By N A Thakur
The contested narrative surrounding the events of October 1947 in Jammu and Kashmir—described in Indian historiography as a “tribal invasion”—lies at the very heart of the Kashmir tragedy. This narrative, carefully crafted by Indian spin masters, sought to conceal the brutal realities unfolded on the ground and to lend a veneer of legitimacy to India’s military intervention—a move that many historians have censured as an act of aggression and violation of the Partition Plan.
Regrettably, even after more than seven decades, Indian school curricula continue to reproduce this distorted version of history, portraying the episode as a moment when “bloodthirsty Pathan tribesmen” stood at the gates of Srinagar and India intervened to save Kashmir. Sadly, this absolute fallacy and distortion of the facts has buried the truth of 1947 beneath layers of deceit and continues to shape how millions understand the origins of one of South Asia’s deepest and most painful conflicts. It is through the relentless repetition of these falsehoods; India reduced the massacre of Muslims in Jammu to a mere footnote in history.
While a hue and cry was raised—apparently to conceal the crimes committed against humanity in the Jammu region—the alleged “tribal incursion” became the fig leaf for India’s premeditated political objectives. Meanwhile, the organized purge that expelled or killed nearly a quarter of a million Muslims in Jammu province—long before the first tribal lashkar reached Baramulla—continued for several weeks under the nose of the Maharaja’s administration. While Pathan tribesmen were still mustering on the frontier, Dogra troops and RSS cadres inside Jammu had already begun cordon-and-search operations targeting Muslim neighbourhoods.
The questions surrounding the Instrument of Accession, however, remained shrouded in mystery. As historian Alastair Lamb observes, “history was written by those who took control of the archives and the channels of communication,” allowing New Delhi to shape a narrative that continues to dominate official discourse decades later.
Any genuine attempt to confront this concocted version must begin by revisiting the sordid saga in its historical perspective and examining the on ground situation that preceded the October 1947 events especially the massacre of Muslims—a tragedy of unimaginable magnitude, deliberately erased from collective memory.
One fails to comprehend how this greatest tragedy of the time could have escaped the world’s attention. A staggering number, estimated between 200,000 and 237,000 Muslims, were killed or expelled by the Dogra state forces and Hindu extremist groups between October and November 1947 (Alexander 1948; The Times London, August 10, 1948).
Chronology of events that shook the region
On 23 October, round-ups in Jammu city’s Dalpatian and Ustad Mohalla saw men marched to parade grounds, shot in batches of twenty, and flung into the Tawi. Two days later, 400 rifles were issued to Hindu Sabha volunteers as Muslim mohallas were sealed. By early November, the Deputy Commissioner wired Lahore that 60,000 refugees had crossed into Pakistan within just 48 hours—estimates would double within a fortnight. On 15 November, in Mirpur, around 2,000 Muslim men were locked inside the main mosque, which was then set alight. By 1 December, the Muslim population in Jammu province had plummeted from about 475,000 to under 100,000—not by the vagaries of war, but by lorries, bayonets, and rivers that “ran red for days” (UK High Commission, Lahore, FO 371/69720; Snedden, p. 139; Lamb, p. 241).
The Machinery of Denial
India’s official narrative attributes the Maharaja’s signature on the Instrument of Accession to the so-called “tribal invasion.” Yet evidence indicates that Indian preparations for troop airlifts began as early as 6 October—weeks before the tribesmen crossed the border (Lamb, p. 167). The accession document itself was drafted in Delhi by V.P. Menon on 26 October and retyped in the Maharaja’s winter capital at Jammu while smoke still rose from Muslim quarters (Jha, p. 97). The tribesmen arrived late to the crime scene; the real ethnic cleansing had already been executed by the Maharaja’s own forces and their RSS allies.
It was against this backdrop of organized violence that Pashtun tribesmen from the North-West Frontier region came to Kashmir—not as invaders seeking conquest, but as volunteers responding to appeals from their Kashmiri brethren. As many historians later wrote, “the tribesmen did not enter Kashmir to conquer it but to rescue their Kashmiri brethren who were being slaughtered in Jammu.”
Significantly, the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference—the sole representative voice of Kashmiri Muslims in the princely state—issued a statement on 25 October 1947, calling upon “the Muslims of the Frontier and Pakistan to come to the rescue of the oppressed people of Kashmir.” The movement, it declared, was an act of solidarity rather than aggression.
Historians such as Alastair Lamb (1991, 1994), A.G. Noorani (2013), and Christopher Snedden (2013) argue that India’s labeling of the tribal advance as an “invasion” was politically expedient—designed to justify its pre-planned military intervention and divert attention from the communal violence already unfolding in Jammu. In their reading, New Delhi’s depiction of the tribesmen as “invaders” functioned as a discursive constructs—a strategic reframing that transformed a regional humanitarian crisis into an episode of cross-border aggression.
Even the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP), in its First Interim Report (10 January 1948), acknowledged that “grave disorder and massacres had preceded the tribal entry,” implicitly recognizing the prior context of violence in Jammu. Yet Indian officials and sympathetic media quickly recast these developments as an “invasion from Pakistan’s territory.” As Victoria Schofield (2000, p. 57) notes, “the language of invasion and defense quickly crystallized into opposing national myths,” giving rise to two incompatible versions of Kashmir’s past—and, by extension, two competing claims to its future.
Why Memory Matters
Kashmir’s present is still hostage to the lies of its past—lies pedalled by none other than the Indian state, with a deliberate design to weave a cobweb of confusion around the Kashmir question. The fact remains that the Jammu massacre was not collateral damage; it was a calculated purge that altered the very demographic and political landscape of the princely state. By decimating its Muslim population and driving tens of thousands into forced exile, the massacre served as an instrument to tilt a Muslim-majority state toward a Hindu ruler’s desperate pact with India—an accord later dressed up as “accession”.
Truth-Telling: a reckoning with the past
For Kashmir, truth-telling is not a matter of political convenience but of moral necessity. As long as the official narrative remains built on denial and distortion, reconciliation will remain elusive. The world cannot expect peace in a region where history itself has been falsified to justify dispossession.
To move forward, there must first be a reckoning with the past — an honest acknowledgment of the Jammu massacre and of the forces that engineered it. For a durable peace, the first step is not another round of bilateral talks but a simple act of truth-telling: an acknowledgment that the rivers of Jammu ran red so that the map could be redrawn.
Only by confronting those buried truths can the people of Kashmir, Hindu and Muslim alike, begin to reclaim their shared history from the ruins of propaganda. For them, truth is not merely a principle; it is the only path to justice and lasting peace.
The author is Director Media and Communications at Islamabad based think tank__ Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR)__ and can be reached via X at @nissarat