The forgotten genocide that still haunts Kashmir

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 by Hindu and Sikh militias with the complicity of the then-Kashmir's Dogra Maharaja's forces, were not spontaneous riots born of Partition's 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.

Archival estimates even suggest astonishing losses — one analysis of Maharaja-era records claims some 237,000 Muslim victims were "systematically exterminated" 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's identity forever. Muslims, who constituted 61% of the total population, were reduced to a minority.

Historians who chronicled the events — including the late Kashmiri editor Ved Bhasin — 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: "if they (India) lose the state of Kashmir, at least they should get Jammu" by ensuring a Hindu majority.

The 1948 UN Convention defines genocide as acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." 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's 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 "tryst with destiny".

The UN 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 — in part by rewarding those who helped "communalise" the province.

For 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.

Today, the IIOJK remains one of the most heavily militarised zones on earth, its people living under surveillance and siege. The events of August 2019 — when India revoked Jammu and Kashmir's special constitutional status under Article 370 — deepened that sense of historical repetition.

Since 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.

What began in 1947 as a campaign to expel a people now continues in the language of law and bureaucracy — a quieter, more sophisticated form of domination.

This enduring repression does not exist in a vacuum. It is nurtured by the rise of Hindutva — the ideology that envisions India as an exclusively Hindu nation, which, historically, it never was.

The movement's parent organisation, the RSS, was active in Jammu during the 1947 killings. Today, its political arm, the BJP, dominates Indian politics and public discourse.

Anti-Muslim bigotry has become normalised in India's mainstream. Hate speech thrives on television; mobs lynch Muslims with impunity; "bulldozer justice" targets Muslim neighbourhoods. Top Indian officials have publicly likened Muslims to "termites" 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.

An agenda of Hindu majoritarianism — the Hindutva ideology — 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 — 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.

Unfortunately, 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 — as we should — 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.

According 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 — through mass surveillance, demographic manipulation and collective punishment — bears the same moral and legal stain.

This is not an argument against India's sovereignty. It is a plea for its humanity. For a nation that seeks global recognition as a modern power, India's refusal to confront the ghosts of Jammu — and the suffering of today's Kashmiris — is a moral failure of historic proportions.

Each year, on November 6, Kashmiris mark Youm-e-Shuhada-e-Jammu — Martyrs' Day — in quiet defiance of enforced silence. They do not seek revenge; they seek remembrance. They mourn for the dead, and for the living — 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.

If 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 — and the generations still living under the weight of that unhealed wound.

Only when we remember truthfully can the world finally begin to heal.

The writer, Nohman Ali, is a media and communications professional, and can be reached at nohmanali@gmail.com