Kashmir mssion was a martyr's home

WHEN my wife and I decided to visit Kashmir, almost on an impulse, to enjoy the beauty of the snow-clad Valley, the hastily drawn up itinerary included a visit to the Catholic mission centre at Baramulla.

My first encounter with the mission was when I received an article from Andrew Whitehead of the BBC for publication in the Indian Express over a decade ago. The piece was about the sacking of the Catholic mission by the invading tribes from Pakistan, who looted, killed and brutalised the mission staff and the patients there.

The day it happened – October 27, 1947 – was a red- letter day in the history of Kashmir. That was the day Lord Mountbatten, the first Governor General of independent India, accepted Maharaja Hari Singh’s accession of his princely state to India.

It was also the day troops of India’s Sikh Regiment began an airlift in Dakota planes from Palam airbase outside Delhi to the rudimentary landing strip at Srinagar. They drove out the tribes hailing from the North West Frontier Province from Jammu and Kashmir, but not before they captured what we call Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and what Pakistan calls “Azad Kashmir”.

Whitehead’s piece made gripping reading, though it did not conform to the rigorous standards of “opinion” that I as Edit Page in-charge was supposed to maintain. Yet, I took the risk of publishing it, and the article made quite an impact.

Let me quote Whitehead:

“I received several letters in response. One came from an Indian army veteran who had been involved in beating back the tribal invaders, and another was from a relative of one of those killed at the mission. I was on my way.

“What started as curiosity had become a quest, and as I came to understand more of the interplay between events at St. Joseph’s and the initial military contest for Kashmir, it became a personal mission to uncover, retrieve, piece together and explain how and why Kashmir became a battleground”.

The result of his quest was the book A Mission in Kashmir (Penguin-Viking, 2007) from
which I have quoted above. I was with The Tribune when I received the book for review. But, instead of reviewing the book, I wrote a full-length cover story for the “Sunday Tribune Spectrum” based mostly on the book.

When the cover story appeared, it evoked a good response. A retired Army officer, a Sikh, who took part in the operation, visited me with a copy of the book. He wanted me to autograph it. I told him that the privilege should go to the author, not me. As a compromise, I signed a copy of the Sunday Magazine in which the article appeared and gave it to him.

He was greatly impressed by the photograph of the graves.

“Christian missionaries are often accused of proselytization. Look at the grave of Mrs Motia Devi Kapoor, who was just a patient. She was buried beside a Lieutenant-Colonel and her grave has the Hindu sacred symbol 'Om', instead of the cross. This is secularism at its best – equal treatment for all religions”.

This was the background against which we hired a taxi in Srinagar, picked up Amin War from his office and set out for Baramulla on the morning of January 14. It was freezing cold, compounded by light snowfall. The road was free of snow but on both sides, snow had begun to accumulate on house roofs, trees and fields. We passed through small towns like Pattan, notorious for encounters, real and fake.