हिंदीOn this day

Battle of Chawinda

Indian Army, I Corps with 1 Armoured DivisionLt Gen P. O. Dunn; Major General Rajinder Singh
1965vs
VictorPakistan Army, 6 Armoured DivisionMajor General Abrar Hussain

India’s main thrust of the 1965 war drove into the Sialkot sector toward the Grand Trunk Road. It led to one of the largest tank battles since the Second World War, fought over the villages around Chawinda.

Date: September 1965 (to the ceasefire of 23 September)Where: Phillora and Chawinda, Sialkot district (Pakistan)Type: Battle
Photo: B. SurajPatro1997 · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Cite

MLA

“Battle of Chawinda.” Hindu History, 2026, https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/battle-of-chawinda-1965/. Accessed .

APA

Hindu History. (2026). Battle of Chawinda. Retrieved , from https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/battle-of-chawinda-1965/

Result

Indian armour took Phillora and reached the edge of Chawinda, but repeated attacks on the town failed before the ceasefire, and Pakistan held it.

01Phillora

I Corps crossed into the Sialkot sector on the night of 7–8 September. On 11 September 1 Armoured Division met the Pakistani armour at Phillora and broke it in a day of close tank fighting in the sugarcane and the village lanes. The 17th Poona Horse, commanded by Lt Col Ardeshir Burzorji Tarapore, was at the front of it. From Phillora the division turned on Chawinda, a small town on the railway that covered the road to the Marala headworks and the GT Road beyond.

02The fight for the town

Pakistan rushed in reinforcements, and for more than a week the two armoured forces fought across the flat fields around Chawinda, Jassoran and Butur Dograndi. Tarapore was killed on 16 September while leading his regiment and was awarded the Param Vir Chakra. A last Indian infantry attack on the town on the night of 18–19 September failed in confusion. The ceasefire of 23 September found Chawinda still in Pakistani hands and a large slice of the Sialkot district in Indian hands, returned under the Tashkent agreement.

Why it matters

Chawinda stopped India’s main offensive of 1965 short of its aim, while Phillora and Tarapore’s Param Vir Chakra became part of the Indian Armoured Corps’ own history.

Places near the battlefield 4

Kartarpur Sahib (Gurdwara Darbar Sahib)Rebuilt
Sultanates, Vijayanagara and the kingdoms that stood

Kartarpur Sahib (Gurdwara Darbar Sahib)

The village on the Ravi where Guru Nanak spent his last years farming and keeping langar, and where he passed the Guruship to Guru Angad. Since 1947 it has stood a few kilometres inside Pakistan, reached from India by a corridor opened in 2019.

Raghunath Temple, JammuStanding
Company rule and the war of 1857

Raghunath Temple, Jammu

A complex of seven shrines in the heart of Jammu, raised by the first two Dogra Maharajas, whose gilded spires gave Jammu the name City of Temples. Its library of Sanskrit manuscripts is one of the great collections of the north.

Bawe Wali Mata (Mahakali), Bahu Fort, JammuStanding
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Bawe Wali Mata (Mahakali), Bahu Fort, Jammu

The Kali temple inside Bahu Fort, on the cliff above the Tawi, is the guardian goddess of Jammu. Jammu people call her Bawe Wali Mata, and after Vaishno Devi she draws the largest crowds in the region.

JammuStanding
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Jammu

The city of temples on the Tawi, seat of the Dogra rajas from whom Gulab Singh built a Himalayan state reaching Ladakh, Baltistan and Kashmir. Its Raghunath temple, begun in 1835, holds one of the great Sanskrit manuscript libraries of the north.