War in Our Times | Independent India’s first war: The Gilgit-Skardu saga of 1947-48

The Gilgit province at the geographical ‘roof of India’ emerged as an area of concern for Britain as the Partition of the subcontinent loomed on the horizon. The province had access to the Sinkiang province of China and was closest to the Soviet Union via the Wakhan corridor, which connected Afghanistan to the northern regions of Gilgit. Having assessed the geo-political conditions rightly, Lord Mountbatten turned a blind eye when the province was overrun by British-officer-led troops of the Gilgit Scouts soon after India and Pakistan were granted independence, enabled significantly by the inability of any speedy intervention by the Indian Army. Barring a fierce defence at Skardu before it fell to the raiders in mid-1948, Gilgit would remain the only part of the erstwhile princely state, which was not contested for recapture by Indian surface forces in the year-long battle that would unfold in the lap of the towering, twisting and intimidating Himalayan ranges. To its north and north-west, the central Srinagar valley is separated from the Gilgit and Baltistan region by the Burzil mountains, a part of the Nanga Parbat Range of the Great Himalayan Range. Across these mountains through the Burzil Pass at a height of 4,000 metres ran the ancient caravan route between Srinagar and Gilgit, the largest town of the region. Under Dogra rule till the early part of the 20th century, it was leased to the British by Maharaja Hari Singh as the Crown saw it as a defensive high altitude buffer between British India and the Russian empire as the ‘Great Game’ unfolded in the region. After Partition, it was assumed that the territory would be considered as a province of the princely state of Kashmir till accession to either India or Pakistan. Coup Emboldened by the initial success of the tribal Lashkars in October 1947 as they advanced towards Srinagar in the Kashmir Valley, and egged-on by extremist propaganda that talked about massacre of Muslims by Dogra troops of the Kashmir State forces, the Gilgit Scouts, comprising mainly of Shia Muslims, with tribals in support, orchestrated a coup in Gilgit on 31 October 1947. The force was led by a British officer named Major Brown. It was but one of many instances in which British officers of the Pakistan Army were believed to have actively assisted the raiders, and later, the regular Pakistan Army during the subsequent stages of the conflict. The operation was a tactical success as local support from jagirs or local leaders in the isolated northern areas was forthcoming. Religious propaganda too succeeded in the predominantly Shia Muslim areas of Gilgit and Skardu. After the fall of Gilgit in early November 1947, it was quite easy for the raiders to build up a force of 3,000-4,000 troops comprising personnel from the Gilgit Scouts, Chitral Guards, tribal Lashkars and locally recruited fighters to launch two operations. The first was a frontal assault on Skardu and the second was an ambitious late winter run in 1947 towards Dras, Kargil and Leh. Defence of Skardu: The aviators pitch in Skardu, the second largest town in Baltistan, was defended by a small force of the Gilgit Scouts and reinforced from Leh by a small force of the Kashmir Infantry led by Major Sher Jung Thapa. For over six months from February to August 1948, the garrison gallantly fought back repeated attempts by the raiders to breach the defences at the Skardu Fort where Thapa had organised his defences. A request to pull back to Kargil was denied — it would have been suicidal to attempt a trek of almost three hundred kilometres with women and children. A request for aerial replenishment akin to what was being done at Poonch was not found feasible for various reasons, amongst them being uncertain weather conditions across the Burzil mountains and the apprehension that Dakotas may not be able to sustain operations from the Skardu airstrip, which was located at a height of 9,500 feet. However, Tempest fighter-bombers attempted to drop supplies in canisters with little success as many of them landed outside the fort and any attempt to retrieve them was met with vicious cross-fire from raiders positioned at vantage points around the fort. Flight Lieutenant Mickey Blake of 8 Squadron has this to say about his first sortie over Skardu area: “On 9th Feb 48 we had to climb to 26,000 feet because of cloud and we were blown off-course by strong easterly jet streams. However, we hit the river Indus and I was able to pin point where we were. We followed the River Indus in a westerly direction and hit Skardu and then Rondu where we hit our target with rockets. However, when we tried to strafe the area, our cannons failed to fire. I hope we gave the b******s a fright. We flew alongside Mt K2, the second highest mountain on our way back/” Pilots those days wore plain chamois leather gloves and had to keep their fingers from going numb by constantly flexing them so that they could press the trigger. Their teeth chattered as they maintained radio contact and navigated across mountains and valleys by relying on vintage maps and what pilots call ‘a seat of the pant’ understanding of terrain. Oxygen masks were rudimentary contraptions and pilots had to literally suck the oxygen out to stay focused. Putting-in rocket and bomb attacks at those altitudes stretched the machines to the edge of their flying envelopes as aircraft ‘screamed, juddered and protested’ as pilots pulled-out from attacks at dangerously low heights — truly an exhilarating experience. Skardu falls Intelligence reports coming out of Skardu in early March 1948 indicated that a large group of more than 500 raiders and 200 porters had bypassed Skardu and were making their way towards Dras, Kargil and Leh. Attempts to send reinforcements to Skardu from Srinagar via Kargil in April and May were a complete failure as the force was continuously harassed and ambushed along the River Indus by tribals who were both well acclimatised and conversant with the topography of the region unlike some of the Indian columns. Gradually, the raiders came to dominate the whole area from Kargil to Zozila and it would take a herculean effort in the months ahead to throw them back. As the raiders tightened their grip on the areas around Kargil and Dras in the summer of ’48, reports came in of the mass murder of Buddhist monks in Kargil by the Gilgit Scouts and Pakistan Frontier Rifles. The Lama of Ganskar Padam monastery was shot dead and the Rangdom Gompa, the second largest monastery in Ladakh, was desecrated and razed to the ground. As the weather improved, repeated air strikes on Skardu using Tempest fighter-bombers were launched from Srinagar from 20th June onwards to try and cause maximum attrition to the raiders, replenish the garrison with ammunition by dropping them in canisters, and try and lift the siege. On August 11th and 12th fierce attacks were launched in the evening hours from eight till midnight, which were beaten back with significant casualties suffered on both nights by the attackers. Despite the gallant resistance by the defenders, Skardu finally fell on 14 August 1948 after repeated attempts to reinforce it failed. Like in most other places all the Hindus and Sikhs in the garrison were massacred, while Major Sher Jung Thapa and a few others were taken POW. The fall of Skardu troubled Major General Thimayya immensely and he tried his best to re-take Skardu, but the terrain, lack of acclimatization, and shortage of attacking formations in the correct ratios that were essential for mountain warfare, ensured that it remained an unfulfilled dream of his. But that did not stop him from motivating the RIAF to launch ferocious aerial strikes on Skardu, one of which had six Tempest aircraft attacking the Skardu Fort and blowing-up an ammunition dump. Alarmed at the turn of events that could lead to aerial encounters between Pakistani Indian fighters and a larger escalation of the air war, the British stepped up attempts to push both countries to the negotiating table and maintain status quo in Gilgit. Retaking Skardu Largely forgotten over the years has also been what could be considered as the first sustained Special Operations campaign by Indian commandos in the Skardu sector in September 1948. Akin to operations by the famed Long Range Penetration Groups in the Burma campaign, Major Hari Chand of the Manali-Leh trek fame, and his band of carefully selected Gorkha and Ladakhi troops carried out a series of daring raids along the Indus and Shyok Valleys. They killed several raiders, destroyed a large howitzer that was being transported for the attack on Leh and disrupted the long lines of communications and supply lines that the raiders had created from Skardu during their multiple offensives on Leh, Kargil and Dras. This had a tremendous psychological impact on the raiders and by the time they retreated along the Indus in November 1948, they were a bedraggled and defeated force. In the hypothetical realm, if India had not accepted the UN brokered ceasefire on 1 January 1949, it could have built-up forces methodically through the winter as assertive military commanders like Major Generals Thimayya and Atma Singh would have gone for the jugular and pushed the Pakistanis completely out of Kashmir. Large tracts of territory in the Skardu region, Domel, Tithwal and Poonch areas could have been reclaimed by the Indian Army during a spring offensive in 1949, following which India may have accepted a ceasefire after getting assurances from Pakistan of further withdrawal from occupied territories. The writer is a fighter pilot from the IAF and an accomplished  military historian. He is the author of two defining books on contemporary Indian military history, ‘India’s Wars: A Military History 1947-1971′ and ‘Full Spectrum: India’s Wars 1972-2020’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. 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