Gen Goverdhan Singh Jamwal
This has reference to social media account on X by former Chief of Army Staff V P Malik in which he has tried to put record straight pertaining to Kargil war.
General Malik is absolutely right what he has said about the Kargil war in the media. I had retired at that time and was in Srinagar and we used to hear these things often and also debate them. There is no doubt that Pakistan has always been doing such acts because Pakistan is built on such foundations and the British and Americans wanted to give them Jammu and Kashmir princely state by attacking India. The Government of that time, Nehru and Abdullah did not listen to us because their only aim at that time was Maharaja Hari Singh’s removal. We have also been saying that it were not the qabalis who raided Kashmir but Pak Army just as they did in Kargil war. But Pakistan told world and their own countrymen that it were mujahideen, and not Pak army which attacked India. Pakistan took the name of Mujahideen by meeting outside forces and talking to outside countries. Similarly in 1947, they took the name of Qabalis. Rather, we know that Mountbatten was left at the helm of affairs only for the reason that he would give Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan and for this, he colluded with then the Supreme Commander Auchinleck. They expected that more and more parts of Jammu and Kashmir go to Pakistan. If possible, at not the whole of Jammu and Kashmir, but at least the whole of Kashmir, Gilgit, Baltistan and Ladakh.
Maharaja Hari Singh and his Dogra soldiers did not allow all this to happen. The Dogra forces who fought under Brigadier Rajendra Singh, were in fact fighting in Jammu since August 15, from Kathua, Hiranagar to Poonch all this was the plan of the British and even if the Government of India knew, the British were sitting there to implement it. Similarly we still say that the attack carried out by Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir is in our records. Our book “History of J&K Operations” by Ministry of Defence was released in June 1987, everything is written in it but it has never been circulated, no one knows it in the universities, even the people of Jammu do not know about this and I have written it in my book, ‘Valour and Betrayal’. But there are very few people who read; and as Malik Sahib has raised this very point, we should tell the whole public, the press and the world about it. Is similarly the British should tell the truth about the betrayal done to us in the 1947 war.
Brigadier Rajendra Singh and his 100 Dogra soldiers who saved Srinagar Airport and J&K are not mentioned anywhere. If Col Narayan Singh had not stopped them at Muzaffarabad on the 22nd, there was no one on the entire road from Muzaffarabad to Srinagar to stop them on that day.
By the time Pakistani Column reached Garhi on 23 Oct Brig Rajinder Singh and his 60 men under Capt Prithi Singh and Sub Dhuni Chand were ready to make Garhi Pakistanis Waterloo. Brig Rajinder Singh with 60 Dogra of J&K Infantry now known as JAK Rifles made it a world-class battle about which VP Menon wrote in his book ‘The Story of Integration of Indian States’ that it was not less than the Battles of Thermopylae in Greece in 480 BCE. They held them till 4 O’clock. The delay that Mountbatten imposed in sending the Army by one day resulted in ransacking of Baramulla. This was a conspiracy of the British against the Indian army by colluding with Pakistan and it is now coming out. We should write about this openly, in our universities, in our schools, in our books. Only then the public will know and in future, the British Americans etc will not do this wrong thing.
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