Zafar Sultan
Every year, 6 November is celebrated to honour those tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims from Jammu who were beguiled into in a malicious trap and then massacred in cold blood. Those innocent and clueless Muslims, who were promised by Indians to facilitate their migration to their other homePakistan, never saw the day light again. They did not have any idea that gloomy and gory fate awaited them; those hapless Kashmiri Muslims: old, young, children and women were slayed by the Indian army and RSS. Other than vicious butchery of the RSS, thousands of young girls were raped and disfigured afterwards. The daughter of Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas, a noted Muslim leader, was also kidnapped during the mass carnage, and later retrieved after the efforts of Sheikh Abdullah.
To add to agonies of ailing Muslims, the doctors at the Government Hospital in Jammu, were strictly directed not to treat the wounded Muslims. So every effort had been made to inflict more excruciating agonies on the injured and axed Muslims. The sheer bedlam that ensued is perhaps not hard to write about but certainly too distressing to envisage. Allama Iqbal woefully mourned those moments. Ye Ghari Mehshar Ki Hai, TuArsaayMehshar Mein Hai (This moment is the Day of Judgment; you are in the field of Judgments Day!).
Despite passage of seventy some years, the souls of those martyrs havent been solaced, for neither the sacrifices of Jammu have been heeded to, nor independence has dawned in Kashmir. In fact, the plight of Kashmiris has aggravated and their woes worsened further. Jammu massacre offers some significant connections, with the present state of affairs in Kashmir and Pakistan .
The gory incidents of Jammu cry for certain actions and explanations. Despondently, this year the government in Muzaffarabad and Islamabad, have displayed uncanny indifference to highlight severity and significance of this fateful day. The official holiday in Azad Kashmir marks certain cosmetic rallies and clichéd speeches and rhetoric. Equally disturbing is the appalling indifference of media to this grave issue. Hence, there is small surprise that majority of our masses, especially our youth, seem to be having little or no knowledge of the massacre, most foul, which was unleashed at such a massive scale.
This day also bags some other pertinent questions.When Kashmiris in Jammu were ensnared, by the RSS marauders under patronage of the Indian army, here in Pakistan a significant step was taken by Sir Zafarullah Khan. Sir Zafarullah formulated Al-Furqan Brigade and assigned the responsibility of training locally recruited jawans to 16 Punjab Regiment, which was stationed at Sialkot. It’s apropos to mention here that 16 Punjab Regiment was principally a skeleton regiment, not a regular army regiment, with only a few officers and jawans. Subsequently, the Al- Furqan Brigade was equipped with weapons and basic combat skills and directed to Jammu border to assist and recue the Muslims trapped at Jammu.
Nevertheless, it is deeply saddening not to find any mention of Al- Furqan Brigade in annals of the history. The entombed Muslims kept on waiting for assistance of Al -Furqan Brigade, stationed merely around 12 Kilometres from the area where chilling butchery took place in Jammu. But that direly needed help never reached them. Why did Al-Furqan Brigade not discharge its duties: to guard and guide the strangled Muslims in Jammu to Pakistan? Where did all those weapons which were with Al-.Furqan Brigade disappear? Why did the authorities not conduct an inquiry to ascertain the role of Al- Furqan Brigade and its failure to perform the assigned duty .These questions would keep on haunting the historians and urging the students of history to discover their answers.
The plight of people of Kashmir has been compounded further, since BJP is in power, it is advancing barbaric agenda of its forefathers with impunity. The brutalities of more than one million Indian military and paramilitary forces have unleashed a macabre of bloodbath, more brutal, more callous.
However, the resilience of Kashmiri people has not subsided. In fact a new spirit has been infused into this freedom struggle.The 6 November calls for some very urgent and concrete measures steps from Islamabad and Muzaffarabad. The first step is to unfurl some bitter pages of history to orient our youth with untaught chapters. Those martyrs of Jammu should not be forgotten too soon. The current in Kashmir struggle owes a great deal to those unsung sacrificers and dwellers of unknown graves in Jammu.
The global community, which is condemning the genocidal assault of Israel in Ghaza, should realise that the RSS also believes in genocide and elimination of Muslims from Jammu and Kashmir. In fact the RSS is already working on the Israeli model and it wouldnt hesitate to achieve its unholy goals, even treading on skeletons of the Kashmiris. Can people in Pakistan, Azad Kashmir and Pakistani diaspora in Europe and elsewhere, afford any more deafening silence?
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