Nohman Ali
\nSeventy-eight years ago this week, the hills of Jammu ran red.
\nIn the autumn of 1947, as the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan, a horrifying tragedy was unfolding in the scenic valley of Jammu as tens of thousands of Muslims were massacred over a matter of weeks.
\nThe killings, carried out by Hindu and Sikh militias with the complicity of the then-Kashmir\u2019s Dogra Maharaja\u2019s forces, were not spontaneous riots born of Partition\u2019s chaos. They were organised, deliberate, and aimed at cleansing the region of its Muslim population. Caravans of families attempting to cross into Pakistan for safety were ambushed and slaughtered. Villages were torched.
\nArchival estimates even suggest astonishing losses \u2013 one analysis of Maharaja-era records claims some 237,000 Muslim victims were \u201csystematically exterminated\u201d by Dogra forces and their Hindu and Sikh auxiliaries. By the time the violence subsided, nearly half a million Muslims had fled their homes. It was a demographic transformation that reshaped Jammu\u2019s identity forever. Muslims, who constituted 61% of the total population, were reduced to a minority.
\nHistorians who chronicled the events \u2014 including the late Kashmiri editor Ved Bhasin \u2014 called it what it was: a state-sponsored genocide. Mahatma Gandhi himself lamented that Muslims in Jammu had been killed by Hindus and Sikhs of Jammu, and those who had gone there from the outside. A Kashmiri scholar explains that the goal of such genocide was explicit: \u201cif they (India) lose the state of Kashmir, at least they should get Jammu\u201d by ensuring a Hindu majority.
\nThe 1948 UN Convention defines genocide as acts \u201ccommitted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.\u201d Here, a religious community (Muslims) was targeted for elimination. Victims were shot en masse, villages were razed, and even women were subjected to systematic rape and abduction. Yet India\u2019s post-independence governments never investigated the killings. No truth commission, no memorials, not even an official acknowledgement. The massacre disappeared from textbooks and national consciousness, buried beneath the mythology of \u201ctryst with destiny\u201d.
\nThe United Nations did get involved at the time: in 1948, the Security Council passed Resolution 47, calling for the withdrawal of forces and a plebiscite to determine the fate of Jammu and Kashmir. But India ignored the promise of a vote, and instead solidified control over Jammu \u2013 in part by rewarding those who helped \u201ccommunalise\u201d the province.
\nA Shadow That Never Lifted
\nFor Kashmiris, the genocide in Jammu was not an isolated atrocity. It was the opening chapter of a decades-long story of fear, erasure, and occupation.
\nToday, the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJK) remains one of the most heavily militarised zones on earth, its people living under surveillance and siege. The events of August 2019 \u2014 when India revoked Jammu and Kashmir\u2019s special constitutional status under Article 370 \u2014 deepened that sense of historical repetition.
\nSince then, journalists have been detained without trial, political leaders silenced, and thousands of young men imprisoned under sweeping anti-terror laws. Land and domicile policies have been rewritten to allow non-Kashmiris to settle, rekindling fears of demographic engineering.
\nWhat began in 1947 as a campaign to expel a people now continues in the language of law and bureaucracy \u2014 a quieter, more sophisticated form of domination.
\nThe Normalisation of Hate
\nThis enduring repression does not exist in a vacuum. It is nurtured by the rise of Hindutva \u2014 the ideology that envisions India as an exclusively Hindu nation, which, historically, it never was.
\nThe movement\u2019s parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was active in Jammu during the 1947 killings. Today, its political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party, dominates Indian politics and public discourse.
\nAnti-Muslim bigotry has become normalised in India\u2019s mainstream. Hate speech thrives on television; mobs lynch Muslims with impunity; \u201cbulldozer justice\u201d targets Muslim neighbourhoods. Top Indian officials have publicly likened Muslims to \u201ctermites\u201d and even threatened to toss them into the sea. Research shows hate speech against Indian Muslims has surged, tripling around the 2023 Gaza conflict and concentrated in BJP-ruled states.
\nAn agenda of Hindu majoritarianism \u2013 the Hindutva ideology \u2013 has seeped into the corridors of power and public life in India. Where once inciting hatred toward a religious minority would have provoked outrage, today it is often treated as normal politics. In such an atmosphere, the story of Jammu 1947 is not a forgotten footnote \u2014 it is a warning unheeded. The ideology that once justified the expulsion of Muslims from Jammu now fuels a nationalism that equates dissent with treason and erases entire communities from the moral map.
\nThe World\u2019s Selective Memory
\nUnfortunately, the world has developed a hierarchy of grief. We remember some tragedies and conveniently forget others. Victims of 9\/11 or 26\/11 are remembered \u2014 as we should \u2014 but we rarely speak of the hundreds of thousands who were massacred in Jammu or the millions who continue to live under military rule in IIOJK.
\nAccording to international law, genocide is defined as the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. By that standard, what happened in Jammu was genocide. The continuing repression of Kashmiris \u2014 through mass surveillance, demographic manipulation, and collective punishment \u2014 bears the same moral and legal stain. This is not an argument against India\u2019s sovereignty. It is a plea for its humanity. For a nation that seeks global recognition as a modern power, India\u2019s refusal to confront the ghosts of Jammu \u2014 and the suffering of today\u2019s Kashmiris \u2014 is a moral failure of historic proportions.
\nRemembering as Resistance
\nEach year, on November 6, Kashmiris mark Youm-e-Shuhada-e-Jammu \u2014 Martyrs\u2019 Day \u2014 in quiet defiance of enforced silence. They do not seek revenge; they seek remembrance. They mourn for the dead, and for the living \u2014 those who still wait for justice. Acknowledging their suffering does not mean picking sides in a century-old conflict; it means upholding universal human values. Kashmiris still mark 27 October each year in mourning, out of grief for their parents and grandparents, and hope that such horrors never recur. The memory of Jammu 1947 should not be erased. Nor should the quiet eviction of rights today be allowed to pass without notice. In an era of resurgent nationalisms, indifference to mass suffering only sows the seeds of the next tragedy.
\nIf the world can grieve for the thousands lost in New York on 9\/11, it must also find the moral courage to remember the hundreds of thousands who perished in Jammu \u2014 and the generations still living under the weight of that unhealed wound.
\nOnly when we remember truthfully can the world finally begin to heal.<\/p>\n
The writer is a media and communications professional, and can be reached at nohmanali@gmail.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nohman Ali Seventy-eight years ago this week, the hills of Jammu ran red. In the autumn of 1947, as the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan, a horrifying tragedy was unfolding in the scenic valley of Jammu as tens of thousands of Muslims were massacred over a matter of weeks. The killings, carried out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13748],"class_list":{"0":"post-512821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-article","7":"tag-nohman-ali"},"yoast_head":"\n