October 1947. The instrument of accession had not yet been signed, and thousands of tribal troops had started advancing towards Srinagar. Sardar Patel knew there was little time and turned to the one pilot he knew, Biju Patnaik, to help.
Patel announced the requisition of all civilian passenger planes on All India Radio, and Biju took charge of the operations.
The aircraft came from the No 12 squadron of the Royal Indian Air Force & the likes of Himalayan Aviation, Indian National Airways & many others.
The unit that was to take the first brunt of the attack was the 1st battalion of the Sikh Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Dewan Ranjit Rai. Stationed at Gurgaon at the time, they immediately assembled at Willingdon airport.
The most important objective was the defence of Srinagar airport, as long as Srinagar could be supplied by air, Kashmir could be defended.
The Instrument of Accession was announced that night and the planes started taking off at 5 am on the 27th. The Sikhs landed and immediately established a perimeter around the airfield. They lost their commanding officer, Colonel Ranjit Rai, but they held on.
One other story about this campaign was the amazing bravery of Maqbool Sherwani, who went around on his bicycle telling the tribal troops who had reached Baramulla that the Indian army had already reached when they had actually not even taken off from Delhi at that point.
The tribals hesitated to attack, and that give the Indian troops that crucial breathing time to set up a defence. Another version has him sending them in the wrong direction when asked the directions to the airport, but either way, he paid for his bravery with his life!

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Joy Bhattacharjya

Joy Bhattacharjya Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @joybhattacharj

27 Oct
Something I wrote in 2013. Happy birthday @KumarSanga2.
"IPL opening ceremonies are a bit like college reunions. After the mandatory functions, the captains, players and staff invariably drift to the bar to catch up on old times."
Ponting and Lee chatting about Ashes battles over their steak, Kohli catching with his India fielding coach, Trevor Penney, and Adam Gilchrist and Trevor Bayliss exchanging notes on good golf courses. And, of course, Kumar Sangakkara in vintage form.
A couple of hours just flew by while he regaled us with his cricket anecdotes and the the misadventures of his cricket board, guys who made even Suresh Kalmadi look saintly in comparison.
Read 4 tweets
19 Oct
Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyam Chandrashekhar's 110th birth anniversary today, and a story that tells you exactly what kind of a man he was...
In January 1935, twenty five year old Chandrashekhar first presented his revolutionary theory at the Royal Society outlining a size limit after which stars would collapse into black holes.
The most famous English astrophysicist of the time, Sir Arthur Eddington, some one whom Chandrashekhar actually regarded as a mentor, ripped into and completely ridiculed his theory.
Read 6 tweets
18 Oct
One of India's finest character actors found out his real birth date after he turned 25. Om Puri was raised in difficult circumstances and the only thing his parents remembered about his birthday was that it was two days after Dusshera in 1950. Years later in Mumbai..
...he managed to find the calendar of festivals for that year and establish that he was born on October 18th. Much later, he would return to Ambala and try and find the house he grew up in, but never managed to locate it.
He gave us Tamas, Sadgati, Ardh Satya & a cameo in Gandhi
...but he also gave us Ahuja from Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, the wily Kakaji in Basu Chatterje's teleserial Kakaji Kaheen and so many more films. An amazingly versatile actor who left us way too soon.
Read 4 tweets
3 Oct
One of the most amazing stories in Indian science, which makes me both despair and hope. On this day, 42 years ago, Subhash Mukhopadhyay delivered the second in-vitro fertilized baby in the world, Durga, just sixty seven days after the first child was born in Britain.
What happened after was unbelievable. The state government rejected his claim and treated him as a charlatan and most of the Indian medical community turned their backs on him. He committed suicide, a broken man three years later.
5 years after his death. TC Anand Kumar, one of India's finest medical minds, was the architect what was regarded as India's first 'official' test tube baby came to know of Dr Mukhopadhyay's previous work and decided to make a detailed study of his notes and research findings
Read 6 tweets
2 Oct
If he was invited to a News Hour debate today Lal Bahadur Shastri would probably not get a chance to open his mouth. During the 1965 Indo-Pak war, my father was around when he came to meet the troops...
...and when he was inspecting a guard of honour his face was normally around the belly button of the soldiers he was crossing. When he hit one that was almost his height, who he could look in the eye, he broke into a huge smile.
& yet he was one of our finest prime ministers, the 1st cabinet minister to resign claiming moral responsibility for a train crash and a leader of rare integrity. When he died as sitting Prime Minister the only asset he owned was a car on which he was still paying instalments.
Read 4 tweets
26 Sep
It's never too late to change your views and make a difference.
Gurudas Banerjee was a prominent Indian academic & the 1st Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University. He was devoted to his mother, who was extremely orthodox, 7 would personally fetch 'Ganga Jal' for her every morning
When she was dying she called Gurudas and made him promise that Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar would be present and play a prominent part in her last rites.
Vidyasagar was at that point the most hated man in orthodox Hindu society for championing and piloting through the Widow Remarriage Bill and his presence there caused a huge furore.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!