No single event has shaped the uncertainty of the future that the people of Jammu & Kashmir uncomfortably and hesitantly peek out towards than those unfolded on 22 October 1947. The inter-religious violence that occurred in Jammu and Kashmir against the backdrop of the 1947 Partition of India and its aftermaths included a possible ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Muslims of Jammu. One million Kashmiri Muslim refugees were uprooted and an estimated 250000-300000 were massacred in the Jammu region alone in August-October 1947.

To quote a 10 August 1948 report published in The Times, London: “237000 Muslims were systematically exterminated unless they escaped to Pakistan along the border by the forces of the Dogra State headed by the Maharaja in person and aided by Hindus and Sikhs. This happened in October 1947, five days before the Pathan invasion and nine days before the Maharaja’s accession to India.” Reportedly, as a result of the massacre/migration, Muslims who were a majority (61 per cent) in the Jammu region became a minority instantly. There is also an article by Horace Alexander written on 16 January 1948 in The Spectator. Alexander put the number of Muslims killed in Jammu at 200,000.

A humanitarian crisis of such colossal magnitude should never have been forgotten in the manner in which it has been for political purposes. India in cahoots with the so-called mainstream politicians of the State have largely succeeded in suppressing the chilling details of a Muslim massacre in Jammu while selling the idea of ‘unity in diversity’ and ‘secularism’ to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Jammu massacre of October 1947 and large-scale migration of Muslims from areas of Pir Panjal and the Chenab Valley (Poonch, Udhampur and Bhaderwah) to the other side (Azad Jammu and Kashmir) drastically changed the demographics and reduced a Muslim-majority (then 61 per cent) Jammu province to a Hindu-majority region. Several thousands of Muslims were loaded in about sixty lorries in the first batch to flee to Sialkot. The Dogra troops escorted the buses but the RSS volunteers were already positioned near Chattha in the outskirts of the Jammu city to kill them.

The first realization was that this calamity is also fraught with certain sense of gendered calamity. There is no denial that uncanny violence sponged off the majority population, but a blanket of silence descends upon the cases of abduction and rape. After the Muslim neighborhoods had turned into ghost towns overnight, the larger impending crisis was the uncertain fate of the abducted women, torn asunder by that crimson autumn.

Often though, the debate has been dominated by the histories of the Holocaust and the studies of other examples of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Until now, little has been written on the manifestation of genocide at the time of the division of India. For a long time, standard accounts of the 1947 communal violence observe this violence as ‘bloodshed’, ‘slaughter’, ‘mass killings’, ‘massacres’ and the like.