In the blood-soaked ledger of Partition violence, one episode remains conspicuously absent from public memory. The Jammu‘s Muslim genocide of 1947 stands as a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing that reshaped the region’s demographics forever.
A premeditated purge
While riots engulfed Punjab and Bengal in 1947, Jammu witnessed something more calculated. Between August and November, thousands of Muslims were systematically murdered or driven from their homes.
This was no spontaneous outburst. Jammu’s Muslim genocide emerged from a conspiracy between government forces, right-wing groups and sections of the Hindu Dogra elite. Their aim was clear: to alter Jammu’s population balance permanently.
The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir presented an awkward arrangement. A Hindu Dogra prince, Maharaja Hari Singh, ruled over a population that was 77% Muslim. The ruling apparatus remained largely Hindu, particularly from the Dogra community.
As Partition approached, this unstable equilibrium collapsed. Hindu political influence in Jammu was growing rapidly. Muslims, especially in western districts near Pakistan, faced increasing suspicion.
The calculus for Hindu leaders was brutally simple. If Kashmir joined Pakistan, they would lose their privileged status. If it joined India, the Muslim majority might assert their rights. A third option emerged: change the population itself.
Rivers run red
By autumn 1947, Jammu had become a tinderbox. Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Punjab brought their trauma and rage. They found willing accomplices among local militias and state forces.
Armed groups, including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha volunteers and local vigilantes, launched coordinated attacks on Muslim communities. Many victims were herded into camps or onto buses, ostensibly for “safe passage” to Pakistan.
Most of these convoys were ambushed. Jammu’s Muslim genocide reached its bloody apex in Kathua, Udhampur and Reasi. British reports conservatively estimated 20,000 Muslims killed. Some accounts place the figure at 100,000.
Nearly half a million Muslims fled across the border into Pakistani Punjab. Those who escaped brought harrowing testimonies.
“The Dogra troopers visited our residence one evening and slaughtered my father, mother, sister, and two younger siblings,” recalls Hussein Gujrar, who was 18 at the time. “I had gone out for the night and was not in the house, so I did not perish.”
Another survivor, Hajra, lost 17 family members in Udhampur. “I ran to save my children and took shelter in a small village called Reasi,” she remembers. “I had given birth to a baby boy the previous night of the killings. While taking the difficult journey, I realised the baby in my arms had died.”
Veteran journalist Ved Bhasin, who witnessed the violence, wrote: “My only objective is to point out that a communalist and killer has no religion. It was humanity that was the victim of communal fanatics.”
Land and power
Jammu’s Muslim genocide was not merely about killing. It was about dispossession. The flight of Muslims facilitated one of South Asia’s largest property transfers. Muslim lands, businesses and homes were systematically appropriated.
This naked land grab transformed Jammu’s economy and demography alike. The region, once with a substantial Muslim population, became predominantly Hindu—a transformation that persists today.
The pattern established in 1947 would be repeated. Just as the Indian state would later seek demographic changes in Kashmir through legal means, Jammu was altered through brute force. As anthropologist Arjun Appadurai observed, “ethnic cleansing is often a technique of state-making.”
The ideologue
Standing at the epicentre of this violence was Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. A member of Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet and founder of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (predecessor to today’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party), Mukherjee championed Hindutva politics.
His opposition to Kashmir’s special status was legendary. His slogan, “Ek Vidhan, Ek Nishan, Ek Pradhan” (“One Constitution, One Flag, One Leader”) reflected his vision of a homogeneous India.
In October 1947, as Jammu’s Muslim genocide gathered pace, Mukherjee declared: “The Hindu community must assert itself. It must refuse to accept the domination of any other religion in India.”
Though he never explicitly called for violence, his rhetoric fuelled the killings. His silence during and after the massacres speaks volumes. His connections to the Hindu Mahasabha, directly implicated in the violence, raise troubling questions.
Right-wing hagiography portrays Mukherjee as a nationalist hero who died for Kashmir’s integration. The victims of the Jammu Muslim genocide might tell a different story.
The enduring shadow
The effects of Jammu’s Muslim genocide persist today. The region’s altered demographics allow the Indian government to portray Jammu as the “loyal” half of the territory, contrasting it with the “rebellious” Kashmir Valley.
The massacre also cemented communal divisions that would shape Indian politics for decades. The Jan Sangh, and later the BJP, built their narrative on themes test-driven in Jammu: Muslim betrayal, Hindu victimhood and threats to national integrity.
Perhaps most significantly, Jammu’s Muslim genocide revealed the fragility of India’s secular promises. When political expediency demanded it, state actors were willing to participate in ethnic cleansing.
The conspiracy of silence
Why is the Jammu Muslim genocide so little known? Acknowledging it would undermine the foundational myths of the Indian state.
It would prove that ethnic cleansing was perpetrated not just by Pakistan but by Indian actors and agents. It would complicate the narrative that Kashmir joined India freely. Most dangerously, it would expose the Hindu majoritarian currents that have always flowed beneath India’s secular surface.
Official India has chosen amnesia. School textbooks barely mention the killings. No official investigation has been conducted. No reparations have been paid. No memorials stand.
“The state forces of Maharaja were heading the massacre, killing the Muslims brutally in Jammu city,” says Zarar Hussian, who fled as a child. “My father was a famous lawyer in Jammu. We had to migrate to Sialkot.”
Zafar Butt, another survivor, puts it more bluntly: “My whole family was murdered by the Dogra troopers in Nawa Kot.”
Memory as resistance
The Jammu Muslim genocide reveals uncomfortable truths about modern India’s birth. It exposed the violence inherent in nationalist projects and the willingness of political leaders to commit atrocities for territorial control.
To remember the Jammu Muslim genocide is to challenge historical erasure. It means confronting figures like Mukherjee, whose legacy divides rather than unites. It means questioning the foundations of Kashmir’s integration into India.
As poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz wrote: “We shall see the day when mountains of tyranny will blow away like cotton.” Until that day arrives, the truth about the Jammu Muslim genocide must be told—not just as a historical record, but as resistance against forgetting.
References:
- “Issue Brief on Jammu Massacre of 1947 – An Often Overlooked Story of Horror,” Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, November 2023.
- “The Forgotten Massacre That Ignited the Kashmir Dispute,” Al Jazeera, November 6, 2017.​
- “Ved Bhasin,” Wikipedia.​
- “How Syama Prasad Mookerjee Fought for J&K’s Integration with India,” Indian Express, January 23, 2023.
- “Kashmir and the Sangh: How Syama Prasad Mookerjee Became a Martyr for the Cause,” Indian Express, January 30,