1947 Jammu Massacre – The Jammu Files
After “The Kashmir Files,” now comes “Baramulla.” The attempt to portray Indian Muslims as a terrorist community by keeping Kashmir’s unrest in the foreground—this Bollywood-Hindustani propaganda continues unabated. The question is: if movie after movie is made about what happened to the Pandits in 1990, why hasn’t a single movie been made about what happened to the Muslims in Jammu in 1947? If we want to remember the events that happened to the Pandits in 1990, then forgetting the atrocities committed against the Muslims of Jammu in 1947 is a crime.
The unfortunate events that happened to Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 are described as “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” But the truth is that before independence, Muslims were the majority in Jammu. In 1947, Muslims made up 61 percent of the population in Jammu province. Between 1941 and 1961, the Muslim population of Jammu dropped from 61 percent to 38 percent. More than 200,000 Muslims were killed, and nearly 500,000 Muslims were displaced and exiled, turning Muslims into a minority in Jammu. It was in reaction to this that communal unrest later began in Kashmir. A few Pandits were murdered there, and the rest fled the valley in fear.
Kashmiri Hindu Pandits were well aware of the Muslim genocide and the barbaric atrocities committed against Muslim women in Jammu in 1947. They were living in fear of a retaliatory backlash. When unrest broke out in 1990, Kashmiri Pandits migrated in panic. In March 2010, the state government informed the legislature that the total number of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 was 150,000 (200,000 according to unofficial sources). Among them, 24,202 families migrated in January 1990. Assuming an average of five members per family, that number stands at 121,010 people. Between 1989 and 2004—over these 15 years—the number of Pandits killed was 219. According to official estimates, even after the 1990 migration, 30,000 Pandits remained in the valley (20,000 according to unofficial sources). By around 2015, this number had decreased to about 3,500.
How many people were killed in the Jammu massacre?
Since there are no official statistics, reports published in various contemporary Indian and international media outlets remain our only resort.
A report published in the British newspaper The Spectator on January 16, 1948, stated that the number of casualties was 200,000.
In the book Horned Moon (1953), it was written: “In the autumn of 1947, almost the entire Muslim population, numbering several hundred thousand, was killed or fled.”
A report published in The Times (London) on August 10, 1948, stated: “…2,37,000 Muslims were systematically exterminated…” This occurred in October 1947, five days before the Pathan invasion and nine days before the Maharaja acceded to India. The report further noted that as a result of this massacre and exodus, the majority Muslim community (61 percent) in the Jammu region was reduced to a minority.
Ian Stephens, editor of The Statesman, reported that approximately 500,000 Muslims were completely driven out of Jammu.
Mahatma Gandhi commented on the situation in Jammu on December 25, 1947: “The Hindus and Sikhs of Jammu, along with RSS cadres who entered from outside (from Gurdaspur and surrounding areas), have killed the Muslims there. Their women have been dishonored. This has not been fully reported in the press. The Maharaja of Kashmir is responsible for what happened there.” (The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 90, pp. 115 and 298).
Background
During the partition of India, the British withdrew their suzerainty over the princely states, giving them the choice to accede to either India or Pakistan, or to remain independent. Although the majority of the population of Jammu and Kashmir was Muslim, the ruler was Hindu. Maharaja Hari Singh did not wish to accede to Muslim-majority Pakistan, nor was he inclined to join democratic India. He wanted to remain an independent and absolute monarch.
Maharaja Hari Singh feared that because Kashmir was Muslim-dominated, he might be deposed in the future and the entire Jammu and Kashmir could join Pakistan. Therefore, to maintain his rule in Jammu—if not in all of Jammu and Kashmir—he drafted an outline to displace the majority Muslims of Jammu. Maharaja Hari Singh himself had created a law in 1926 stating that outsiders could not own land in Kashmir. However, after 1947, under his initiative, a significant number of Hindu and Sikh refugees were systematically brought from Punjab and the border provinces and rehabilitated in Jammu. At the same time, Maharaja Hari Singh imposed various tax burdens exclusively on his Muslim subjects.
Protesting against the burden of excessive taxes and infiltration, local Muslims began peaceful demonstrations. Hari Singh deployed the military and brutally suppressed the protests. Subsequently, the Dogra army was deployed to clear Muslim-majority villages in Jammu. At that time, one-third of the state military and more than half of the police force were Muslim. Before commencing the eviction campaign, Muslims were removed from both the army and the police forces.
Following the riots in Rawalpindi in March 1947, many Hindus and Sikhs fled to Jammu. They began spreading exaggerated accounts mixed with facts and falsehoods, which aroused a desire for revenge among the Hindus and Sikhs of Jammu against Muslims.
In the Poonch region, there were approximately 50,000 Muslim ex-servicemen of the British Indian Army who possessed arms. In July, all armed individuals were ordered to surrender their weapons at police stations. However, the weapons surrendered by the Muslim ex-servicemen were instead handed over by the Maharaja’s police to Hindu and Sikh refugees.
By mid-October, Hindu-Sikh rioters and the Dogra army began expelling Muslim villagers from Jammu province. To save their lives, the villagers fled on foot toward West Punjab. Most of them took shelter in refugee camps in the Sialkot, Jhelum, Gujrat, and Rawalpindi districts.
On October 14, Hindu-Sikh rioters attacked various villages in Jammu (Amreh, Chek, Athpur, Kachpura), killing Muslims and setting fire to their homes. The state Dogra army led these attacks and supplied weapons to the attackers. Except in Muslim-dominated areas, Muslims in other regions were hunted down using vehicles and killed. Even Gujjar Muslim men and women delivering milk were killed on the roads.
Many Muslims living outside Muslim-majority areas were brutally murdered. Although an official curfew was imposed, Hindu-Sikh rioters freely roamed in vehicles armed with weapons and ammunition. In reality, the curfew served only to restrict the movements of Muslims.
The Muslims of Talab Khatikan and Mohalla Ustad were besieged; their food and water supplies were cut off. Instead of providing protection, the administration encouraged them to leave for Pakistan. The first group of several thousand Muslims was loaded onto about sixty trucks and dispatched toward Sialkot. Unaware of what was about to happen, families boarded the trucks. The vehicles were escorted by soldiers. However, as soon as they reached Chattar on the Jammu-Sialkot road—where armed Hindu and Sikh groups were already positioned—the Muslims were dragged out of the trucks and mercilessly killed. Women were raped and abducted. Dogra soldiers either joined the rioters or stood by as passive spectators. News of this massacre was meticulously suppressed.
The next day, another group of Muslims was loaded onto trucks in the same manner and pushed toward the same fate. Those who miraculously survived reached Sialkot and recounted the details of these atrocities.
On November 5, Dogra troops launched another organized eviction drive against Muslims. Under the pretext of being taken to Sialkot, the trucks were instead driven into the hilly forests of Rajouri district in Jammu, where a similar massacre was carried out.
During that period, countless people—regardless of whether they were children, the elderly, or women—were brutally murdered across vast areas, including Udhampur, Chenani, Ramnagar, Reasi, Bhaderwah, Chhamb, Deva Batala, Akhnoor, and Kathua in Jammu. The intensity of this slaughter was so severe that nearly 123 villages became “completely depopulated.” In Jammu district alone, the Muslim population decreased by more than 100,000, and an estimated 27,000 Muslim women were abducted and raped. Thousands of Gujjars were killed in local neighborhoods, and villages around the Jammu Cantonment area were burnt to ashes. Kathua lost nearly 50 percent of its Muslim population.
Dogra state troops were at the forefront of these attacks. Those fleeing toward the Pakistan border to save their lives were also hunted down and killed along the way. The curfew imposed during the massacre was primarily used to restrict movement in Muslim-dominated areas, while the killers rampaged freely with exposed weapons.
Following the killings of Muslims, the names of those places were also changed. For instance, Urdu Bazaar became ‘Rajinder Bazaar,’ and Islamia School became ‘Hari Singh High School.’ Properties left behind by Muslims, which should have naturally passed to government custody, were handed over to looters and rioters. These properties remain in the possession of them and their descendants to this day.
According to a report in The Times (London) on August 10, 1948, out of an estimated 800,000 Muslims who attempted to migrate, “more than 237,000 were systematically exterminated by the Dogra state army and Hindu-Sikh rioters, led by Maharaja Hari Singh himself.”
Local media also incited these killings and evictions. For example, a Jammu-based Hindu newspaper proudly wrote that ‘one Dogra is capable of killing at least two hundred Muslims.’
According to the 1961 Census of India estimates, approximately 123 villages in Jammu province had become ‘completely depopulated,’ and the Muslim population in Jammu district alone had declined by more than 150,000.
| Area | 1941 Population | 1941 Muslim % | 2011 Muslim % | Declining number of Muslims |
| Jammu District | 431,362 | 39.6% | 7.1% | 151,010 |
| Kathua District | 177,672 | 25.3% | 10.4% | 29,567 |
| Udhampur District (With Chenani) | 306,013 | 42.7% | 41.5% | 5,975 |
| Reasi District | 257,903 | 68.1% | 58.4% | 59,804 |
| Jammu District (Poonch and Jammu Districts) | 1,172,950 | 44.5% | 27.9% | 246,356 |
| Poonch Jagir | 421,828 | 90.0% | 90.4% |
Division of Kashmir
Many Muslim families in Jammu had familial ties with the tribal populations of the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). Five days after the Jammu massacre, tribal militias from Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province entered India and launched an attack on Kashmir to protect the lives and honor of their relatives. As the tribal forces advanced toward Kashmir, the army of the Dogra king—which had until then been engaged in the massacre of innocent, unarmed Muslims—fled to Jammu.
Ultimately, to save his own life, King Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession with India. Following the signing of the agreement, India dispatched its army to fight against the tribals.
This conflict between the tribal groups and the Indian Army eventually took the form of the First Indo-Pakistani War. When New Delhi and Islamabad agreed to a ceasefire in January 1948, the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was divided between the two nations.
Conclusion
Here is the direct English translation of the provided text:
The purpose of this report is not to downplay the tragedy that befell the Kashmiri Pandits in 1990. Without a doubt, that was an unacceptable and unforgivable crime. The main objective of this report is to bring to the nation the forgotten history of the two-month-long Muslim genocide in Jammu in 1947.
If we are never to forget the injustice done to the Kashmiri Pandits, there can likewise be no excuse for failing to remember or condemn what was done to the Muslims of Jammu. This is not merely a matter of moral integrity; it also profoundly impacts the unity of the multi-ethnic populace that forms India. If our memory or historical narrative becomes selective, it becomes one-sided and fractures India’s pluralistic unity.
Following World War II, the Jammu massacre was one of the most horrific events of ‘ethnic cleansing’ on the international stage. According to many historians and researchers, at the root of Kashmir’s long-standing conflict lies this deliberately suppressed genocide of 1947.
It is a matter for deep reflection whether the anger resurfacing again and again today stems from the current generation—those whose close relatives fell victim to genocide and barbaric atrocities that day, and who were fortunate enough to survive and flee, leaving behind their homes and belongings.
Today, under the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), refuge in India is being spoken of for minorities facing religious persecution in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan; the question is also being raised as to why those Muslims—who were victims of religious violence within India’s own borders and were forced to seek refuge in another country to save their lives—should not be given the opportunity if they wish to return to their ancestral land today.
References
- ভারত বিভাজনের সময় জম্মুতে যেভাবে মুসলিমদের নির্বিচারে হত্যা করা হয়েছিল
- ১৯৪৭ জম্মু হত্যাকাণ্ড
- জম্মু গণহত্যা: স্মৃতির আড়ালে চলে যাওয়া ইতিহাস
- The killing fields of Jammu – How Muslims become a minority in the region
- Jammu Massacre: More Than a Historical Retrospect
- Jammu Massacre: A forgotten story of how over 2 lakh Muslims were killed in Jammu which led to Kashmir issue
- The forgotten massacre that ignited the Kashmir dispute
- 1947-When Jammu’s Rivers Turned Red
বাংলা এবং বাঙালির জন্য লড়াইকে এগিয়ে নিয়ে যেতে আমাদের সাহায্য করুন।
আমরা কোনো কোটিপতি বা বড় কোনো কোম্পানি নই – আমাদের পাঠকরাই আমাদের সমর্থন করেন। আমাদের এই গুরুত্বপূর্ণ এবং সাহসী প্রচেষ্টার জন্য অনুদান দিয়ে আমাদের পাশে থাকুন।
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