Operation Polo

Story hook

26 October 1947, Srinagar. Maharaja Hari Singh has fled to Jammu the night before. Pakistani Pashtun tribal raiders, armed by Pakistan Army quartermasters, are 24 km from the capital. They have already looted Muzaffarabad and Baramulla, killing Maqbool Sherwani and a French nun Mother Teresa Marie. V P Menon flies into Jammu. He carries an Instrument of Accession. Hari Singh signs.

Within 12 hours 1 Sikh Battalion is airlifted from Delhi to Srinagar by Dakota aircraft. They hold the airfield. Indian Army's first foreign deployment as an Indian Army (not a colonial force) is defending the airbase of a state that became part of India fewer than 12 hours earlier.

For the next 76 years, Kashmir would remain the unfinished business of Partition. Three wars — 1947-48, 1965, 1999 Kargil — and a parallel war over East Pakistan in 1971. Plus the 1962 war with China that Nehru did not see coming. Operation Polo would settle Hyderabad in 1948. Operation Vijay would settle Goa in 1961. But the Kashmir question would outlast every government that promised to solve it.

Why this matters for UPSC

• Prelims: Year + war + key general + treaty + UN resolution — high-frequency MCQ. Asked 2014, 2017, 2019, 2022.
• Mains GS-I + GS-II: India's military history + post- Independence foreign relations.
• Mains GS-III: Defence + internal security; recurring topic.
• Interview: Strategic assessment of each war + Kashmir question.