Remembering a Black Day

Blog Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Intent upon paralyzing the infant state of Pakistan, barely two and a half months old then, the forcible occupation of the State of Jammu and Kashmir by India on 27 Oct 1947, truly marks the birth of a great tragedy. Upon the partitioning of the British India on 14th August, 564 princely states had joined either India or Pakistan.

Only three states; Junagadh, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir, remained. In these states the rulers belonged to a different religion from the majority of their subjects. In Hyderabad and Junagadh the rulers were Muslim where as the majority of the population was Hindu. In Jammu and Kashmir the reverse was true; the ruler was a Hindu and the population overwhelmingly Muslim. Each of these states was annexed by India through the use of force.

While Junagadh and Hyderabad went down silently the occupation of Kashmir turned into a bitter pill that India, despite best efforts, has not been able to swallow and for this the credit goes to the valiant resistance put up by its people. As Independence approached, the Maharaja of Kashmir found himself unable to decide the future of the state. Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan emerged as the most natural course to be followed. Its geographic contiguity economic interdependence and dominant Muslim population made it the only logical choice. Nehru and Gandhi had however embarked on their own designs to coerce the Raja and have a letter of accession signed by him through hook or crook. As Maharaja Hari Singh vacillated in reaching a decision the events began to generate a momentum of their own. At the strategic level Mountbatten provided all possible assistance for India to militarily intervene in Kashmir. The Radcliffe Award, on his insistence, most irrationally, awarded the Muslim dominated district of Gurdaspur in the Punjab to India; providing India with a ground link to Sri Nagar through the Pathankot railhead. Patel and Baldev Singh, the Defence Minister of India, got busy planning a forced intervention in Kashmir. The improvement of the Road from Jammu to Pathankot began immediately and telegraph lines were extended to Sri Nagar where new wireless equipment was installed to facilitate aviation operations in winters.

A heavy supply of arms and ammunition to the state forces in Kashmir commenced in the middle of September and a concentration of Indian Forces began to build up at Madhopur in Pathankot for eventuality of an offensive in Kashmir. At the political front efforts intensified to force an instrument of accession from the Maharaja to commence the procedure of occupation. Justice Mehar Chand Mahajan, an erstwhile member of the Radcliffe Boundary Commission from Gurdaspur was appointed to the position of the Prime Minister of the Jammu and Kashmir State by the Maharaja , primarily under influence of Patel, who was Indian deputy Prime Minister in charge of the States Department. Before reaching the State, Mahajan visited Delhi on 11 Oct 1947 and met Patel, Nehru, Gandhi and Mountbatten.

The task assigned to Mahajan was to arrange the accession of State to India. On 29 September 1947, Sheikh Abdullah was released from jail to subsequently form the interim government in Kashmir and to facilitate the merger of the State with India as its future Chief Minister. The Sheikh, much later realized the blunder he had committed by throwing in his lot with Nehru but by then so much water had flowed down the Jhelum River. Kashmiris are still playing the price of his folly in an unending spell of bloodshed and repression. Events now began to move inexorably towards a climax. On 24 Oct the Poonch Rebels formally declared their independence, announcing the formation of the Azad Kashmir. The Indian Defence Committee, presided by Mountbatten met in an emergency session on 25th Oct and decided to capture Sri Nagar through an air assault. V.P.Mennon was dispatched to Sri Nagar to coerce the Maharaja to sign an accession agreement only to return on early morning 26 Oct to report his failure. Menon’s visit on 25 Oct so un-nerved the Maharaja that he packed all his valuables and left for Jammu by road in the morning of 26 Oct, without signing any instrument of accession.

There is tremendous confusion as to when and how the maharaja signed the instrument of accession and was it signed before the invasion started on 27 Oct 1947. In all probability when the invasion commenced at about 0900 hours on 27 Oct with the landing of the Sikh Regiment at the deserted Sri Nagar Airport, the instrument of accession was still not signed by the Maharaja. On 31st December 1947 India made an appeal to the security council of the UN to intervene and a UN brokered ceasefire ultimately came into effect on 1 Jan 1949, following UN resolutions calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir. 27 October 1947, the day on which India invaded Kashmir truly stands out as a Black Day and a bench mark of Indian inclination for aggression in realizing her territorial and political ambitions. Her reckless act, however, failed to factor in the will of the Kashmiri people, whose grass root resistance to Indian occupation has been the major factor in her failure to absorb the State in the Indian Union despite passage of six decades. Momin Iftikhar

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