By Mehr un Nisa
The story of Jammu in 1947 is not a story of spontaneous chaos. It was a story of a sinister plan. A plan drawn up months before Partition. A plan to wipe out Muslims from Jammu and create conditions for the Hindu ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, to accede Jammu & Kashmir to India without the will of Kashmiri people.
The Jammu Massacre did not begin in October 1947, as many history books suggest. It started in September 1947, when the Maharaja’s forces and Hindu nationalist groups began organizing attacks on Muslim villages. By the time the violence ended in December, over 200,000 Muslims had been killed and half a million forced to flee to Pakistan. It was the first genocide after the Second World War. And it changed Jammu’s demography forever.
Jammu was not a random battleground. It was a Muslim-majority province. Out of a total population of around 4 million, more than 3.2 million were Muslims. The region was ruled by a Hindu Dogra dynasty, loyal to the British and later to India. When the British left in August 1947, most Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir wished to join Pakistan. But the Maharaja and his close Hindu advisors had other plans.
They knew a Muslim-majority state would naturally opt for Pakistan. So, they began plotting. The Dogra rulers, the RSS, and Hindu Mahasabha started a coordinated campaign to change Jammu’s demography before the state’s political fate was sealed. Arms were distributed to Hindu and Sikh civilians. Local Kashmiris were disarmed. Non-Muslim refugees from Punjab were brought into Jammu and settled in Muslim localities.
Then came the violence. In September 1947, the first signs of systematic violence appeared in Poonch and Reasi. Dogra troops, aided by RSS volunteers, began attacking Muslim villages. They burned homes. They looted property. They killed without mercy. By October, the carnage spread to the entire province, from Kathua to Akhnoor, from Samba to Jammu city.
The worst massacres took place between October 20 and November 9, 1947. 70,000 Muslims were slaughtered in Kathua, Akhnoor Bridge, Samba, Maogaon, and Suchetgarh. In Jammu city, around 40,000 Muslims were killed in just a few days. Entire families were wiped out. Women were raped and abducted.
Thousands were told they would be transported safely to Pakistan , but the “convoys” turned into death traps. Dogra soldiers loaded Muslims onto trucks and buses, telling them they were being sent to Sialkot for safety. But as the vehicles reached Chattha and Makwal, they were ambushed by armed mobs. Men, women, and children were butchered. The Dogra army stood by, sometimes even joining in.
British journalist Ian Stephens, then editor of The Statesman, described the killings as “systematic savageries.” He estimated that half a million Muslims either vanished or were killed. The Times of London on August 10, 1948, reported 237,000 Muslims killed. Pakistan’s official figures later placed the toll even higher, around 600,000.
Even Indian journalist Ved Bhasin, who later became known for his integrity, confirmed that over 100,000 Muslims were massacred in Jammu. The killings were so extensive that hundreds of villages vanished. In Jammu district, 155 villages that existed in 1947 were empty by 1961. In Kathua, 43 villages stood deserted. The census figures tell the rest of the story. Before the massacre, Muslims made up two-thirds of Jammu’s population. Today, they make up one-third. This demographic shift was not an accident, it was the goal.
The Dogra rulers could not have executed such a large-scale operation alone. They had help. The RSS, newly empowered after Partition, wanted Jammu to be a “Hindu homeland.” The Hindu Mahasabha saw the massacre as a way to avenge Muslim-majority areas joining Pakistan. Together, they turned Jammu into a killing field.
The Dogra army supplied weapons. Hindu and Sikh mobs carried out the killings. The Maharaja’s administration destroyed Muslim records, seized their lands, and resettled non-Muslims in their place. Even after the killings, the terror continued. Muslim survivors were harassed, their lands confiscated, and their villages renamed. Those who fled to Pakistan were declared “evacuees”, their property automatically taken by the state.
By the end of 1947, over 500,000 Muslims had fled to Pakistan. They arrived in Sialkot, Gujranwala, and Lahore with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Many had lost entire families. They brought stories of betrayal, of how the same soldiers who promised to protect them became their executioners.
In the refugee camps, survivors spoke of women being abducted, children being thrown into fires, and villages being erased overnight. These were not isolated incidents. This was a systematic, state-backed campaign of ethnic cleansing. The massacre achieved what the Maharaja wanted. The Muslim majority was turned into a minority. Within months, the political map had changed. When Maharaja Hari Singh finally acceded to India in October 1947, Jammu had already been “cleansed.” The “problem” of Muslim numbers had been solved.
Despite the scale of the killings, the world said little. No international commission ever investigated the killings. No Dogra officer was tried. No Indian authority ever acknowledged it as a genocide. The victims were erased from memory, reduced to statistics in dusty archives.
The Jammu Massacre was not just an episode of violence. It was the foundation stone of India’s control over Jammu and Kashmir. The massacre made the accession possible. It silenced Muslim political voice in Jammu. It turned a majority into a minority. And it set a pattern of demographic manipulation that continues in different forms even today.
Remembering Jammu is not about reopening old wounds. It is about restoring truth. It is about acknowledging that what happened in September 1947 was a planned genocide, not a riot, not a clash, but a calculated extermination.
The survivors called themselves “Gunsiyeh”, “the killed ones.” They carried that identity across generations. Their stories still echo in the refugee settlements of Pakistan.
The Jammu Massacre reminds us that the victors do not just write history, they also bury it. And it is our responsibility to unearth it. Because justice begins with remembrance.
The author is the head of the research and human rights department of the Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR). She can be contacted at the following email address: mehr_dua@yahoo.com