As Jammu and Kashmir observes Black Day, it is time to recall Maqbool Sherwani who saved thousands of people from tribal invaders

Baramulla town in north Kashmir is home to the memory of a man who stood between Kashmir and its annexation by Pakistan through a proxy armed attack by Pashtun tribesmen soon after the partition and before Maharaja Hari Singh signed the document of accession making his princely state part of India.

Maqbool Sherwani, a dynamic Kashmiri in his early thirties, was in Sumbal village when he heard of the “Kabali-raid,” a Kashmiri term for the attack by tribesmen in the fourth week of October 1947. On October 26, the tribesmen had taken control of Baramulla as Sherwani rushed home on his motor-bicycle and asked his father to shift his stepmother and six siblings to a safer place, for he had heard of terrible stories of loot, arson and rape by the marauding Pakistanis.

Kashmiris have terrible memories of ‘Kabali raid,’ the first experiment by Pakistan of using non-state fighters to further its interests and annexe territories and yet the state never highlighted this gory phase of history openly.

In his book ‘The 1947-48 Kashmir war – The war of lost opportunities,’ Maj Gen Agha Humayun Amin credits Maj General Akbar Khan (A Brig then) with formulating a brilliant strategy of using tribesmen for Kashmir after the state forces had occupied Muzaffarabad and Sialkot. He calls Akbar Khan as the ‘architect of Philosophy of armed insurrection by aiding non-state actors as state proxies. He writes about Khan: “His idea of use of non-state actors as advanced in his writings were picked up much later and practised in Afghanistan, NEFA and Kashmir (current insurgency).’

Akbar Khan in his memoirs has admitted about tribesmen from North West Frontier Province (since renamed as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) being sent by Pakistani dispensation to liberate Kashmir from Hari Singh and India.

Sherwani was a National Conference activist and managed the family-owned Sherwani soap factory. He told his father that the Kabalis were behaving like hungry wolves – burning homes, crops and raping women and their targets were Sikhs, Hindus and National Conference activists. Soon, he was on a self-assigned mission to befriend leaders of the tribesmen who were roaming around in his town. During his conversations, he misled them from proceeding to Srinagar, where the Maharaja was desperately trying to seek help from Delhi against the invaders.

Sherwani’s ploy helped delay the advance of the ‘lashkar’ to Srinagar and facilitated the landing of the first group of Sikh troops in Srinagar in nick of the time to save the airport and repulse the attackers. He also organized his party workers into sheltering Sikhs and Hindus from being killed by them. Among some Kashmiri collaborators who had helped the invaders reach to this point, someone informed them about Sherwani’s identity and how he had diverted them from the path to Srinagar.

With their help, the tribesmen hunted him down and pumped 14 bullets in his body. In a show of savagery, the attackers tied his body on a pole where it remained for two days, nobody dared touch it for the fear of reprisals. His elder sister was the first to know about it and buried his body.

Maqbool Sherwani was a legend till the advent of the gun and Islamic propaganda from Pakistan. Kashmiri who had lived in the times of tribal raid referred to him as a tall and handsome young man who was about to get married; bold and visionary who foresaw a dark future for Kashmiris if the looters and killers had their way. However, the new-age Pakistan-returned ‘jihadis’ called him and his family traitors and some even burnt down a community hall in his name. The hall has since been rebuilt.

Though Sherwani’s life and deeds were commemorated by Army and Police each year, the NC only did some lip service. “I feel my Uncle didn’t get the right place in history,” says Dr Arifa Sherwani, a niece of the martyr. As posters of Maqbool Sherwani, the hero of Baramulla, by the Ministry of Culture and displayed across the city on the eve of the anniversary of the tribal raid, Arifa says she feels proud of her uncle. “People who call him traitor have no idea of the Kabalis’ behaviour with Kashmiris,” she says.

Sherwani was a National Conference activist and managed the family-owned Sherwani soap factory. He told his father that the Kabalis were behaving like hungry wolves – burning homes, crops and raping women and their targets were Sikhs, Hindus and National Conference activists. Soon, he was on a self-assigned mission to befriend leaders of the tribesmen who were roaming around in his town. During his conversations, he misled them from proceeding to Srinagar, where the Maharaja was desperately trying to seek help from Delhi against the invaders.

Even as Sheikh Abdullah wrote about Sherwani’s role in saving Kashmir in his biography ‘Atish-e—Chinar,’ the party chose not to glorify his sacrifice beyond a point. Soon, political machinations overtook the tales of heroism and Sherwani’s legend was left for Army and Police to defend, at least once in a year. The government raised a commemorative stone at a place where his body was left; names a locality in his hometown and a ward in Srinagar’s multi-speciality hospital SKIIMS after him. However, a key road in Srinagar named after him continues to be called residency Road, its British era name, till today.

Pakistanis analysts like Maj Gen Mir lament sending the irregular forces to Kashmir and losing a war that had almost been clinched in its favour. Had the tribesmen not made themselves busy in looting the homes, government treasury and raping women and not halted for celebrating Eid for three days at Baramulla, the Indian forces would not have been able to land in time to defend Kashmir.

As the National Conference that ruled J&K for the longest period continued to have a love-hate relation with Delhi, the heroism of Sherwani was lost as a fudgy memory. Now with J&K becoming a union territory the government, for the first time openly commemorating the martyrdom of Sherwani and others in the tribal raid, have revived his heroism.