After the ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India in October 1947 amid a tribal invasion from Pakistan, India and Pakistan fought their first war over the territory. A UN-brokered ceasefire in January 1949 established a ceasefire line dividing the state into Indian- and Pakistani-administered portions, later formalized as the Line of Control. The war and its aftermath displaced several hundred thousand people, including Muslims fleeing Jammu toward Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs fleeing toward India. The dispute over Kashmir's final status remains unresolved and has triggered further wars in 1965 and 1999.
India and Pakistan fought over the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir following its disputed accession to India; a UN-mediated ceasefire divided the territory
The 1941 census of India counted 4,021,616 people in the princely state, about 77 per cent Muslim. The 1947-49 war divided the state along what became the ceasefire line and then the Line of Control; estimates of those displaced across it, together with the killings in Jammu province in autumn 1947, run to several hundred thousand, with figures for the Jammu massacres alone ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 dead.
Most of the range is not battlefield deaths but the communal killing of Muslims in Jammu in autumn 1947, for which Christopher Snedden gives 20,000-100,000, Justice Yusuf Saraf 20,000-30,000, an early Pakistani headcount 50,000, a joint Indian-Pakistani investigation by two English observers about 70,000, Ian Copland about 80,000 and the journalist Ved Bhasin about 100,000; Ian Stephens's claim of 500,000 'eliminated' is regarded by Copland as dubious, and The Times's 1948 figure of 237,000 conflated deaths with flight to Pakistan. Combat deaths in the 1947-49 war are conventionally put at roughly 7,500 across both armies and the tribal lashkars. Indian accounts tend toward the lower Jammu figures and Pakistani accounts toward the higher; no forensic count was ever made, and 200,000-334,000 Muslims fled to Pakistan, which makes deaths and departures hard to separate.
The 1947 Jammu massacres are documented by Christopher Snedden, Ian Copland and Ved Bhasin and by the joint Indian-Pakistani investigation conducted by two English observers in late 1947, though their estimates of the toll differ by an order of magnitude.
India, Pakistan