1948 Kashmir war history

[bhramos]

1948 Kashmir war history

The Indian defence against Pakistani forces attacking Kashmir in 1947-48

 

[Super Commando Dhruva]

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\03\16\story_16-3-2010_pg3_2


I was quite intrigued by the convoluted reasoning underpinning Riaz Shahid's op-ed, 'Reassessing Liaquat Ali Khan's role' (Daily Times, February 15, 2010). In it he assailed Liaquat Ali Khan for a number of wrong decisions, among which one that generated controversy was the allegation that he appointed Ayub Khan as Pakistan's army chief when the latter had allegedly been given very bad references for timidity and lack of leadership during World War II when he was posted on the Burmese Front; more damning than that was, according to Riaz Shahid, Ayub's absence from the Kashmir War. The lack of battle experience, argues the author, rendered him unfit to be promoted as the highest soldier of Pakistan.

Since I am in the process of completing a book on the role of the Pakistan military in Pakistani politics, I have had to go through the literature on the Kashmir War as well. I must say that with or without Ayub Khan's participation, initiating hostilities in Kashmir cost us that state. Mian Iftikharuddin, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Dr MD Taseer had been tasked to woo Sheikh Abdullah over to the Pakistani point of view on Kashmir. They gave up in despair when scores of tribal warriors backed by Pakistani regulars and irregulars entered Kashmir in the last week of October to liberate it from Dogra rule.

The tribal warriors quickly forgot the mission they were supposed to achieve, and succumbed prey to a vice deeply rooted in their culture and history — looting, pillaging and raping. Among their victims were some European nuns, presumably engaged in meditation and helping the poor. Why some of our senior officers could not keep such characters under control is of course another matter, but Kashmiri opinion quickly turned against the infiltrators. The rape of the nuns brought along international disapprobation and condemnation.

The tribal warriors had no clue that something called the Accession Bill privileged the rulers of princely states to determine their state's relationship with India and Pakistan. That Pakistani officers and jawans were also oblivious of the same is rather astounding. The fact is that even Quaid-e-Azam did not realise the great folly in going into Kashmir. There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that he had instructed a number of ministers to help the 'freedom fighters' whereas Liaquat and some others were lukewarm in their support. This difference of opinion in the central cabinet comes out clearly in Major (retd) Agha Humayun Amin's book on the Pakistan Army to which Riaz Shahid has referred in his above-mentioned essay.

But here are some arguments to prove that the Kashmir War actually set in motion a process that diminished our claim on Kashmir. Maharaja Hari Singh Dogra had no intention of merging his state with either India or Pakistan. The Pakistan-sponsored insurgency forced him to choose sides. The Indian emissary, VP Menon, arrived in Srinagar with a document that stipulated Indian military help only if the Maharaja signed the Accession Bill. There is some dispute as to the actual date on which it was signed, but the document that the Indians have in their possession gives October 26 as the date on which it was signed.

At that time the British officers were holding commanding positions on both sides. The only reason some of them stayed behind was to ensure that these two states were not dragged into an armed conflict with each other; another reason was to train and groom them to become part of the grand Commonwealth reservoir of troops, which Britain deluded itself into believing will still be its role in South Asia for a long, long time to come. It is clearly stated in the 12th and last volume (1983) of the Transfer of Power that the British government has released on the partition of India that British officers who agreed to serve in India and Pakistan were under clear instructions not to fight in case war broke out between these two states.

Even more importantly, it is now time to wonder if our leaders acted responsibly in opening a front in Kashmir when more than 14 million people had been uprooted, some 1-2 million killed — of which at least half of the fatalities were that of Muslims — in the rioting, and hundreds of thousands of women abducted by men from the 'enemy religions'. Pakistan was on the verge of bankruptcy. In 1948, the Pakistani international border with India was as vulnerable — in fact infinitely much more — as in 1965.

Take up any book published in Pakistan on the division of the common assets of the Indian Royal Armed Forces and you will find Pakistan, justifiably, claiming that it was not given a fair share of the tanks, guns and ammunition and so on. Had the Indians opened the front at Lahore or Sialkot in 1948 as they did in 1965, our bluff would have been called forthwith.

The fact remains that the British Acting Commander-in-Chief, General Gracey (the C-in-C General Messervy was away on leave) did not let down Pakistan by dissuading Jinnah to let the conflict escalate. He did a favour. This does not sound very patriotic, but as a scholar I must speak the truth. The 1947-48 Kashmir was a much more irresponsible adventure than the one that was initiated in 1965.

In August 1965, infiltrators were despatched into India. They were able to report some spectacular successes though the evidence now tells a story of both advances and reverses. The Indians opened the front along the Punjab border on September 6. For a few days our armed forces fought with great courage and determination, but so did the Indians. After a few days, we had run out of spare parts, ammunition and armaments. The situation on the other side was perhaps not any better.

On our side this happened even when for almost a decade we had been recipients of state-of-the-art US military aid and training. In 1948 we were poorly armed and proper training and organisation were absent. It would have not made an iota of a difference if Ayub had fought in 1947-48 and gained battle hardiness. Such romantic phraseology is totally unwarranted. It only perpetuates a vain myth that the Pakistan military is some invincible fighting machine and the fault lies in some generals.

Ishtiaq Ahmed is a Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) and the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. He is also Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Stockholm University. He has published extensively on South Asian politics. At ISAS, he is currently working on a book, Is Pakistan a Garrison State? He can be reached at [email protected]

 

[Super Commando Dhruva]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n08/tariq-ali/bitter-chill-of-winter

The invasion was fixed for 9 September 1947, but it had to be delayed for two weeks: Khurshid Anwar had chosen the same day to get married and wanted to go on a brief honeymoon. In the meantime, thanks to Anwar's lack of discretion, a senior Pakistani officer, Brigadier Iftikhar, heard what was going on and passed the news to General Messervy, the C-in-C of the Pakistan Army. He immediately informed Auchinleck, who passed the information to Mountbatten, who passed it to the new Indian Government. Using the planned invasion as a pretext, the Congress sent Nehru's deputy, Sardar Patel, to pressure the Maharaja into acceding to India, while Mountbatten ordered Indian Army units to prepare for an emergency airlift to Srinagar.

Back in Rawalpindi, Anwar had returned from his honeymoon and the invasion began. The key objective was to take Srinagar, occupy the airport and secure it against the Indians. Within a week the Maharaja's army had collapsed. Hari Singh fled to his palace in Jammu. The 11th Sikh Regiment of the Indian Army had by now reached Srinagar, but was desperately waiting for reinforcements and didn't enter the town. The Pathan tribesman under Khurshid Anwar's command halted after reaching Baramulla, only an hour's bus ride from Srinagar, and refused to go any further. Here they embarked on a three-day binge, looting houses, assaulting Muslims and Hindus alike, raping men and women and stealing money from the Kashmir Treasury. The local cinema was transformed into a rape centre; a group of Pathans invaded St Joseph's Convent, where they raped and killed four nuns, including the Mother Superior, and shot dead a European couple sheltering there. News of the atrocities spread, turning large numbers of Kashmiris against their would-be liberators. When they finally reached Srinagar, the Pathans were so intent on pillaging the shops and bazaars that they overlooked the airport, already occupied by the Sikhs.

The Maharaja meanwhile signed the accession papers in favour of India and demanded help to repel the invasion. India airlifted troops and began to drive the Pakistanis back. Sporadic fighting continued until India appealed to the UN Security Council, which organised a ceasefire and a Line of Control (LOC) demarcating Indian and Pakistan-held territory.[*] Kashmir, too, was now partitioned. The leaders of the Kashmir Muslim Conference shifted to Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, leaving Sheikh Abdullah in control of the valley itself.

 

[bhramos]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n08/tariq-ali/bitter-chill-of-winter


. Here they embarked on a three-day binge, looting houses, assaulting Muslims and Hindus alike, raping men and women and stealing money from the Kashmir Treasury. The local cinema was transformed into a rape centre; a group of Pathans invaded St Joseph's Convent, where they raped and killed four nuns, including the Mother Superior, and shot dead a European couple sheltering there..

were those pathans gay!!!!!!!!
raping men and women !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[bhramos]

1948 THE FIRST KASHMIR WAR

 

[prashantm912]

were those pathans gay!!!!!!!!
raping men and women !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

May be some they were.
This line is quoted from the wikipedia

 

[bhramos]

First Kashmir war India and Pakistan 1947 to 1948

 

[Indianboy]

Osho on Indian Leadership while 1948 and 1962 wars:

India has remained, for two thousand years, under slavery. Masters went on changing; slaves remained the same. My whole family was involved in the freedom struggle; everybody has been punished and jailed. I was continuously -- because I was too young -- fighting with my uncles, with my father, saying, "Can't you see a simple thing? For two thousand years in a country, which is not a country but a continent so vast that the whole of Europe can be accommodated in it, small countries like England, which is not bigger than a big district of India, control and rule. And it is not a single instance: Moguls came, Turks came, Mongols came, Hunas came. To anybody who wanted, this country was available, ready to be enslaved.
My point was that the real question is not to fight the people who have become your rulers. The real question is to fight within you the one who has become a slave. Otherwise this seems to be absolutely impossible. How could small groups of people come and rule all over the country? Certainly there must have been a slave in everybody's being.

And you can see it even today. After forty years of freedom, what have you got? When China attacked India after freedom, the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was immensely annoyed. Forces were sent, and they were defeated; China had taken over thousands of miles of beautiful Himalayas. And once they were defeated, Jawaharlal Nehru said, "That land was useless -- not even grass grows there." Then why had you sent all those people to be murdered and butchered? -- to save a land where nothing grows, not even grass.

Since then no Indian president or prime minister has even mentioned it, or said, "What about those thousands of miles of beautiful Himalayas? When are you going to return it?"

Pakistan has taken a part of Kashmir. The man who was in charge of the Indian armies, General Chaudhuri... his wife was very interested in me and in my ideas. She told me the inside story. General Chaudhuri was ready, and he wanted to attack before the sun rose, before the Pakistani armies were even awake. And his logic was absolutely right: "We should not only take our part that Pakistan has taken, we should go deeper towards Lahore, which is not far away. We should take Lahore too."

Then you have the upper hand when the question of negotiations comes: "We can leave your Lahore to you; you leave our part to us." Otherwise how are you going to negotiate? For what? You are not giving anything, you are just asking for something. For forty years continuously India has been asking, "The part you have taken should be returned." But rather than returning it they have made it, constitutionally, part of Kashmir. Now it is not an invaded part, now it is an essential part of Kashmir. And the Indian leaders have been silent; nobody has even objected.

General Chaudhuri was phoning continually to say, "Allow me to go ahead." But Jawaharlal Nehru and his cabinet could not decide; they said, "You have to wait until sunrise." And you will be surprised to know that if he had waited until sunrise the whole of Kashmir would have gone into the hands of Pakistan.

He did not wait -- he was a real, courageous man -- but they delayed him so much that he started attacking just nearabout when the sun was going to rise, without the orders from the prime minister. It was through his courage that Pakistan could take only a small part -- but the most beautiful part, and the most significant part as far as military science is concerned, because that small part allows Pakistan to be joined with China. That small part is so significant -- without it the boundaries of China and Pakistan were separate. Pakistan has taken that part, and now China has made a thousands-of-miles-long superhighway, reaching to Lahore. Both are the enemies of India, and now they are connected.

Chaudhuri was insisting, "Allow me.... Forget about that part, because Pakistan is focused on taking it. Let them take it -- don't waste time. Allow me: I will take Lahore, their most important city" -- and it was only fifteen miles away, a few minutes' job. But the cabinet discussed and discussed -- this country is very clever as far as discussing is concerned; for centuries it has been discussing everything, and doing nothing.

As they became aware that Chaudhuri was going to take over Lahore, they stopped him and said, "Without our orders, who are you?" and Chaudhuri was punished, retired before his time. His wife was telling me, "If he had been allowed to take Lahore, we would have had an immediate solution to the problem. Pakistan would not have been ready to lose Lahore, because Lahore joins us with Afghanistan and the Soviet Union."

Chaudhuri was very clear in his conception that they would not take the risk of India becoming joined by road, by railway trains, to the Soviet Union. They would have rather changed and negotiated: "You can take the part we have taken, and you give the part that you have taken."

This country has learned, in two thousand years, to be slaves. So even though forty years of freedom have passed, there is no freedom anywhere -- only in the words of the constitution; otherwise how could the police commissioner have dared to prevent me... and tell me to leave Poona within thirty minutes, on the grounds that I am controversial?

I simply want to know: Has there been anybody in the whole world who was of any significance and not controversial? Was Jesus not controversial? If he had remained just with his father in his carpentry, I don't think people would have crucified him. They did not crucify his father.

Was Buddha not controversial? But was he ordered by any kingdom...? India was divided into two thousand kingdoms at his time, and he was moving freely from one kingdom into another; not even a visa was asked, not even a passport. And nobody can be more controversial than Gautam Buddha, because he was against the VEDAS, which are the base of the Hindu religion. He was against the brahmins, who are the priests and the lawgivers of Hinduism. Still nobody prevented him just because he was controversial.

It seems we have become such slaves in our minds that we have written a constitution which is simply a copy of all the best constitutions of the world; we have chosen fragments from here and there. Whenever I think of the Indian constitution I always, without exception, remember a small story: It was Darwin's birthday, and the children of his neighborhood wanted to present him with something, because he was the most famous man, and of course the most controversial man, of his time. He was very friendly with children and used to play with them; they were all his friends.

For his birthday, they were thinking about what to present him. Because his single-minded interest was to know about animals, birds, how life has arisen, why life has taken so many forms, what the children did was -- children are very intelligent before they are corrupted by their elders -- they gathered a few insects and cut pieces from them: wings from one, legs from another, a body from the third, a head from the fourth -- from different insects -- and they glued them and made a new insect. They waited to see whether Charles Darwin, the greatest expert on insects and animals and birds, could even say what kind of insect this was.

They were very much excited, and in the evening they brought it to him. Even Darwin could not figure it out. He had seen... over his whole life he had been around the world. But these little children of his neighborhood, where had they found such an original insect? Then he looked closely -- he was getting old -- and he said, "Bring my glasses... because I have never seen such an insect."
And when he put on his glasses, the children said, "Now tell us the name of the insect."
He said, "This is a humbug!"

The Indian constitution is a humbug: something from the Soviet constitution, something from the American constitution, most of the English constitution, and from every other country whatever they could find which is good, sounds good -- freedom of the individual, no discrimination, freedom of expression, government by the people of the people for the people. Everything is borrowed. It looks good when you read it, but it is not applicable.

Because I am controversial I should leave Poona within thirty minutes. Where should I go? -- because I will be controversial wherever I am! And if to be controversial is a crime, then there is no place for me anywhere in my own country, which goes on bragging to the whole world that this is the greatest democracy.

This is the freedom for which my whole family fought, went to jail, suffered. And because all the elders of the family were suffering, only women were left in the house; the business was closed. We were children, small children, and we were suffering because there was even no money to pay the school fee. And this is the freedom for which not only my family, but thousands of families, suffered, thousands of people died.

And they were all controversial people.... Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Dr. Ambedkar -- they were all controversial people. If you have even a little intelligence you are bound to be controversial. Only in the armies is your intelligence crushed and destroyed so that you cannot say no, even if you see something is wrong. You have been trained to say yes in every condition.

Source - Osho Book "The Messiah, Vol2"

 

[KS]

I dont know if my history is wrong is this article is wrong ?

Two 1000 years of slavery..? Slavery by whom ? Any by 'this country' which country was he referring to ? How could a few hours of sunrise chnage the fact the Pak irregulars were so deep into Kashmir and onto the gates of Srinagar ?

I dont know......

 

[Indianboy]

Don't bother about the details, but do u agree what he has said about the poor leadership, capturing Lahore etc...?

In one of his lectures he had advised Indira Gandhi to take advantage of 72 victory and do something about occupied Kashmir so that Pak and China can never be close geographically..but you know the result...the victory was given away freely for a Karar which made no impact on Pak.

Be it Yudhisthir, Prithviraj or Gandhi, Nehru...they can't see they are doing injustice to their own country by being just to enemy..they are being violent to their own nation by remaining non-violent to enemy.

 

[KS]

In '71 we could not do anything because the US was pressuring us not to enter West Pak and the Soviets too could not guarentee their shield in case India was to cross the international border. Indira was under tremendous pressure from US and she could not be faulted.

Maybe we could have extracted some concession inlieu of the POWs, but thats it. Military action in West Pakistan was not an option.

But I agree that Nehru should not have gone to UN in 1948 and instead pressed ahead with the attacks until the Northern Areas were secured. But his moralistic bullshit destroyed one chance we had in history to reclaim what was ours.

 

[rock127]

were those pathans gay!!!!!!!!
raping men and women !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They are also known as baccha-baaz... also "janvar-baaz" basically they are capable of all type of all "baazi"

 

[Redhawk]

Found this NDTV documentary episode on the Indo-Pakistani of 1947/48 very interesting and informative. I must say that the Indo-Pak wars were very interesting wars, from a military perspective, especially having to contend with the environment and altitudes of Kashmir.

And having actual archival footage from the wars in black and white or colour always makes it that much more interesting. Nothing like having the intrepid newsreel cameraman there to get it all down on celluloid to keep for generations to come.

I have heard, too, that the scenery in Jammu and Kashmir is breathtakingly beautiful.

 

[Tamil Soldier]

Pakistani eunuchs and their first loss to India, after the two nation-states were born in the aftermath of colonialism.

So nice watching Muslims get hammered.

 

[ezsasa]

Fake HIstory continues to be peddled.
=====
First Kashmir War

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Fake HIstory continues to be peddled.
=====
First Kashmir War

What do you think the extent of fake history peddling is in the academia?

 

[ezsasa]

What do you think the extent of fake history peddling is in the academia?

Not just academia, commercial books and pop culture as well which is where these digital content fellows are picking up their narrative.

ultimately it's about numbers, say a thousand books and content are depicting fake colonial version of history, there should be atleast one thousand one hundred books and content correcting and challenging fake half truths. then atleast there is 50% chance that a neutral person who is researching gets to know both sides of the story.

 

[Blademaster]

Fake HIstory continues to be peddled.
=====
First Kashmir War

This video is totally full of shit.

 

[cereal killer]

From what I have heard Kashmir war is regarded as a massive lost opportunity for Paxtan in their circles. Pakhtoons were never supposed to find so much success probably a dedicated Paxtani assault could have made it a Absolute thriller in the end.
Nehru vs Jinnah at diplomatic level was a close call too. Both f***s had connections.