October 22, 1947, is recorded in the history books as the day when Pashtun tribals invaded Jammu and Kashmir. This set in motion a set of events that resulted in the accession to India of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir; the newly independent countries of India and Pakistan going to war; the division of the territory into two parts; and the beginning of the Kashmir dispute that still escapes a solution.
What is less well know is the violence that occurred just before the tribal incursion: the massacre of anywhere between 20,000 to 237,000 Muslims, according to varying claims, over the span of a few weeks, in the state’s Jammu province.
These killings, mentioned only in obscure media reports and recent scholarship, took place as millions of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were crossing the new international border created by Partition. Britain’s colonial machinations, especially its hastening the Partition Plan, precipitated widespread violence in the summer of 1947, resulting in one of the biggest slaughters and population displacements anywhere.
Most of what is called “Partition violence” took place in British India, and after the transfer of power, in the successor states of India and Pakistan, outside the over 600 princely states scattered over the subcontinent. Attacks on road convoys and trains ferrying refugees towards the borders made up the bulk of the violence. The princely states managed to escape much bloodletting.
However, scholars have shown recently that Jammu and Kashmir, Alwar and Bharatpur in present-day Rajasthan, Patiala and Faridkot in east Punjab and Bahawalpur in west Punjab were the exceptions. These researchers contend that large-scale killings took place there with state forces complicit in the violence.
These were some of the worst massacres in India’s history, involving state actors and local militias seeking the ethnic cleansing of Muslims. The absence of any acknowledgment of these mass atrocities by the leadership of the new nation, let alone accountability for the perpetrators, produced a pattern of state responses to minority concerns that continues to cast a long shadow.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here .
