Partition

by Barney White-Spunner

  Gracey refused. He was not, he said, prepared to order any troop movements without the authority of the supreme commander. A similar situation now arose between Jinnah, backed interestingly by Mudie, who seems to have ‘gone native’ on this point, and Gracey as Lockhart and his fellow chiefs had just been through with Nehru over Junagadh. Gracey stalled and asked Auchinleck to come urgently to Lahore. Mudie was furious with Gracey and called him a ‘wind-up merchant’ who was out of his depth and had no political sense; this is the traditional reaction of British civil servants when confronted with uncomfortable truths by generals. He had, he said, no business involving Auchinleck. There was also a rumour that Mountbatten had telephoned Gracey and told him that if he did move troops he would not get a knighthood.20

  Auchinleck arrived the next morning. The old field marshal, who was seen as increasingly pro-Pakistan and anti-India, still had the authority to deliver a clear message. He was at his best that day. If Jinnah insisted on moving Pakistani troops into Kashmir it would mean certain war with India. In those circumstances he would have to withdraw all British officers. Jinnah had no choice but to capitulate; the Pakistan military could not function without its British element. Several senior Pakistanis were subsequently very critical of Auchinleck, arguing that if he had kept out of it then Pakistan would have moved quickly into Srinagar and easily defeated the few Indian troops there. The Kashmir issue would have been resolved in accordance with the wishes of its majority population and the long-running conflict with India could have been prevented. ‘This was a political decision and the Auk should have kept out of it’, wrote his otherwise strongly supportive ADC, Shahid Hamid.21 It was a subjective view. The British government would almost certainly have withdrawn its officers, Pakistan was in no position to organise a complicated military operation and war could not have been restricted to Kashmir. There were, it is true, those in Delhi who were lukewarm about Kashmir, not thinking a territory that was home to just 1 per cent of India’s population worth the cost in money and blood. Patel, for example, was not a strong supporter of Sheikh Abdullah, whom he saw as too socialist. However, Nehru was determined and even Patel became one of the main agitators for Indian involvement once news of the lashkar’s activities started to reach Delhi. The most far-sighted solution would have been for Jinnah to stop the lashkar then, if he really could have done so. India would then have had little justification for retaining troops in Kashmir and it may well have been possible to arrange a plebiscite.

  Auchinleck also suggested to Jinnah that he should call a roundtable conference of himself, Liaquat, Nehru, Mountbatten and Hari Singh. Jinnah agreed. Auchinleck flew back to Delhi where he was congratulated on what he had achieved. Patel was not, though, keen on the idea of a conference whereby Nehru would have to go to Lahore. It could be seen as an admission of guilt. ‘For the Prime Minister to go crawling to Mr. Jinnah when we were the stronger side and in the right would never be forgiven by the people of India’, he said.22 Nehru was, however, keen to go, but while he and Patel were arguing Nehru was taken ill. In the end Mountbatten went on his own, as governor general to governor general.

  It was a difficult meeting, the two men as strained as ever in each other’s company. Jinnah’s principal complaint was that no one in Delhi had informed him or his government what was happening. Had the Indian government told him on 24 October that there was a problem and they wished to send in observers then Pakistan would have cooperated and the whole issue would be over by now. Neither had anyone thought to inform him about the dispatch of troops. Nehru had told Mountbatten that Liaquat had been kept informed; if so, Jinnah retorted, correctly, there was no record of it. It was more likely that, as a result of Delhi believing that the invasion had always been a Pakistani government plot, they had deliberately cut communications.

  Jinnah then said that both sides should withdraw at once and simultaneously, with him making the comment that he could force the tribesmen to pull back by hitting their supply routes. Mountbatten, aware that he could not deliver an Indian withdrawal, countered by putting his idea for a plebiscite under United Nations’ auspices. Jinnah said any plebiscite with Indian troops still in situ would be false as people would be intimidated into voting for Sheikh Abdullah. He would prefer one organised by the two governor generals. Mountbatten said, correctly, this would be impractical. The meeting was inconclusive. Jinnah finished by saying that it was an Indian attempt to strangle Pakistan at birth, rather as he interpreted the massacres in the Punjab. ‘The situation was already so bad there was little that could happen to make it worse.’23 A political solution in Kashmir would still be elusive seventy years later.

  On 27 October the lashkar had reached the prosperous town of Baramulla, thirty miles from Uri and still thirty-five miles from Srinagar. Baramulla had a large Sikh and Hindu population as well as the substantial St Joseph’s Convent, part college and part mission hospital, founded by the Mill Hill fathers and with a complement of two priests and sixteen nuns that autumn. News of the coming attack had spread the previous day. There was a mass exodus of non-Muslims towards Srinagar, egged on by local Muslims ‘regaling them with lurid accounts of the treatment meted out to Sikhs at Muzaffarabad’, noted Father George Shanks, one of the two Mill Hill priests in the mission. ‘The hospital had practically emptied en masse that morning . . . girls within a few days of their confinement, women half-dead with TB or cancer . . . were hurried off their sick-beds by fearful husbands . . . the menacing spectre of rape at their heels’.24 The Muslim reaction was predictably different. When the lashkar started to arrive at 10.30 a.m. on the 27 October, ‘Hundreds walked several miles down the river to welcome them’ those ‘who were coming to rid them of the century-old Dogra slavery. Almost the entire male Muslim inhabitants and thousands of others from the countryside had turned up in their choicest clothes to meet the liberators. Major Khurshid Anwar particularly was the centre of attraction. Almost everyone wanted to thank him personally’, recalled Muhammad Yusuf Sarat, a local politician who would end up as a judge in Pakistani or Azad Kashmir.25 But the euphoria would be short-lived as the Pathan tribesmen made it clear that their priority was loot over liberty. For two days they devoted themselves to stealing what they could.

  Shanks found his house within the mission compound surrounded by ‘fifteen of the most unpleasant hoodlums I have ever seen. Armed to the teeth with rifle, sword, dagger, most of them carrying an axe for business purposes. Untidy black beards, unkempt long hair, dirty black turbans, ragged clothes caked with blood and dirt’. One of them extended his hand. Father Shanks moved to shake it but found instead that the man had dived into his pocket in search of money. They systematically looted every room, every drawer, every cupboard. Shanks could not help but admire the thoroughness of their theft; they left nothing behind.26 But worse was happening at the hospital. There ‘the whole place erupted with shooting, shouting, screaming, yelling’. Within a few minutes six people lay dead, patients slaughtered in their beds, and a young nun and a British officer, Colonel Tom Dykes, who was staying in the mission with his wife and three young children, had been badly wounded. They both died later that day. Tom Dykes’s wife had also been killed, leaving the three boys orphans. Later there were accusations that several of the nuns had been raped, although there seems to be no firm evidence to support this. The hospital was also systematically looted.

  Yet although the St Joseph’s mission outrage was to command international attention, worse was happening in the town itself. There not only was all non-Muslim property looted or destroyed but Hindu and Sikh girls certainly were raped or were carried off as booty. The Balis, a prominent Sikh family, had seen relations from Muzaffarabad and Uri fleeing in the previous days. They simply bolted their house as best they could and fled into the hills, expecting to return once the lashkar had moved on. Instead they would spend weeks running for their lives from village to village. Gunwant Kaur’s family were less fortunate. Her father and three to four other members of her fam
ily were killed. ‘In the middle of all this they were taking away lots of youngsters, young women. Taking them to other villages. Abducting them. Many were forcibly married to their abductors.’27 Altogether it is estimated that twenty-five women were taken, nearly all Sikhs.

  The effect of this prolonged looting was that the lashkar stayed in Baramulla for two days. Brigadier Akbar Khan, the senior Pakistani officer who had given the tribesmen rifles, described his fury at the state of Baramulla, previously a town of ‘orchards, schools, road and river transport stations, shops and restaurants – in short a bright and cheerful looking place’ now looked as if ‘an earthquake had shaken it. Shops were empty, doors and windows were gone – brick, stone and paper littered the ground’. Yet he was even more enraged that, while the road to Srinagar lay open, unguarded now the maharajah’s forces had fled, the lashkar didn’t move on to take the capital. Another two hours, he believed, and before them lay Srinagar, ‘trembling at their mercy’. It was the greed, greed of the irregulars that was to cost Pakistan dear. Eric Britter, The Times correspondent, and who reckoned the lashkar now numbered about ten thousand (probably an exaggeration – Cunningham in Peshawar later estimated that the maximum number they reached was seven thousand),28 said that Khurshid Anwar was simply not strong enough to force the tribal leaders to stop their men looting and get them on the road. When he attempted to stop them he was, it was rumoured, told to mind his own business or he would be killed.29 It was not until the rotund Pir of Manki Sharif arrived and ‘forcefully reminded the tribesmen that plunder was not the primary purpose for which they had entered Kashmir’ that they started moving. The pir also visited St Joseph’s and had the Dykes boys given 30 rupees in blood money for the death of their parents. ‘Aren’t you ashamed’, demanded one of the nuns, ‘to give thirty rupees to the children whose parents your men have killed?’ The pir remained silent.30

  As the tribesmen were looting, and the pir was lecturing, Colonel Rai’s 1st Sikhs were landing at Srinagar’s grass airstrip in the DC3s. The first aircraft touched down in the early morning of 27 October, to be followed by a gradual build-up but it would take until that evening to get the bulk of the battalion on the ground. The pilot of one of the Dakotas took off again once he had disembarked his troops and flew west along the Baramulla road. He returned to brief Colonel Rai saying that he had seen Baramulla in flames but otherwise no sign of movement along the road, despite the fact that his aircraft was struck by a bullet. Rai decided that he had insufficient men to hold the airstrip, which was by then thronged with non-Muslims desperate to leave, so he decided, acting on the pilot’s fairly sketchy reconnaissance, to take what transport he could find and to move with his lead company towards Baramulla. He arrived there late on 27 October, as the tribesmen were ending their first day of determined looting. He occupied the last ridge before the town on the main Srinagar road, about a mile and a half outside the town, where he found a small detachment of the maharajah’s cavalry who had got left behind. Rai could tell he was outnumbered and waited for reinforcements.

  The next morning his position was spotted by the lashkar who started shooting at his men. At first fire was sporadic but during the afternoon the tribesmen opened up with heavy machine guns and small mortars; it is worth pondering where they had managed to lay their hands on these weapons which required a degree of skill and training to operate. By late afternoon Rai decided that he would have to withdraw and told his men to start pulling back. As he did so he fell dead, shot through the head. His soldiers couldn’t bring his body back with them so they hid him on the hillside.

  His company pulled back to the next tactical position between Baramulla and Srinagar near the small town of Pattan. Here they again occupied a defensive position, from which, now reinforced from the gradual build up at the airfield, they were able to hold off the lashkar’s badly organised attacks. They were also assisted by Indian Air Force fighter-bombers flying initially from Ambala and then from Srinagar. The pilots found the conditions chaotic, the airfield packed with equipment and people and no refuelling facilities so they had to take fuel from the Dakotas. They did, however, give the Sikhs a decided advantage; there were, of course, no Pakistani aircraft flying so the Indian pilots had the sky to themselves. Consequently they stopped the lashkar’s vehicles moving, at least in daylight, which meant they had to continue the advance into Srinagar on foot.

  Conditions in Srinagar were as chaotic as on the airfield and the atmosphere tense. With the departure of the maharajah, his government had effectively stopped. Policing had been taken over by Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference militia, who now patrolled the streets. The sheikh had been ‘sworn in’ as head of a provisional government on 31 October, amid scenes of much popular support. Thousands rushed to join the militia, which had both an active women’s detachment and a children’s wing, who drilled with dummy weapons. Muslim League supporters remained in the background, hoping their day to take political power might come when and if the lashkar arrived. Food was scarce and power intermittent. As always, the rarest commodity was reliable information and radios were in short supply. A redoubtable English woman, Gwen Burton, described what it was like being trapped in the comparative comfort of Nedou’s Hotel, where at least they had access to a ‘wet battery’ set. People flocked in to hear the news. ‘There was a lot of heavy firing and bombing last night’, Mrs Burton wrote home to friends in England, evidently hoping that one day her letter might be delivered. ‘Not at all pleasant and very nerve racking. Food is beginning to get scarce . . . We have’, though, she added, ‘had lovely weather’ for it all ‘so far and only hope it goes on’.31

  Despite the rapid build-up of Indian troops, the lashkar still significantly outnumbered them and for the first few days of November the military situation hung in the balance. A large group of tribesmen, who now appeared slightly better organised, got to within a few miles of the airfield; if India lost that its war was effectively over as what troops it had landed would be cut off. On 3 November about one thousand tribesmen attacked an Indian Army position at Badgam, which, had it fallen, would have meant the airfield was vulnerable. ‘The fighting went on from mid-afternoon until dusk. By the end of several hours of bitter fighting, the Indian Army had lost an officer, Major Somnath Sharma, and fourteen other men, with a further twenty-six wounded’, noted Andrew Whitehead.32 Although the position held, the Sikhs were too weak to stop any further advance but, unaccountably, for the second time in a week the tribesmen failed to press home their advantage.

  Rai had been replaced by the determined Colonel Harbakhsh Singh who now decided, in light of the Badgam attack, that he was in danger of being outflanked and to pull his remaining troops in from Pattan to concentrate on the defence of the perimeter of Srinagar itself. Lacking radios and transport, he transmitted his orders by dropping notes onto their position from a low-flying aircraft. Gathering what local transport they could, mostly tongas (wheeled cabs) which, in Indian Army legend, they pulled themselves, horses being scarce, the remaining Sikhs withdrew.

  Badgam was to be the last chance Khurshid Anwar and his lashkar had to bring about a decisive result. On 6 November he made a determined attempt to force an entry through the Indian-held perimeter. ‘The city reverberated to the sound of machine-guns and mortar firing. About 1.00 am the invaders made a daring attempt to enter the city about four and a half miles west’, wrote The Times of India correspondent but the tribesmen could not force their way past the Sikhs’ positions. By this stage there were 3,000 Indian troops in the city and, inevitably when irregulars face formed and trained soldiers in an open engagement like that, they will come off worse. The tribesmen withdrew.

  On 7 November the lashkar gathered near the village of Shalateng, just north-west of Srinagar, possibly intending to make one more attempt to break in. Their morale was now low and for days groups had been leaving, taking their loot and starting the trek back west. The Indian Army spotted the concentration. Reinforced by sixteen armoured cars,
which they had succeeded in bringing up, Brigadier Bogey Sen, now in command as the force had grown well beyond battalion size, prepared an assault. He did it well. Surrounding the tribesmen on three sides, and with coordinated air support, he attacked. The lashkar, with limited heavy weapons, was decisively defeated. Within twenty minutes they had broken and started running west, leaving, according to Indian sources but unsubstantiated, 472 dead. A further 146 bodies were found on the road to Baramulla as the Indians pursued them; 138 buses and trucks were taken. Afterwards some would claim that Sen had only turned up at the last minute and that it was Harbakhsh Singh who had planned and executed the attack; whoever was responsible, it was decisive. Shalateng secured the Kashmir valley for India. Tribesmen with bolt-action rifles were no match for armoured cars and Spitfires, as disgruntled Pakistani military commentators would lament.

  A visitor to the site of the battle some days afterwards described corpses in profusion, most apparently the victims of air strikes than Indian bayonets: ‘Dogs and vultures were eating the bodies’.33 Andrew Whitehead quotes Margaret Parton of the Herald Tribune describing ‘a huge, red-bearded tribesman lying dead in a ditch by the highway to Baramulla, his hill-made rifle still clutched in his hand’.34 More tribesmen were taken in Baramulla itself. Parton described them:

  Never have I seen such disgusting, grotesque figures: one of them, a hulking giant with a filthy grey beard through which straggled one protruding yellow tooth, wore blue checked plus fours, khaki puttees, a blue RAF jacket, and torn sandals. An unclosed knife wound lashed across his right eye and part of his cheek, and the blood had dried without any attempt to wash it away. Then there was a little gnome about five feet high and eighty years old, who cackled; a middle-aged tribesman in a bloodstained burnoose, with the flashing eyes of a zealot; and a half-naked monkey in a string of red and blue beads who claimed to be a local ‘faquir’.35