About Pathan Tribal Invasion: Alastair Lamb, Incomplete Partition

[15] About Pathan Tribal Invasion:

Alastair Lamb, Incomplete Partition, Roxford 1997, p.185

Left behind in Baramula [on 27 and 28 October] were assorted groups of [Pathan] tribesmen from the North-West Frontier Province and, even, it is very possible, Afghanistan. 

Discipline was not the strongest characteristic of such men; and their officers experienced serious difficulty in keeping them under control, particularly when stories began to circulate of the arrival of the Sikhs (who had been generally accepted by the tribesmen as the greatest scourge of the Muslims in the communal massacres which accompanied Partition, and the legitimate foe in any jihad, holy war) at Srinagar airfield. 

The inevitable killing of Sikhs and Hindus in Baramula, particularly merchants who had remained to guard their stock, now began to be accompanied by indiscriminate looting and a considerable amount of rape, applied as much to unfortunate Kashmiri Muslims as to the infidel. 

Usually these outrages did not lead to massacre; but in a few cases, where leaders completely lost control over their men, an orgy of killing was the result. This was certainly the case at St. Joseph's College, Convent and Hospital, the site of what was to become one of the most publicised incidents of the entire Kashmir conflict. 

Here nuns, priests and congregation, including patients in the hospital, were slaughtered; and at the same time a small number of Europeans, notably Lt.-Colonel D.O. Dykes and his wife, as well as the Assistant Mother Superior and one Mr. Barretto, met their deaths at tribal hands.

Alastair Lamb, Incomplete Partition, Roxford 1997, pp.186-187

The Indian side has maintained, largely on the evidence of European and American press reports which date to several days after the Indian reoccupation of Baramula on 8 November, that many thousands of people were killed there by the tribesmen (notably the reports in New York Times by Robert Trumbull ). 

The town was by this time virtually deserted, the Muslim population having fled, initially to avoid the attentions of tearaway tribesmen and then in fear of the advancing Indian Army, which was seen to represent the return of the Dogras and the vengeful wrath of Sir Hari Singh. 

The unfortunate Baramula residents may also, to judge from photographs published by the Indians, have suffered bombardment by Indian mortars, artillery and, it may be, aircraft - there is no doubt that the Indian side made extensive use of air power in the first phase of the Kashmir campaign: all this may well have reinforced the reluctance of the Baramula folk to stay put.