T H E I N F O R M A L WAR

entire days, Baramulla was subjected to an orgy of destruction, rape and loot.
Sometimes their help to their brother Muslims , Bourke-White acidly observed,
was accomplished so quickly that the trucks and buses would come
back within a day or two bursting with loot, only to return to Kashmir
with more tribesmen, to repeat their indiscriminate liberating
and
terrorizing of Hindu, Sikh and Muslim villager alike.23
And, it would seem Christians. The nuns of the Baramulla Mission Hospital,
the most modern in the Kashmir valley, were butchered en masse when they
attempted to intercede on behalf of their patients.24
Perhaps the worst fate of all was reserved for the National Conference leader
Mir Maqbool Sherwani, who led covert operations by the Kashmir Militia against
the tribal irregulars, and organized popular resistance. Captured by the raiders
,
Sherwani was asked to make an announcement of support for Pakistan. He
refused. Bourke-White has recorded what happened:
It was a curious thing that the tribals did next. I don t know why these
savage nomads should have thought of such a thing unless their sight
of the sacred figures in St. Joseph s Chapel on the hill just above had
suggested it to them. They drove nails through the palms of Sherwani s
hands. On his forehead they pressed a jagged piece of tin and wrote on
it: The punishment of a traitor is death. 25
Sherwani was finally executed by a firing squad, but his death was not in vain.
In retrospect, those three days of carnage in Baramulla were to cost Pakistan
all of Jammu and Kashmir. Confronted with the enemy at his gates, Hari Singh
finally acted. He dropped his resistance to Abdullah s involvement in the governme
nt,
and signed documents acceding to India, thus enabling direct military
intervention. Arrangements for assistance proceeded at breakneck speed , and
Indian troops were flown in to secure Srinagar airport.26 Akbar Khan, personally
present on the field of battle, gave a valiant speech about what the issue of
Kashmir meant to us as Muslims and Pakistanis .27 He adopted the nom de guerre
General Tariq , in honor of the legendary Moor commander reputed to have
burnt his boats behind him upon landing for the conquest of Spain in the seventh
century.28 General Khan s use of Islamic myth would inspire those who planned
a subsequent military campaign, the war of 1965, but did little to energize the
forces he commanded to prevent Indian troops from beating back the invasion to
Uri. A similar process of reversal took place in Jammu. By the end of November
1947, Indian forces succeeded in relieving much of the province.
Efforts to secure a political settlement continued throughout this military
campaign. Although he initially called for a compromise on both sides, the rejec
tion
of his pleas by Pakistan led Mountbatten to press for unilateral concessions
from the party over which he had real influence India .29 Nehru, by contrast,
increasingly believed that an aggressive military response was the only option.3
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