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| The brigadier who performed great feat in military history | | |
SANT KUMAR SHARMA
Jammu, October 26, 2009:
The saviour of Kashmir, Brigadier Rajendra Singh, fought many grim battles against the Lashkars led by Pakistani officers. His tenacious fighting checked the onward march of the marauders for full four days.
He had initially dug in his heels at Uri on October 22 reaching there at midnight. He had to retreat, every day, as the men at his command continued dying. On October 26, he retreated with his small band of men to Baramulla which was a prosperous town then. They fought gallantly but died, one after another.
This retreat encouraged the enemy troops who reached Uri. Regrouping his troops the Brigadier rushed to Uri. In Uri Rajinder Singh faced the full thrust of the enemy and he performed the main task of stopping the invaders as long as he could so that their march to Srinagar was delayed. The Brigadier destroyed that bridge which cut the base of the enemies from the next place. The invaders launched a three pronged attack which caused great loss to the Brigadier. First he retreated his soldiers from Moharra and then from Rampat (Jehlum Valley road). Here the Brigadier fought a bitter battle with the enemy for 11 hours. But the Brigadier had to pay a heavy loss. In the end he ordered the remaining troops to retreat. When the troops, while fighting, were searching for defensive position, Rajinder Singh was single-handed firing continuously to provide fire cover to the rear company. There at that time two bullets hit him, one injuring his right arm and the other his right leg but this did not silence his gun. Quickly the enemy surrounded him and he was killed.
In the "History of Kashmir" Bamzai has written that the Brigadier and his soldier colleagues, cooks, mess bearers and orderlies, under the orders of the Brigadier, had taken up arms and performed great feat in the military history of the world. These sons of their motherland of India stopped the Pakistani troops for three days and prevented them from marching ahead.
The same evening, the raiders entered the town and an orgy of plunder and arson began. Hindus and Sikhs were hunted down like wild animals and killed, mercilessly. The Lashkar leaders took young women into their custody, raped and killed many. Many they took back and sold them through auction in Peshawar and Rawalpindi.
It was in Baramulla that Maqbool Sherwani, a Kashmiri Muslim, was killed in the town square as he opposed the killings and mayhem. He was shot dead for he refused to kowtow to the raiders.
Maqbool professed that all Kashmiris, Hindus and Sikhs included, were his brothers. A British officer, Colonel Dykes, who ran a missionary hospital in the town, and his assistants, were butchered in cold blood.
Bodies of men, women and children lay strewn in the streets as many houses were burnt down by the marauding raiders. Valuables like looted gold and silver ornaments and young women were the battle booty the marauders collected. The raiders, individually, tried to collect as much booty as they could and they were not willing to take orders from their commanders to move further on, to Srinagar.
They just wanted to ensure that the booty (women & wealth) they had collected by looting and plundering Baramulla stayed with them. Many just turned back, heading home carrying whatever they could, ignoring orders to march on.
Maharaja Hari Singh left the summer capital Srinagar, for Jammu, on October 25.
The Government of India learnt about the full ferocity of the Pakistani attack on J&K territories only on October 24. The next day, it sent V P Menon, secretary in the ministry of states, to Srinagar by air to meet the Maharaja and assess the situation.
It was Mr Menon who advised Maharaja Hari Singh to leave Srinagar and go to Jammu lest he fell into the hands of the raiders. Menon left Srinagar, for Delhi, the next day and Mehar Chand Mahajan, the Prime Minister of J&K, accompanied him.
The J&K government and Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah urged Nehru to send military aid. But he Nehru cabinet decided that military aid could be provided to J&K only after its formal accession to India.
On October 26, Menon flew to Jammu where the Maharja gave him the formal Instrument of Accession, duly signed. Menon then flew back to Delhi in the afternoon. By late evening, the Governor-General of India accepted the Instrument of Accession and J&K became a part of the Indian Union.
Providing military aid to a constituent unit of the Union was the duty of the Government of India and it started making preparations to do so in right earnest.
The nearest unit available in Delhi for this duty was 1 Sikh based in Gurgaon then and accordingly Lt Col D R Rai was informed that his troops were to fly to Srinagar the next morning.
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