Kashmir Invasion of October 1947 - They were not raiders

Several hordes consisting of tribals from North-West Frontier Province, serving officers and soldiers of the Pakistan army, veterans of the British army as well as J&K State Forces, and deserters of J&K State Forces, invaded the State of J&K starting from the night of 08/09 October, 1947. The Kashmir Valley, per se, was invaded on 22 October 1947. Operating in line with the British plan, code-named Operation Gulmarg, those 10,000 men forming such hordes were first referred to as Raiders by our PM, Pandit Nehru.

Raider is a term that refers to the actions by a group of individuals who intrude into a territory or property, carry out killings and/or loot and plunder and then go back to their land, often carrying whatever has been robbed. Cambridge dictionary thus defines a raider as someone who enters a place illegally and usually violently and steals from it. The difference between a raid (an act of entering an area illegally, stealing and falling back to own base) and an invasion (an act of breaching an internationally recognised border, capturing and holding the area in a foreign land with a view to expanding own hold over such a territory), thus needs to be understood to correctly comprehend the scenario surrounding the invasion of October 1947.

Major General Akbar Khan, who was the man supervising the invasion of J&K State, wrote a book by the title, Raiders in Kashmir. In the Preface of that book, he writes: “Nehru called us raiders. He did so in a derogatory sense. But what he did not know was that raiding is, nowadays, an accepted and very highly developed branch of the art of war. Aircraft, commandos, guerrillas, motorised infantry, tank cum artillery groups, submarines, and even gentlemen of the cloak and dagger tradition are all increasingly used for hit and run tactics to achieve the objects of war. So, we can, I think without indignity, retain the name raiders —particularly so when the fighting techniques of the Frontier tribesmen does (sic), in the military sense, make him indeed a very competent and daring type of raider.”

Indian leaders, by referring to the invaders as raiders, thus played into the hands of Pakistanis. The latter, as it is, had been denying any role of the Pakistani army in the invasion of J&K State right till the middle of 1948. Hordes of frenzied men led by Pakistani officers and soldiers were no raiders! While Akbar Khan cleverly points at their hit and run tactics, the fact remains that irrespective of the tactics employed, the strategic aim of annexing J&K by force doesn’t fit in the frame of a raid. It was certainly an invasion, defined by the Cambridge dictionary as ‘an occasion when an army or country uses force to enter and take control of another country.’

A mystery surrounded the usage of such a term when the biggest Princely State had just been invaded. Many commentators attribute such a usage to the fact that the British, more specifically Lord Mountbatten, had convinced Pt Nehru that Pakistan was in no position to attack J&K and trigger an all-out war with India. So, when the invasion happened, the British, who had planned it and had been supervising its execution, possibly told Nehru that a few raiders had entered J&K State.

By another logic, the cross-border raids had begun with effect from the first week of September 1947. The affected region was that of Jammu. Those raids were part of another plan that had been put into effect before Pakistan finally accepted Operation Gulmarg as the only plan. As the news of those raids had been reaching Delhi from September, the official usage of the term, raiders, was allowed to be continued, though incorrectly, when the invasion finally happened in early October 1947 in Mirpur and during the third week in the Valley.

Whatever may have been the reason for using such terminology, the fact remains that it offered Pakistan a readymade escape route that he used cleverly. By mentioning and using this term, the signal sent to the world was that the revolt had been indigenous, and a few raiders had pitched in to help their Muslim brethren who were being tortured by a Hindu ruler. And that was what Pakistan had been claiming at that time.

Another implication of such a term was for the first battalion of the Indian Army, 1 SIKH, that landed at Srinagar on 27 October morning. The CO of the battalion, Lt Col DR Rai, had been made to believe that he had to just land there and deal with a bunch of raiders. It was only after he reached the outskirts of Baramulla with a small force under him that he realised the enormity of the task at hand. He also realised that the brief given to him had been wrong, and instead of facing some ragtag army of club-wielding raiders, he was faced with an organised force that had support weapons like machine guns amid its ranks. It was for that precise reason that he sent a message to Delhi on 27 October itself, stating, “…500 enemy and 2000 locals near Baramulla cannot be held by State forces, so will … reinforce State troops to prevent break-through. Build-up must be expedited.”

With the Indian Government sticking to this term at the diplomatic level, it became easier for Pakistan to deny its army’s involvement. It was only after enough evidence had been placed on the table by India and after regular army formations of Pakistan had moved into the conflict zone that Pakistan finally accepted the involvement of the Pakistan army.

The following painting in the war museum of Pakistan proves a thing or two:

A soldier, a tribal and a deserter

Invaders and not raiders invaded the State in October 1947. Unfortunately, the term, so wrongly used by Indian PM and others in power, continues to be in use today. Such a usage gives Pakistan an escape route; it enables the country to claim, again wrongly, that the natives of the State wanted freedom from the Maharaja and the few good men —read raiders —just went in to help their co-religionists inside J&K. Even today, another term, Kabailis (tribesmen) is used casually to refer to the hordes that had men from diverse backgrounds. Such usage also enables the British to remain in the side shadows with no one pointing the finger at them for all that they had done to not only partition the country but to ensure forced annexation of J&K State through Operation Gulmarg and Operation Datta Khel. While the former was meant to capture Jammu (more specifically, the area across Chenab, i.e., Bhimber, Mirpur and Poonch) and Kashmir Valley, the latter was played out in the highlands of Gilgit-Baltistan.

But for the courageous stand taken first by the State Forces, followed by gallant fight put up by the Indian Army, the British would have succeeded in their plans; their plans, incidentally, continue to create trouble even today.

The author is a military historian with 16 published books under his name and is the Founding Trustee of Military History Research Foundation ®, India