Seventy-nine years after Major Somnath Sharma fell at Badgam holding a crumbling perimeter with his last bullet, India's leaders still mark 3 November as a day to stop and remember. Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma was among the first to do so on Tuesday, posting a tribute that invoked the major's indomitable courage and supreme patriotism on the anniversary of his martyrdom.

Writing in Hindi, CM Sharma saluted the soldier as the 'प्रथम परमवीर चक्र से सम्मानित अमर बलिदानी' — the immortal martyr honoured with the first-ever Param Vir Chakra — and declared that the story of his valour at the Battle of Badgam in 1947 would 'kindle the flame of national service in the heart of every Indian for ages to come.'

The 1947 battle that stopped Pakistan's advance on Srinagar

The context matters as much as the tribute. On 3 November 1947, barely weeks after Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India, Pakistani tribal militias backed by regular forces swept toward the Srinagar airfield — the single lifeline for Indian reinforcements. Major Somnath Sharma, commanding a company of the 4th Battalion, Kumaon Regiment, was deployed at Badgam to hold the flank.

Outgunned and outnumbered, Sharma's men absorbed assault after assault. According to army records, he continued to direct his troops and report the enemy's advance to headquarters even as the situation grew untenable. He was killed when a mortar shell detonated an ammunition box nearby. His last radio message — that the enemy was only fifty yards away but he would not withdraw — has passed into military legend. The airfield held. Srinagar did not fall.

India's first Param Vir Chakra — awarded posthumously

When the Government of India instituted the Param Vir Chakra on 26 January 1950 — the republic's first day — it made the award retrospective to the 1947 operations. Major Somnath Sharma became its first recipient, posthumously. The honour remains India's highest military decoration for battlefield gallantry in the face of the enemy, and Sharma's name leads every roll-call of its recipients.

CM Sharma's tribute describes the major's sacrifice as 'पावन बलिदान' — a sacred sacrifice — and calls it 'forever worthy of reverence and emulation' for all citizens. The language is ceremonial but the underlying reference point is consequential: a thirty-six-hour defensive action in Kashmir that shaped the territorial outcome of a war.

Across party lines, 3 November draws annual tributes from chief ministers, defence ministers, and army chiefs alike — a cross-partisan consensus that the 1947-48 Jammu and Kashmir operations belong not to any political legacy but to the national memory. That tradition continued this morning from Jaipur.