After 15 August 1947, pro-Pakistan and pro-Indian elements in Jammu Province engaged in considerable violence. Much of this was not widely reported, even though the violence in Jammu may have been worse than in Punjab, where perhaps up to one million people were killed. There were two reasons for this lack of reporting. First, communications to and from J&K were disrupted by events in newly-divided Punjab. Second, sub-continental attention was focused on the well-reported communal events occurring in Punjab, or Bengal.

In relation to J&K, attention was focused on Kashmir Province, particularly Srinagar, and not Jammu Province. Maharaja Hari Singh was residing in J&K’s summer capital pondering his accession; many political leaders were in jail there. Reporting was easier from Kashmir Province also because of its compactness, better roads, and communications with metropolitan India, particularly via the all-weather Jhelum Valley Road.

Another reason why the Jammu events were poorly reported in 1947 was that the Maharaja’s government suppressed, adulterated or hindered news collection and reporting activities. Hari Singh’s administration was waging a ‘ceaseless war against newspapers and Journalists [sic] that [we]re in favour of Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan’. By 7 October, it had imposed ‘rigorous pre-censorship on all news and views’ published in at least four ‘leading’ local newspapers; it had banned the entry of four daily newspapers from West Punjab, and forced the ‘Muslim “Kashmir Times” to cease publication’ after instructing its editor ‘not to publish matter advocating Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan’. The newspaper suspended publication in protest. In early October, the Maharaja’s government interned the correspondent for Associated Press of India (API), a major source of news about J&K.

Maharaja Hari Singh
Maharaja Hari Singh

Significant inter-religious violence took place in Jammu Province in 1947. Pro-Indian Hindus and Sikhs murdered and harmed Muslims; pro-Pakistan Muslims harmed and murdered Hindus and Sikhs. Although Indians and Pakistanis have largely ignored this violence, the evidence below suggests that non-Muslims killed large numbers of Muslims in Jammu around October 1947. Equally, many Jammu Muslims fled to safer areas nearby in Pakistan or to western areas of Jammu Province controlled by pro-Pakistan Poonchis and Mirpuris. There were about half a million such Muslim refugees. Conversely, Muslims killed many Hindus and Sikhs in other parts of Jammu Province and in the Muzaffarabad District of Kashmir Province. Many non-Muslims also fled to safe areas in J&K where their community was in the majority, or to India. The inter-religious violence discussed below received little attention in 1947, although it was a significant precursor to the Pukhtoon invasion.

Anti-Pakistani and pro-Indian elements in J&K were responsible for the killing of Muslims in J&K. These included: Maharaja Hari Singh and some members of his predominantly non-Muslim armed forces; local Hindus, including right-wing RSS members and Hindus and Sikhs displaced from other parts of J&K.

Some of these non-Muslim refugee arrivals were ‘victims of frenzied savagery’. Equally frenzied, they took revenge, or inspired others to take revenge on Jammu Muslims, particularly those more vulnerable because they lived in Hindu-majority areas in eastern Jammu Province. A further motive to attack people in these turbulent and lawless times was the opportunity to loot, pillage and accrue booty.

A more objective source is UNCIP’s 1949 Report of the Sub-committee on Western Kashmir. It stated that ‘Many of the Muslim refugees have lively recollections of the Jammu massacres of November 1947’. Buried deep in the report was mention of a zaildar (revenue collector) who informed UNCIP that ‘on 20th of October 1947, he heard the Maharajah, while visiting [Bhimber] tehsil, give orders that the Muslims were to be exterminated and had seen His Highness shooting two or three’. While these two occurrences in the UNCIP report were significant, the report was after the event and not for public consumption.

Newspaper coverage of anti-Muslim activity in Jammu Province began as early as 26 September 1947. On this day, CMG carried an isolated, but startling, API report headlined ‘Exodus of Muslims from Jammu’. It stated that ‘Jammu will almost be free of Muslims if the present speed of evacuation continues unchecked. —

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