It is estimated that 50,000 Muslims have migrated to the West Punjab, while nearly 50,000 [sic] Muslims start towards Pakistan every day. Although the report did not explain why Muslims were leaving, one reason almost certainly was the unsettled conditions prevailing. Another was a possible ‘impending’ famine (which also would have affected non-Muslims), although in early October CMG reported there was ‘No Imminent Danger of Famine’ in J&K. A further reason may have been that displaced Muslims from outside J&K were traversing the state going from India to Pakistan.
From 19 October 1947, CMG began regularly reporting incidents of violence against Jammu Muslims, particularly in Poonch. Initially, these were based on press releases or communiqu?s from pro-Pakistan sources such as the Muslim Conference or the Pakistan Government. (Concurrently, the J&K Government was accusing Pakistan of sponsoring unrest in J&K, an allegation Pakistan ‘emphatically and categorically’ denied.) On 26 October 1947, the first report from a source not obviously pro-Pakistan appeared on CMG’s front page. Quoting ‘latest messages’, it stated that ‘The exodus of Muslims from Kashmir State [sic] as a result of recurring attacks by Dogra troops continues apace’, with some 5,000 Muslims entering Pakistan on 23 and 24 October. The report appeared under a headline querying whether there was a ‘Pogrom Against Kashmir Muslims?’.
It detailed an interview given by the former editor of the Kashmir Times, G.K. Reddy, who had left Srinagar in mid-October after being exiled from J&K for advocating its accession to Pakistan. (While disenchanted with the Maharaja and his regime, he was not necessarily disenchanted with Pakistan or India.) After leaving Srinagar, Reddy was detained for ten days at Domel, the customs point on the Jhelum Valley Road located near Muzaffarabad town. After that, he was ‘secretly removed under military escort’ to Kathua and expelled. Reddy arrived in Lahore on Sunday 26 October. When interviewed about his experiences in ‘the disturbed areas of Jammu’, he related that he had seen a ‘mad orgy of Dogra violence against unarmed Muslims [that] should put any self-respecting human being to shame’. This included seeing ‘armed bands of ruffians and soldiers shooting down and hacking to pieces helpless Muslims refugees heading towards Pakistan’; watching officials and military officers ‘directing a huge armed mob against a Muslim refugee convoy [that it] hacked to pieces’; and, in Jammu City, counting ‘as many as twenty-four villages burning one night [while] all through the night rattling fire of automatic weapons could be heard from the surrounding refugee camps’. Reddy concluded by warning the J&K Government that ‘by such methods of mass murder they [sic] cannot alter the population scales of the State’.
From around the beginning of November, press reports of violence against Muslims in Jammu largely, but not totally, disappeared. The reason for this was simple: most news was about the high profile tribal invasion of J&K. Reporting then increasingly dealt with the political, diplomatic and military battle between pro-Pakistan and Indian forces in, and for, J&K.
On 21 November, CMG reported that a party of (unnamed) Englishmen, after interviewing 200 wounded refugees in Sialkot, was ‘convinced that there has been a disgraceful massacre of Muslims in Jammu’. On 26 November, The New York Times stated that Jammu had been ‘the scene of massacres against Mohammedans’ in retaliation for Hindu and Sikh deaths in West Punjab.
On 18 December 1947, CMG published a detailed account, possibly officially sanctioned, by the above-mentioned Englishmen about anti-Muslim activity in Jammu Province in previous months, including attacks against police and women. This provided the most credible, useful and significant account to date.
The Englishmen, possibly pacifist Quakers and seemingly not ideologically driven, had visited Jammu Province recently and interrogated Muslim refugees and officials. Their subsequent report was considered a ‘factual report jointly submitted by two foreigners who … were commissioned for this purpose by the Governments of India and Pakistan’. It provided comprehensive information about anti-Muslim violence in Jammu Province in 1947.
The Englishmen detailed ten separate violent incidents that had occurred between the beginning of October and 9 November. Some suggested official complicity. Six of the incidents took place before Maharaja Hari Singh acceded to India, meaning that his government was solely responsible—and largely culpable. The other four incidents
took place after the accession, but before the Maharaja began to share power in Jammu Province with Sheikh Abdullah’s Emergency Administration instigated in late October 1947 and initially restricted to the Kashmir Valley. When Abdullah visited Jammu on 16 November, the ongoing violence there inspired him to take five ‘emergency advisers’ to ‘create confidence among Muslims’.
Of the seven specific incidents of anti-Muslim violence that the Englishmen alleged, all but two involved a massive loss of Muslim lives. —-
