The Maharaja sent many protests to the Pakistan Government. These brought no relief. Among the raiders were Pakistan Army personnel, some in uniform. Many of the raids were led by their Army officers in civilian clothes. Pakistan disclaimed any responsibility for the raids. The presence of Pakistan Army personnel was explained away by saying that they were released personnel or men on leave.
While the Maharaja wavered on the question of accession, Mr. Jinnah became impatient.
In case the Maharaja needed a warning of the grand design against his state, he received it early enough, in Gilgit. This outlying district in the North-West of Kashmir had been under British administration, having been leased by the Maharaja in 1935 for a 60-year term. It reverted to the state after Mountbatten made the announcement on 3 June 1947 regarding the transfer of power. However, when a governor was sent there at the end of July to take over the administration, Major General Scott, who accompanied the governor, was informed that all British officers of the Gilgit Scouts had opted for Pakistan. Three months later, the Gilgit Scouts besieged the governor’s residence and set up a provisional government, their British commander hoisting Pakistan’s flag over their barracks.
With hostile activity on its borders and unbridled communal propaganda by Pakistan, the situation in the state deteriorated rapidly. The Maharaja’s Army was in action against hordes of well-armed raiders all along the state’s border South and West of Punch. Fort Owen had to be abandoned on 15 October, the Kotli-Punch road was cut and Bhimbar, Mirpur and Mangla were under siege.
This dispersed his Army, which was exactly the enemys aim.
Sheikh Abdullah had been released on 29 September to help curb the wave of communal fury that was sweeping the state but this did not bring much improvement. The situation became more complicated due to the economic blockade that Pakistan now imposed on the state. The state’s communication routes with the outside world ran through Pakistan. The only railway line ran from Jammu, its winter capital, to Sialkot, in Pakistan. Srinagar, the summer capital, was connected with Pakistan by a good tarmac road, which ran by way of Baramula, Uri, Domel and Muzaffarabad to Abbotabad, Havelian and Wah. There was an alternative route that led from Domel to Rawalpindi by way of Murree. The route from Jammu to Pathankot, in East Punjab, was at the time merely a track.1 The state depended entirely on imports for petrol, kerosene oil, cotton cloth, salt and foodgrains. Pakistan’s blockade hit the state and its people badly.
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On 22 October came a major assault along the Murree-Srinagar road. This was supported by a very large force entering the Jammu province from Punch to Bhimber in the South and a smaller flanking force entering the state via Tithwal-Handwara to the North. The Pakistanis named this invasion Operation ‘Gulmarg’. The central invading force consisted of some 5,000 men, mostly tribesmen from the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. They rode in civilian lorries and were equipped with service rifles, mortars, machine guns, demolition charges, mines and radio sets. Civilian trucks carried their ammunition, rations, petrol and medical supplies.
The first objective of this tribal lashkar was Muzaffarabad (see Fig. 3.1). This border town had a garrison of one infantry battalion, consisting of Punchi Muslims and Dogra Rajputs. At the approach of the lashkar, the Punchis went over to the enemy after killing their commanding officer and most of the Dogras in the unit. The town was thereafter thoroughly sacked. Domel, the next objective, fell to the enemy on 23 October.
Three months later, the Gilgit Scouts besieged the governors residence and set up a provisional government, their British commander hoisting Pakistans flag over their barracks.
At this stage Brigadier Rajinder Singh, who had taken over from Scott, made a gallant attempt to stop the invaders. Unfortunately, the force that he had with him was quite inadequate for the purpose. It consisted of some 200 men whom he had collected from the rear parties at Srinagar. He rushed off with these men, reached Uri on 23 October, and blew up a bridge on the Domel-Srinagar road. On the following day he was killed while fighting the enemy, but the blown-up bridge delayed the capture of Baramula till 26 October.2
Baramula was a prosperous town, only 56 kilometres from Srinagar. Once the tribesmen got there, they let loose an orgy of primitive savagery. They plundered the town and, regardless of age, sex or religion, massacred a large part of its population. Even the nuns at the missionary hospital were not spared; they, together with the rest of the staff, were butchered, and the building was put to flames.
After the pillage of Baramula, the tribesmen were so laden with loot that many of them decided to go back and deposit it before coming for more. Included in their takings were young women, carried away forcibly, ‘to be sold like cattle in the streets, of Rawalpindi and Peshawar or to live and die as slaves in the mountain fastness of the distant tribal territory’. The carting away of the loot of Baramula saved Srinagar. Had the lashkars gone on, there was nothing between Baramula and Srinagar to stop them.3 Those who directed the invasion could not perhaps control the tribesmen effectively. Or, maybe, they did not foresee the sharp reaction that the rape of Kashmir would arouse in India.
The situation became more complicated due to the economic blockade that Pakistan now imposed on the state.
The Indian Government had been watching the situation in Jammu & Kashmir with great concern. While it would have acquiesced in a peaceful accession of the state to Pakistan in case the Maharaja had taken such a decision, it could not countenance a forcible occupation. The onrush of the tribal horde shook the Maharaja and created chaos in his administration. Terror-stricken, his ‘officials were leaving their jobs to look after the safety of their families’. As a last resort, on 24 October, Hari Singh appealed to the Indian Government for troops. Earlier, Sheikh Abdullah had met Prime Minister Nehru in Delhi, and the Maharaja had requested the Government of India for arms and ammunition. When the appeal for troops came, arrangements were already being made to send these supplies.
The Maharaja’s request for troops reached Delhi late on the night of 24 October. To decide the issue, the Defence Committee of the Cabinet met the next day under the chairmanship of Mountbatten. Gerenal Lockhart was present at the meeting. He read out a telegram from Pakistan’s Army Headquarters stating that some 5,000 tribesmen had attcked and captured Muzaffarabad and Domel, and that considerable tribal reinforcements could be expected. The Defence Committee considered that the most immediate necessity was to rush arms and ammunition. On Mountbatten’s advice, the decision on despatch of troops was deferred. He urged that it would be dangerous to send troops unless the state had first offered to accede to India.To explain the position to the Maharaja, V.P. Menon flew to Srinagar.4 At the same time, Lieutenant Colonel Manekshaw of the MO Directorate was sent there to study the situation on the spot. The next day (26 October) Menon brought the Instrument of Accession signed by the Maharaja, and Sheikh Abdullah also joined in the appeal for troops. As Governor-General, Mountbatten accepted the accession but it was subject to the proviso that ‘the question of [final] accession should be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people of the state. . . as soon as law and order had been restored in Kashmir and her soil cleared of the invader’.5
The path was now clear for the Defence Committee to order the despatch of troops. Lieutenant General Russell was given the task of rescuing Jammu & Kashmir with the enemy only 56 kilometres from Srinagar, the need of the hour was to save this town and its air-strip, since Srinagar was 480 kilometres from the Indian railhead at Pathankot, and the only chance of success lay in sending troops by air.
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