Only with a view to setting the record straight, I am truly constrained to point out two glaring, and unbelievable, errors of date/year and name - about the same historical event - in Devangshu Datta's otherwise interesting and persuasive column "Secrets, lies and conspiracy theories" (Viewpoint, April 18). Lal Bahadur Shastri died in Tashkent not in 1965, but in 1966, on January 11. And the Tashkent "deal" was "brokered" not by Leonid Brezhnev, but by Alexei Kosygin, the then prime minister of the then Soviet Union.
Sharadchandra Panse Pune
Devangshu Datta replies: Mr Panse is absolutely right about the Tashkent Conference being held in January 1966. This is entirely my error since I was writing from memory and did not check it. The Kosygin/Brezhnev attribution is more debatable but Kosygin was indeed, the man who oversaw the deal in that he sat at the table with Ayub Khan and Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Our apologies. We stand corrected.
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