Seventy-eight years ago this week, the hills of Jammu ran red. In the autumn of 1947, as the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan, a horrifying tragedy was unfolding in the scenic valley of Jammu as tens of thousands of Muslims were massacred over a matter of weeks.

The killings, carried out by Hindu and Sikh militias with the complicity of the then-Kashmir’s Dogra Maharaja’s forces, were not spontaneous riots born of Partition’s chaos. They were organised, deliberate, and aimed at cleansing the region of its Muslim population. Caravans of families attempting to cross into Pakistan for safety were ambushed and slaughtered. Villages were torched.

Archival estimates even suggest astonishing losses – one analysis of Maharaja-era records claims some 237,000 Muslim victims were “systematically exterminated” by Dogra forces and their Hindu and Sikh auxiliaries. By the time the violence subsided, nearly half a million Muslims had fled their homes. It was a demographic transformation that reshaped Jammu’s identity forever. Muslims, who constituted 61% of the total population, were reduced to a minority.

Historians who chronicled the events including the late Kashmiri editor Ved Bhasin called it what it was: a state-sponsored genocide. Mahatma Gandhi himself lamented that Muslims in Jammu had been killed by Hindus and Sikhs of Jammu, and those who had gone there from the outside. A Kashmiri scholar explains that the goal of such genocide was explicit: “if they (India) lose the state of Kashmir, at least they should get Jammu” by ensuring a Hindu majority.

The 1948 UN Convention defines genocide as acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Here, a religious community (Muslims) was targeted for elimination.........

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