Talk:Indo-Pakistani war of 1947–1948

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Indo-Pakistani war of 1947–1948 was a Warfare good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

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The picture is incorrect

It is wrong, The indian soldiers during the "first kashmir war" was not the first kashmir war instead it was indian soldiers during the battle of tanga during ww1 can we switch the picture please? 104.188.182.52 (talk) 22:46, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User:104.188.182.52, This does look to be incorrect. Do you have a link to an official site documenting the provenance of this picture? Cinderella157 (talk) 04:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No however I was previously was wrong. It was the battle of mahiwa and I know because on Wikipedia's battle of mahiwa article it has the same picture and forensic photo analysis shows that it was during the early 20th century not 1947. 104.188.182.52 (talk) 20:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The IP editor is correct - the photograph can be found on the Imperial War Museum's website,^[1] and shows the Kashmir Mountain Battery in action at Nyangao against Mahiwa, 16th - 19th October 1917.-- Toddy1 (talk) 22:34, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have nominated the file on Commons for deletion. It is a wrongly-labelled duplicate of another image. The deletion discussion can be found at c:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Indian soldiers fighting in 1947 war.jpg (2nd nomination).-- Toddy1 (talk) 23:34, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am pretty sure there are pictures of Pakistani soldiers during the 1947 war on wikimedia commons as an alternative picture for the inaccurate one. Xenomire (talk) 12:47, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bias in the article

The article suggests that Pakistan alone provoked the war by invading Kashmir with Pashtun tribesmen, which is incorrect (and lifted straight from Indian state propaganda)

Hari Singh is the one who attacked first by destroying several Pakistani villages in cross-border attacks as part of his larger campaign of terror against local Muslims.

Notwithstanding Hari Singh's unprovoked aggression towards the Muslim-aligned coalition, India, well before October 22 (the date of the Tribal invasion), had de-facto intervened in Kashmir before the Pakistani tribesmen, and planned to do so well in advance.

Read (Lamb, Alastair (2002). Incomplete partition: the genesis of the Kashmir dispute, 1947-1948, pp.128-132):

The Government of Jammu & Kashmir State did not fail to react to the Poonch revolt and its extension southwards into Kotli, Mirpur, Bhimber and elsewhere. It tried to confiscate all arms and ammunition from the local Muslim population in such areas as it could control. It permitted armed bands of Hindus and Sikhs, including members of extremist organisations like the RSS (the Hindu militant Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which was to be banned in India in February 1948 following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi) from the Indian side of the border, to execute massacres of Muslims in Jammu and in Riasi and Mirpur Districts. By the end of September Muslim refugees escaping the fury thus unleashed were flowing in ever increasing numbers both into Pakistan and into territory controlled by the Azad Kashmiri forces. There is evidence that from the outset regular troops and police in the State service joined informally and covertly, but enthusiastically, in these atrocities which, some have estimated, eventually resulted in the death of at least 200,000 Muslims and drove twice as many into exile.

By the beginning of October the Jammu & Kashmir State authorities joined openly in this anti-Muslim policy by setting out to create along the State’s border with Pakistan (in the region of Gujrat and Sialkot) a depopulated zone some three miles deep. Hindus here were evacuated. Muslims were either killed or driven across into Pakistan. On a number of occasions Jammu & Kashmir State Forces actually crossed over into Pakistan and destroyed villages there (well documented acts of Jammu & Kashmir State “aggression” on its territory which Pakistan has signally failed to exploit in its arguments concerning the rights and wrongs of the Kashmir situation). Early in October British observers saw in one such village on the Pakistan side of the border no fewer than 1,700 corpses of slaughtered Muslim men, women and children. Before 22 October, a crucial date in the Kashmir story, the Pakistan authorities reported that at least 100,000 Muslim refugees from Jammu were being cared for in the neighbourhood of Sialkot. The Government in Karachi might talk about negotiations, but there was a growing body of opinion in Pakistan, particularly in the Punjab, which argued forcefully for more direct action to stop the killing.

...

On 13 September Patel received a request from the Jammu & Kashmir Government for a military adviser in the person of Lt.-Colonel Kashmir Singh Katoch, who was not only a serving officer in the Indian Army but also the sonof the then Jammu & Kashmir Prime Minister, Major-General Janak Singh, a relative of the ruling Dogra family of Maharaja Sir Hari Singh. The request was passed with approval to the Minister of Defence, Sardar Baldev Singh; and in due course Kashmir Singh Katoch was deputed to Srinagar where he undoubtedly played a significant part in the forthcoming crisis.

From this date onwards we have evidence of all sorts of Indian military aid being provided with Patel’s express approbation for Jammu & Kashmir, of which the following are examples. On 28 September, at the urgent request of Maharaja Sir Hari Singh, Patel arranged for the provision of one civilian aircraft (from Dalmia Jain Airways, presumably a DC3) to run a special service between Srinagar and Delhi. By 1 October wireless equipment had been provided to assist all-weather operations at Srinagar airport, to which supply flights could now begin to take in loads of arms and ammunition to the Jammu & Kashmir State Forces from Indian stocks (which, so soon after the end of World War I, were indeed massive). Preparations were also at this time put in hand for more effective telegraphic communications between India and Jammu and Srinagar; and the road from the Indian Punjab border near Madhopur to Jammu was now being greatly improved by the construction by Indian Army Engineers of a pontoon bridge over the Ravi leading to Kathua.

Somewhere around the second week of October the decision was taken in New Delhi to send actual troops as well as arms and equipment; some units from the Patiala State Army, at least one battalion of infantry and a battery of mountain artillery, were transported to Jammu & Kashmir (clues to this strange episode are to be found, among other places, in the writings of two senior Indian soldiers, Lt.-General Sen and Major-General Palit). One infantry battalion was stationed in Jammu City, where it reinforced the Maharaja’s major stronghold; and a mountain artillery battery reached the outskirts of Srinagar airfield. It is possible, indeed probable, that at least another battalion of Patiala infantry was sent forward along the Jhelum Valley Road to the neighbourhood of Uri where it stood in reserve behind the 4th Jammu & Kashmir Rifles guarding the two major points of access to this road from Pakistan. Some of these men travelled overland; but it may well be that some also came by air. The Patiala troop movements, the evidence indicates, were completed by 18 October. Published Patiala sources, which have surely been heavily doctored to accord with the chronology of established Indian mythology, suggest that this intervention took place at the personal request to the Maharaja, Yadavindra Singh, by Jawaharlal Nehru. ...

The fact that senior politicians in New Delhi had decided weeks before 15 October that such an accession was essential to Indian interests is not open to serious doubt. A letter from Nehru to Patel, dated 27 September 1947, is by itself sufficiently clear evidence for this conclusion. As Nehru then declared: winter was approaching, and the Banihal Pass, that lifeline between Jammu and Srinagar, would soon be snowbound; unless Maharaja Sir Hari Singh decided, or was obliged, to accede to India in the very near future, then Pakistan would take over the entire Vale of Kashmir as well as Baltistan and Ladakh. India, therefore, must act quickly, in cooperation with Sheikh Abdullah and his National Conference, to bring about the preemptive accession of the State of Jammu & Kashmir to the Indian Union. SecularKashmiri (talk) 10:45, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please note WP:NOTAFORUM. This is a contentious topic and strict adhere to Wikipedia policies is necessary.

The Alastair Lamb book you cite is self-published and will not be acceptable in a contentious topic.

See the section on Operation Gulmarg, especially the second paragraph, for Pakistani plans to invade, dating back to August 1947. This is not "Indian state propaganda". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:50, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Inclusion of State Forces of Chitral on side of Pakistan

The state forces of the Chitral princely state also took part in this conflict on the side of Pakistan. Both the chitral state scouts - now referred to as the Chitral scouts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitral_Scouts ) as well as the Chitral Bodyguard force - merged into chitral scouts since (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitral_Bodyguard) were sent by the Mehtar of Chitral and took part part in the conflict in the Gilgit Baltistan region. sources: https://thefridaytimes.com/24-Nov-2021/chitral-s-role-in-the-liberation-of-gilgit-baltistan https://www.vifindia.org/sites/default/files/1947-48-indo-pak-war-fall-of-gilgit-and-siege-and-fall-of-skardu.pdf (excerpt: "By the beginning of Feb, the 600 strong enemy forces, made of tribal raiders, Chitralis and nearly 80 deserters of J&K Infantry, and well equipped with modern rifles, 2” and 3” mortars, had completed all the preparations for the capture of Skardu" , "On 17 June, Col Shahzada M Mata ul Mulk, son of Mehtar of Chitral, sent a communication to Thapa through a messenger, Sepoy Amar Nath, a captured POW of 5 Jammu & Kashmir Infantry, asking him to surrender" , " 39.51.111.20 (talk) 20:10, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Strength in infobox

Taeyab, in this edit, you amended the Indian military deaths from 1,103 to 1,103-1,500 with no change in sourcing. Could you please explain. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:12, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

apologies I forgot to change the source for the indian side Taeyab (talk) 05:44, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

more neutral + reliable sources added: Encyclopedia of Wars and Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1494-2007 states that indian losses were up to 1,500 killed

Also added to create distinction between Tribal militia deaths and Pakistani military casualties for better understanding to the readers Taeyab (talk) 05:55, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]