Talk:Rajouri district

Massacre

I notice that the figure of 30,000 people massacred at Rajouri is being questioned. However, numerous sources give that number.

When the rebels and raiders took control of the country side, all the non-Muslims from the regions took shelter in the garrison towns. At the better-documented case of Mirpur, there were 25,000 non-Muslims when the town was attacked and Poonch had 40,000 refugees when it was rescued. The figure of 30,000 for Rajouri is comparable. There is no off-hand reason to doubt it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:34, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Mirpur's case is documented by historians and other independent sources also. My only concern is that all sources that give the figure of 30,000 in Rajouri are from Indian military. I didn't come across any independent source that gave this figure. One more problem is, all sources seem to use an almost similar wording, which suggests that all are reproducing the claim from only one writer's account. Some have even changed the wording 30,000 Hindus were killed, wounded or abducted to 30,000 of its(Rajouri's) inhabitants slaughtered and its women subjected to barbaric brutality (no wounded mentioned) !

However the other user @Kahrori: first objected to that content, and I just refined his earlier tag, which was put as direct text in the passage. So he has to say what his exact concern was. --- TylerDurden10 (talk) 22:17, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, you only know of one "historian" that mentioned Mirpur, that too in a superficial way. Normal historians tend to cover political history and ignore military history. Military history is generally done by military people themselves, or by security specialists if there are any. The 1947 war was covered in India by military people, quite extensively (serveral dozen books on it).

The 30,000 would have been an estimate. I doubt if they dug out the dead bodies to count them. The original source for the information appears to be this one:

• Prasad, Sri Nandan; Pal, Dharm (1987), Operations in Jammu & Kashmir, 1947-48, History Division, Ministry of Defence, Government of India, pp. 49–50

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:51, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

For Mirpur, we have a survivor of non-Muslim "concentration camp", Bal K. Gupta's account. That aside, anyway the original source you mentioned seems quite neutral. The number of non-Muslims killed, wounded and abducted was reported to be 30,000 is a much balanced wording. However, since I didn't know where it came from, if the content was taken from a military source which uses a dramatic & sensational wording like Bhattacharya, its not unfair to doubt that the estimate was pulled out of thin air, for an exaggeration or propaganda. So you can't be too hard on me, saying "I doubt if they dug out the dead bodies to count them". I didn't ask if they did. An editor of so high experience as yours, shouldn't say information like these cannot be questioned for cross-verification. Cheers! --- TylerDurden10 (talk) 01:06, 3 April 2017 (UTC)