Unforgettable summer of 1947

Beneath the scenic splendour of Gulmarg lies the history of the turbulence following Partition, writes Noel Lobo

PICTURES of Gulmarg covered in snow with visitors frolicking in it sent me to look up a description of it in high summer in Wilfrid’s Russell’s Indian Summer (published in Bombay in 1951). He was writing of the fateful months following August 1947. In view of recent developments of cordiality with Pakistan, it seems in order to give readers a glimpse of happenings at the time.

Gulmarg (he writes)—the meadow of roses—must always have been one of the most perfect retreats in the British Empire, but I doubt if it can over have been more peaceful than in the last summer of British rule. The weather was perfect and the troubles in the plains seemed to keep all but a handful of the oldest devotees away from its alpine solitude. Nestling snugly on its upland shelf beneath the thirteen thousand foot range of Apherwat, this village of chalets and gardens, with its single hotel and club, its two lovely golf courses and the English church was a dreamland mixture of a Swiss hamlet, an English golf resort and an Indian cantonment...set in the Himalayas.

Joining his wife and her mother, Amy Sawhny, in her chalet which she had for 30 years, he soon learnt that the outward vision of paradise was somewhat deceptive.

A young Indian colonel, whose regiment at Partition had been out on the NWFP on the border of Afghanistan and was now awaiting his transfer, told him about his dangerous journey from there to Gulmarg. He and his armed escort had to drive in a jeep the 200 miles through Muslim tribal areas. There had been hostile mobs of tribesmen all along the route, and woe betide any Sikh or Hindu passing through. Enough said.

He learnt about the background to what became the struggle for Kashmir from the last British resident who ceased to be that on August 15, 1947: Wilfrid Webb. While going round the golfcourse, Webb told him about the revolt against the maharaja in the 1930s of the tribe of Poonchis that had only been quelled by the arrival of British troops. These mountain people, like others of that ilk the world over, had never liked their ruler; and they had never been subjugated living as they did in such an inaccessible region. He was also told that the maharaja was about to launch his troops against them and also the Muslims in the Jammu area.

From a retired British colonel he learnt that the Poonchis were in great strength in the ranks of the new Pakistan army; about 15,000 of them.

It is no wonder that Wilfrid Webb was worried as the days went by at the failure of the maharaja to declare which country he intended to join. ‘He stayed inside his palace, a craven figure surrounded by his priests and courtiers. Kak, his strong prime minister, who had apparently urged him to join Pakistan and introduce reforms had been dismissed and replaced by a creature of the palace. Administration was gradually coming to a standstill...’ Kak and his English wife, assuming Muslim names, tried to escape on the last civil aircraft leaving Srinagar. As it began to taxi to the runway, a car dashed up ‘to the strip in a cloud of dust and a man signalled the pilot violently back to the control.’ The Kaks were off-loaded.

General Paddy Wilson told the author that he had rumours that the maharaja was negotiating with India ‘under the tribesmen,’ both from Kashmir and from the NWFP, would descend on the valley at the first sign of accession to India using it as an excuse for loot and destruction.

Sure enough this is what happened. Barmulla was sacked and the nuns and an English family sheltering in the convent were murdered. This was the signal for Maharaja Hari Singh to ask Nehru for help. The rest of what happened is history. Will there be a happy ending?

To end on a personal note from Wilfrid Russell’s book. When he learned that his wife’s family— they were from Lahore—had lost their Gulmarg chalet, looted like the others, and ‘that the communion plate had been taken from the little Anglican church there, I began to feel that Pakistan had been criminally slack, to put it mildly, in allowing these wild men to get so terribly out of hand.

Russell had served in the air force in India during the war, and had known my wife’s father. In fact, he read out the citation at the presentation of his second DFC in 1945. In a book that he had given the intrepid Indian pilot, Wing Commander K.K. Majumdar, he had written on the flyleaf: ‘May the glory of the Indian Air Force never be dimmed.’ Russell worked for Killick Nixon in Bombay before finally leaving India for his country.

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