From Blood to Bureaucracy: How a 1947 Massacre Became a Modern State Policy

The Jammu Massacre of 1947 was not a spontaneous outbreak of communal violence; it was an organized and state-sponsored operation designed to alter the demography of a Muslim-majority region. Under the Dogra ruler Maharaja Hari Singh, and with the direct involvement of extremist militias from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Hindu Sabha, Akali Dal, and Patiala forces, tens of thousands of Muslims in Jammu were killed, expelled, or disappeared within weeks. Contemporary accounts, such as those by Horace Alexander in ‘The Spectator’ and Ian Stephens in ‘The Statesman’, confirm that these atrocities took place with the “tacit consent of State authority.”

For international law, the Jammu Massacre constitutes more than a tragic historical event. It meets the criteria of ‘crimes against humanity’ under the 1945 Nuremberg Charter and, after India’s military intervention in Jammu and Kashmir on 27 October 1947, also qualifies as ‘war crimes’ under international humanitarian law. The purpose was clear: to convert a Muslim-majority area into a Hindu-dominated region before any plebiscite could determine its political future. The international community’s failure to investigate or prosecute those responsible created a precedent of impunity that still shapes South Asia’s security environment.

What began with blood in 1947 has since evolved into bureaucracy. The violent demographic engineering of the past has been replaced by administrative and legislative instruments aimed at achieving the same objective. The abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A of the Indian Constitution on 5 August 2019 marked a decisive moment in this transition. Those provisions had preserved limited autonomy and protected the demographic composition of Jammu and Kashmir. Their removal opened the way for non-residents to purchase land and obtain domicile rights in what is now referred to as Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K).

This shift from overt violence to bureaucratic control represents a sophisticated form of modern statecraft. It allows an occupying power to pursue colonization under the veneer of legality and governance. The new domicile rules, land reforms, and administrative reorganizations are not benign reforms; they are instruments of demographic transformation. In defense and strategic studies, such actions fit the definition of “hybrid warfare” using legal, economic, and information tools to consolidate political control over a contested territory.

The pattern is unmistakable. Where the Jammu Massacre used rifles and convoys, today’s system uses property laws, communication blackouts, and counterterrorism legislation. The tools differ, but the intent remains constant: to neutralize the indigenous population’s political identity and suppress its right to self-determination. The international silence that followed the 1947 massacre made such policies possible.

The United Nations passed several resolutions affirming that Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory and guaranteeing its people the right to choose their political status through a plebiscite. Those resolutions remain unimplemented. The absence of accountability for the original massacre emboldened subsequent governments in New Delhi to act without fear of consequence. The world’s passivity in the face of these violations has converted moral outrage into diplomatic convenience.

For Pakistan, the Jammu Massacre is not merely an episode of history but the root of a continuing geopolitical dispute. Islamabad has long argued that the international community’s indifference has sustained a system of occupation. As a principal party to the conflict, Pakistan carries both a moral and strategic responsibility to ensure that these crimes are documented, legally analyzed, and presented in global forums. The facts of 1947 mass murder, forced displacement, and state collusion form the legal foundation for demanding justice for today’s victims in IIOJ&K.

The human-rights situation in the occupied region demonstrates the persistence of this historical design. Since 2019, Kashmir has witnessed mass detentions, curfews, digital censorship, and an unprecedented military presence. Thousands have been arrested under repressive laws. Land is being reallocated to outsiders, and employment quotas now favor non-locals. Each of these measures erodes the region’s Muslim-majority character and consolidates administrative occupation. In the vocabulary of international relations, this is demographic securitization, the use of population control as a tool of national security policy.

Seventy-eight years after the Jammu Massacre, its shadow continues to shape South Asia’s strategic environment. The lack of historical accountability undermines prospects for peace and perpetuates mistrust between India and Pakistan. Sustainable stability in the region will remain impossible until the crimes of 1947 are recognized as crimes against humanity and the people of IIOJ&K are granted the right to self-determination promised by international law.

Recent geopolitical developments have added further complexity. The signing of a new ten-year defense framework between the United States and India has strengthened India’s military posture across South Asia and the Indo-Pacific. While framed as a partnership for regional security, such agreements risk emboldening India’s domestic assertiveness and reinforcing its occupation policies in IIOJ&K. Enhanced defense cooperation, combined with the absence of human-rights conditionality, may further narrow the space for dialogue and accountability.

If the international community continues to ignore these developments, the transformation of Jammu’s 1947 violence into Kashmir’s 2025 bureaucracy will stand as one of the clearest examples of how impunity evolves. Justice is not a sentimental demand; it is a strategic necessity. A conflict left unresolved for nearly eight decades cannot be managed by military power or administrative decrees. It requires recognition of historical wrongs, restoration of political rights, and implementation of the UN-mandated plebiscite.

From blood to bureaucracy, the trajectory of Jammu and Kashmir reveals how violence, when unpunished, can reinvent itself as governance. The world’s silence after the massacre became its complicity; its continued silence today risks making that complicity permanent. If the principles of justice and self-determination are to retain meaning, the people of IIOJ&K deserve more than sympathy, they deserve the rights that were promised to them in 1947 and denied ever since.

The writer is a Research Associate at the Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR) internship program and the founder of HEAL Pakistan, an initiative focused on education, empowerment, awareness, and leadership. He can be reached at habibmail.1947@gmail.com.