflict of which it had instigated. A Security Council resolution also didn't do anything to help stop the fighting, until the Soviet Union stepped in, with the support of the United States, and invited the leaders of both India and Pakistan to Tashkent to broker peace.

In this video by British Pathe, we see then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shashtri reaching Tashkent and meeting Ayub Khan, the then President of Pakistan. Holding talks in the presence of Soviet mediators, Lal Bahadur Shashtri finally signed the Tashkent Agreement, calling off the bloody war between India and Pakistan on 10 January, 1966. Shastri however, never got to see the peace: the day after he signed the agreement, the Indian Prime Minister died of a heart attack without having left Tashkent.