Jammu Kashmir: The Saga of Pakistani Attack 1947; Two districts fall, Part 1

 

 

73 years ago, when the partition of the country was barely two months old, and the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir had concluded a standstill agreement with the newly created dominion of Pakistan, the tribesmen of NWFP of Pakistan, abetted and assisted by Pakistani army officers, launched a massive incursion into the valley and in the border areas of Jammu to the west. Pakistan tried to annex Kashmir by force of arms.

 

 

Hard pressed by the incursion, the Maharaja acceded to the Indian Union and this paved the way for the Indian troops to enter the state territories and counter the attack. On the night of 31 December 1948 cease fire was declared and with that was born the Kashmir issue.

 

 

The story of military operation in Kashmir against the invading tribesmen has been told by many historians in India, Pakistan and in other countries. Each one has his version. But the real story of what suffering, pain and disaster this incursion brought to the small Hindu and Sikh community of the valley has not been told so far. Instead, enormous misleading propaganda of so-called communal harmony in Kashmir has been given the media hype all these six decades and half. It is a stupendous distortion of history, misrepresentation of facts and misleading unsuspecting readers as well as the new generations of Kashmiri Hindus and Muslims alike.

 

 

 

In this article, we intend to give some glimpses of true history of the tribal attack and what befell the Hindu and Sikh community in the course of the attack and subsequent history of Kashmir

 

 

 

Early in the morning of 22 October 1947, the main column of the raiders crossed Garhi Habibullah and attacked Muzaffarabad. The traitors of 4 Kashmir Infantry of the State force holding the outpost at Lohar Gali (Lohar Kot) and Ramkot, joined the raiders and gave them the fullest information about the strength and disposition of the defending troops. Muzaffarabad was given over to fire and sword before its sleeping citizens could realize what had happened. In Muzaffarabad, a large number of Hindus and Sikhs were gunned down and their females kidnapped, never to return to their families. Domel, a strategic locality on the confluence of Jhelum and Kishen Ganga fell on 22 October. Defenders under the command of Brig. Rajendra Singh of state forces dug in at Uri on 24 October, fought for the whole day and retreated to Mahura in the night of 24/25 October bravely. Fighting against numerically far superior enemy, and Brigadier Rajendra Singh having been martyred at Mahura, the remnants withdrew to Baramulla on the night of 26-27 October.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Defence Ministry's report gives this graphic picture of desolation of Baramulla town: "Terror stalked the streets of the quaint little town. The inhabitants, Hindus and Sikhs alike left all their earthly possessions and fled to the hills. The deserted streets lay silent, echoing only to the rattle of the raiders' nailed boots as they threaded their way between the corpses strewn around. A thick pall of smoke hung over the ravaged town and flames from burning houses cast a lurid glare over burnt out shells of what had been prosperous shops and smiling homes. With many young girls and much treasure now in their possession, the raiders gloated over their good fortune."

 

 

 

With the fall of Baramulla, the strategic entry point of the valley, the raiders under the command of Pakistani regular army officers seized the campus of St. Joseph's College and converted it into their operational headquarter. Here on its spacious ground they held the jirga in which the Pakistani military officers gave them the plan of attack on Srinagar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nobody knows the exact number of the tribesmen conducting incursion. But after over-running the highlands between Baramulla and Muzaffarabad, the rapacious highlanders known in Kashmir history as bombas and khashas, the treacherous looters and murderers became their camp followers. Armed with old type firearms, axes, swords, lathis and other crude weapons, carrying huge Islamic green flags and banners and with green arm bands, brandishing whatever weapon they carried, they raised slogans like Islam zindabad, Pakistan zindbad etc.

 

 

 

The worst was that the local residents of the town joined the tribesmen in large numbers and quickly developed Islamic fraternity promising them all and any help they needed. The locals volunteered to serve as their guides since the raiders were not conversant with local topography.

 

 

 

In Baramulla, the locals provided raiders with a list of prominent Hindus and Sikhs, and then a group of two or three tribesmen accompanied by their local guides conducted them to the residences of prominent Hindus of the town. Members of the family were lined the compound and one or two raiders followed hi local looters went inside the house, ransacked boxes, almirhas, cupboards, store rooms, kitchen and bedrooms. They were looking for cash and gold. They finished their job quickly and came out when the local looters waiting in the compound of the house swarmed inside and looted each and everything in the house. Before leaving the house in total desolation the armed tribesmen shot dead the person from among the assembled group after looking up his name in the list that had been provided to them by the locals.

 

 

 

The murderers and looters ravaged street after street and house after house of the Hindu community. Within few hours of the fall of Baramulla, destruction of the Hindus was brought about in full. A good number of male persons among the Hindu community were taken captives and brought to the camp at the campus of St. Joseph's College while about a hundred young women and girls were locked up in the rooms of the old tehsil building of Baramulla. At night raiders came with candle sticks in hands to select younger and more beautiful women to be picked up for rape and molestation. Reports said that many young girls and women besmeared their face with soot and charcoal to look ugly and escape molestation.

 

 

 

The treatment of the Sikhs was the worst. In the terminology of the tribesmen they were "bal wala kafar" meaning the infidel with hair. We will come to that part later on. First let me describe briefly the personality of the tribesmen. They wore long hair, trimmed near the lower part of the neck. With a longish shirt and baggy shalwar and a round Afghan cap, they invariably wore a waistcoat and a necklace of beads.

 

 

 

 

Very few of them had military boots and most of them were poorly shod with a boot on one foot and a tattered chapel on the other. Sometimes some of them wore a straw sandal in one foot and the other foot was bare. But hardy and tough as they were, they walked over ridges, hillocks and uplands with ease and with lightening quickness. Their pockets were stuffed with chana, gurh and dry fruits. Each of them slung a 303 rifle with a belt of bullets, and only a few carried pistols.

 

 

 

After the loot in Baramulla, their appetite for loot of the Hindus and Sikhs was fiercely whetted. Consequently, from Baramulla they fanned out in the length and breadth of district Baramulla into scores of groups with two or three tribesmen and hundreds of locals including the bombas and khashyas and others carrying an assortment of crude weapons, They raised Islamic slogans Allaho Akbar, Islam zindabad and then in the name of Islam killed, looted and raped the minority community members.

 

 

 

The planning of expanding their incursion was so perfect that in just one or two days they traversed the entire district of Baramulla wherever there was a village with a few houses of Hindus and Sikhs. For example, 35 miles away from Baramulla, the district headquarter, there happened to be a lonely Hindu household in the deep recess of Mawar river valley in Handwara tehsil. When this household was attacked, there were only two tribesmen with guns in their hand and more than three hundred locals who told the tribesmen that the Hindu household was a prosperous one. The saga of loot and spoliation of this unfortunate house like hundreds of others beggars no description.

 

 

 

In the small town of Handwara at a distance of about 20 miles from Baramulla, one Pandit family administered poison to all the members of his family to escape the atrocities of the tribesmen and their local supporters. When the Hindus in a village were attacked and looted, the were let out on condition that they convert to Islam and the local mulla immediately undertook the ritual of converting him to his faith. The local mulla and others, most of them earlier so vociferous about "Sher Kashmir ka kya irshad, Hindu Muslim Sikh ittehad" wasted not in convincing the newly converts about the grace and benefactions which the new faith would bring them. The mulla, in consultation with the neighbours of the converted Pandit or Sikh, gave him the Islamic name, regulated his attendance in the mosque and began giving lessons in the tenets of Islam. He was told in emphatic words that the incursion of the mujahids meaning the tribesmen was to eradicate all traces of "kufr" (infidelity) from Kashmir. The converted Pandits and Sikhs were quick to endorse the decree.

 

 

 

Defence Ministry's publication cited above observes: "Yet in their (tribesmen) success lay the seeds of their doom. For in the savage excitement of looting and raping, the ultimate goal of the "Holy War" was forgotten. Each man tried to grab as much wealth or as many girls as he could, and for the moment refused to be bothered with the "infidel", Maharaja at Srinagar or the "liberation of the oppressed Muslims" of Kashmir. Many of the raiders, loaded with loot, turned back for home and responded to their officers expostulations by saying that they would be back soon after depositing their treasure in security. The advance on Srinagar was thus held up for a few days, and those proved crucial."

 

 

 

As the raiders headed along the JV Road to Srinagar, they also fanned to the right and left of the road. Supported and guided by the locals they reached each and every village in district Baramulla wherever there was Hindu or Sikh habitation, even if in the smallest number, with the sole purpose of looting them and carrying away whatever booty they would lay their hands upon. Each attack on the local Hindu household was followed by general loot of the house leaving the inmates with nothing but the scanty clothes they wore on their person. Smaller and larger town fell one after another as there was not even a policeman not to speak of the troops. It was free for the raiders, looters, religious propagandists and mullahs and yelling crowds. People assembled on streets, raptly listening to the harangues of a rabid Islamists telling them that Pakistani flag had been hoisted atop Hari Parbat and the rule of Islam had been promulgated.

 

 

 

As Muzaffarabad, Domel, Chakothi, Uri and Bonyar fell one after another, refugees running to save their lives made a beeline across the JV road and headed towards Srinagar. Some tonga carts and bullock carts carried the beleaguered refugees, Hindus and Sikh men, women and children. Some rode bicycles and others just walked in groups saying not a word but hurrying onward to the city at whatever speed they could muster. Hindu and Sikh families residing in houses closer to the JV Road left their homes and withdrew to hinterland to be with a relative or a friend in the hope that the raiders would not turn to them but would march on to Srinagar. That was not correct. The raiders were brought the information by the locals that Hindus and Sikhs were hiding in their villages and in this way any hope of their survival receded. From remote villages, some not all Hindu families moved to the smaller towns, from smaller towns to larger ones like Sopor, Barmulla, Handwara, Kupwara, Bandipora, Sumbal, Patan etc. But no town, no village and no hamlet was spared. Selective killing of Hindus took place to strike fear among the entire community.

 

 

 

Treatment of locals towards the beleaguered Pandits and Sikhs was deplorable although there could be an exception here or there. By and large, the locals refused shelter to them and their supplication was of little avail. Even after declaring that they had embraced the Islamic faith and chanted the kelima, they were not spared. One or the other Quranic verse was cited to justify cold and unsympathetic treatment towards the Hindus. In many cases, the Hindus were killed by known persons in order to grab their booty in cash and kind,

 

 

 

Nevertheless there were Muslims in some villages who remained passive and did not provoke others against the Pandits.

 

 

 

While attacking Hindu houses and subjecting these to loot and arson. the raiders seeking gold, silver or costly fabrics broke the metallic grips of somavars and copper hooks taking these for gold. But the local looters spared not a blade of grass. Even pestles and anvils and grinders made of stone were looted from Hindu houses. Later on, it was found that the peasants used to winnow grain on carpets stolen from Hindu houses. Books stolen from Hindu houses were torn into thousands of shreds and strewn all over the compound. Green flags with Pakistani insignia were hoisted atop Hindu houses and temples. The Hindus were asked to wear green patches or armbands as a mark of distinction of a kafir, meaning heretic from a Musulman.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The raiders moved in private lorries and trucks they had brought with them from their places of origin. But wherefrom did they get petrol for these vehicles was not known. Later on, after the recapture of Baramulla, we found that all supplies for the raiders, clothing, food grain, packed eatables fruits, petrol etc. were supplied from Pakistan in special trucks. When the raiders were repulsed by the advancing Indian Sikh LI, they told locals "looto looto looto" meaning loot the stores which the fleeing raiders had to leave behind as Indian troops closed in. They did not like that the stuff should go in the hands of the Indians. No succor whatsoever came to the traumatized Hindu minority as there was no government and lawlessness had overtaken the land.

 

 

 

District Baramulla was a large district in those days extending from Uri to Narbal in length and Gulmarg to Guraiz in width. Kupwara and Tithwal also fell within its jurisdiction. The entire district had fallen in the hands of the raiders. Local goons who till the other day lead the crowds to the rallies of National Conference, carrying high the red flag with plough emblem of NC and yelling the NC cliché of "Sheri Kashmir ka kya irshad/Hindu, Muslim Sikh ettehad" replaced it with green flags and pro-Islamic and pro-Pakistan religious slogans. Sher-i-Kashmir's precept of communal harmony evaporated in thin air and the minority community lay flat and prostrate in front of terrific Islamic fanatics. How much fickle-minded was a Kashmiri?