On 3 November 1947, as the autumn sun dipped behind the snow-lined ridges around Srinagar, a small company of 4 Kumaon held its ground against overwhelming odds in the village of Badgam. By nightfall, most of them lay dead. Their commander, Major Som Nath Sharma, fighting with his left arm in plaster, was among the fallen. But the hours they bought saved the Valley, allowing India to reinforce Srinagar in time, push back the tribal raiders and secure what was, at that moment, the most vulnerable city in the subcontinent.
istory often turns on moments that later seem impossibly fragile. The stand at Badgam was one such moment.
A city hanging in the balance
In late October 1947, Srinagar was under imminent threat. The tribal lashkars that had entered Kashmir after the collapse of the frontier at Muzaffarabad were now racing towards the city. Baramulla had fallen. Looting, burning and atrocities caused an unexpected delay, but the raiders had resumed their advance and were closing in along the main axis to Srinagar. The Maharaja had signed the Instrument of Accession only hours earlier. India had rushed 1 Sikh by air on 27 October, but these were still thin forces spread across a widening perimeter.
By the first week of November, intelligence was patchy and contradictory. The raiders appeared to be changing direction and testing the outskirts south-west of Srinagar. The threat to the airfield was serious. Without the airfield, no reinforcements could land. Without reinforcements, Srinagar would be lost.
It was in this climate of urgency and uncertainty that Major Som Nath Sharma was ordered to take his company to Badgam.
A commander who refused to rest
Sharma, barely 25, was an officer already shaped by wartime service. He had fought the Japanese in Burma and had been wounded there. His left arm had been fractured and was still in plaster when he moved to Kashmir. His brigade commander offered to keep him back, but Sharma insisted on leading his men. He believed a commander should never ask his troops to go where he was unwilling to go himself. This sense of duty was characteristic of the early Indian Army, where officers led not from behind but from the very front.
On the morning of 3 November, Sharma’s company took up positions around Badgam to carry out what was intended to be a routine patrol and blocking action. The initial assessment was that the enemy was probing the area lightly. What stood before Sharma in the next few hours, however, was not a small reconnaissance party but a major thrust of nearly 700 tribal fighters trying to encircle Srinagar from the south-west.
The moment the battle changed
Around 2:30 pm, Sharma’s forward scouts reported rapid enemy movement. Within minutes, the raiders appeared in the open fields surrounding Badgam. They had taken advantage of the hilly terrain and dry nullahs to mask their approach. The company came under intense fire. Sharma realised instantly that he was facing a force far larger than expected, and that withdrawal now would uncover the route straight to the airfield.
He ordered his men to hold their ground.
The company, roughly 100 strong, deployed into defensive positions. Sharma moved across the line, using his good arm to handle maps, ammunition and wireless messages. Eyewitness accounts later recalled seeing him standing upright, exposed to fire, shouting encouragement to his men and directing sections to reposition to stem the encirclement.
The tribals attacked repeatedly. Sharma’s men fought from orchard walls, drainage ditches and the mud compounds of Badgam. Light machine guns were firing continuously. Ammunition was running low. The company signaller struggled to maintain contact as bullets snapped overhead. The raiders attempted to break in from three sides.
Still the line held.
The final radio message
Shortly before he was killed, Sharma sent what became one of the most famous battlefield dispatches in Indian military history: “We are heavily outnumbered. We are under devastating fire. I shall not withdraw an inch but will fight to the last man and the last round.”
It was not rhetoric. It was an exact account of the situation. His men were falling one by one. Casualties mounted. A mortar bomb exploded near him, killing him instantly. By evening, nearly half of his company was dead or missing. The rest were fighting in small knots, often in hand-to-hand combat.
But Badgam did not fall until the raiders were forced to slow down and reorganise. They had expected to brush aside a small picket. Instead they had walked into a determined resistance that cost them time and momentum.
The hours that changed the Valley’s fate
The significance of Badgam lies not just in the courage displayed but in the consequences that followed. Sharma’s stand delayed the enemy advance long enough for Indian reinforcements to arrive. Units of 1 Sikh, 4 Kumaon and armoured cars of 7 Light Cavalry were able to reposition and stabilise the defensive line west of Srinagar. By 7 November, India launched a counterattack at Shalateng, destroying the spearhead of the tribal lashkars and pushing them back towards Baramulla.
Badgam made Shalateng possible. Shalateng saved Srinagar.
Had Sharma’s company broken in the early afternoon, the raiders could have reached the airfield before dusk. Transport aircraft filled with additional troops were landing every hour. A successful strike on the runway could have severed the only link between Kashmir and the rest of India. The domino effect would have been devastating.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the fate of Kashmir turned on the decisions made by Sharma on that afternoon.
The making of an enduring legend
Major Som Nath Sharma was awarded the Param Vir Chakra, the first in independent India’s history. The citation highlighted his personal example, his disregard for his own safety and his decision to hold on despite overwhelming odds. But what gives the story its lasting resonance is not just the gallantry but the clarity of purpose Sharma displayed. He understood, perhaps more sharply than anyone else on the field that day, that Badgam was not merely a local position. It was the hinge on which the security of the Valley swung.
His company fought, bled and died in a small Kashmiri village, but their sacrifice secured an entire region.
A legacy carried forward
Today, the battlefields of 1947 are often overshadowed by later conflicts, yet the story of Badgam remains central to the Indian military tradition. It is taught in academies not only as an example of tactical bravery but also as a study in leadership. Sharma’s insistence on going to the front despite his injury, his calm during the onslaught, his unbroken communication with higher headquarters and his final refusal to withdraw form a complete portrait of an officer whose loyalty to his men and mission never wavered.
In Kashmir, the ground where 4 Kumaon fought still bears the memory of that desperate fight. Veterans who served in later years often visited the ridgelines and orchards to visualise where the first great stand of independent India took place. The significance of the site is not merely military. It stands as a symbol of a nation defending its fragile new sovereignty.
The stand that still speaks to India
In the seventy-plus years since that cold afternoon in Badgam, India has seen many battles and many acts of heroism. Yet few moments carry the clarity of purpose and the weight of consequence seen in Sharma’s stand. It was a battle fought at a moment when the future of Kashmir was undecided, when reinforcements were uncertain and when the distance between survival and collapse could be measured in hours.
Sharma and his men gave those hours. And in doing so, they altered the course of the 1947–48 war.
Their sacrifice was not merely an act of courage. It was an act of preservation. It preserved Srinagar. It preserved the airfield. It preserved the possibility of defending Kashmir. And through that, it preserved a chapter of India’s history that might have been written very differently.
Major Som Nath Sharma’s last stand is therefore not simply a story from the past. It is a reminder that sometimes the fate of a nation rests in the hands of a few determined individuals holding a thin line in a remote village, fighting not for glory but for time — those precious minutes and hours that change everything.
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