A recent discussion with my friends on the Kashmir issue brought in the question: What should be considered a more authentic source for facts, fiction, or history?
A passing remark was made about the Jammu Massacre, a lesser-known and almost never-talked-about incident. Fiction is kind of a disguise under which a writer is relatively free to express their views; at the same time, it evades the scrutiny of the state, which applies strictly to history.
People often dismiss fiction as a non-serious work, but the “fact” again is that history also is as fabricated, if not more, than fiction.
If it were not the case, Salman Rushdie would not have been issued a fatwa for writing The Satanic Verses, and Indian professors would not have been arrested for reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
Indian history celebrates 15th August as its Independence Day. But the reality of the Partition, the pain, and trauma faced by lakhs of people forced to forsake their homes and their identities overnight, is recorded only in fiction.
Be it Amrita Pritam, Saadat Hasan Manto, Khushwant Singh or Amitav Ghosh, to name a few, depict the ground reality: the pain of separation of a community which had much in common.
But what struck me is the fact that the Jammu Massacre is not at all talked about. The Kashmir issue is bound to bring up a discussion on the mass exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley, which is used by the so-called nationalists to justify all violence perpetrated by the Indian Army on the Kashmiri Muslims, but that the Muslims in Jammu faced the same situation like that faced by the Punjabi Muslims in 1947, is never discussed.
I wonder whether there ever will be the right time, now in this Islamophobic era, or the coming years, to deliberate on the Jammu Massacre, in which more than two lakh Muslims were killed by the paramilitary forces of the Dogra regime in November 1947, after a short warning to relocate in the Islamic state of Pakistan.
Given here is a link to Al-Jazeera’s report about the Jammu Massacre, which is a must-read. Kindly share your views in the comment section below about what you think about contemporary politics. Do read these other reports too. Please note I have avoided repeating the facts that can be easily accessed through these links.
- 1947 Jammu massacres
- Jammu Massacre: A forgotten story of how over 2 lakh Muslims were killed in Jammu, which led to Kashmir issue
- The Massacre That Widened the Communal Gap