Remembering a Black Day
Momin Iftikhar
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.
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