TRACING THE ROOTS OF JAMMU MASSACRE AND ITS IMPACTS ON THE PRINCELY STATE OF JAMMU AND KASHMIR

The Jammu massacre of October November 1947 is a critically overlooked episode of South Asian Partition violence. Unlike the widely studied Punjab and Bengal massacres, this targeted killing of Muslims in Jammu remains neglected in official and nationalist accounts.Drawing on archival documents, British administrative files, newspapers and survivor testimonies, this paper argues that the massacre, which claimed nearly 200,000 Muslim lives and displaced around 300,000, was a state-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaign, not an isolated event. The Dogra regimes disarmament of Muslims alongside arming Sikh and Hindu militants fueled communal tensions, enabling large-scale atrocities. The paper situates the Jammu violence within the broader context of the Rawalpindi massacres and the geopolitical shifts of the time, revealing how ethnic engineering reshaped Jammu and Kashmirs political landscape. By challenging dominant narratives, this study highlights the massacres strategic motives and its enduring impact on the Kashmir conflict,bringing marginalized experiences to the forefront