Srinagar: Chief minister Omar Abdullah has turned the spotlight on the events of Martyrs' Day in Jammu and Kashmir after claiming that the 22 Kashmiri civilians killed by Dogra forces on July 13, 1931 had “laid down their lives against the British”.

Linking the massacre to the Jallianwala Bagh firing incident, Abdullah said that those killed by the army of Dogra monarch Maharaja Hari Singh outside the central jail in Srinagar in 1931 were fighting “against British rule in all its forms”, while regretting that they were “projected as villains only because they were Muslims”.

As his party leadership along with other mainstream leaders and moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq were prevented on Sunday (July 13) from visiting the Mazaar-e-Shuhada (Martyrs' Graveyard) in downtown Srinagar to commemorate Martyrs' Day, Abdullah had said in a post on X that “we may be denied the opportunity to visit their graves today but we will not forget their sacrifices”.

Political analysts and observers in Jammu and Kashmir believe that Abdullah, who is the working president of the National Conference (NC), was distorting what happened on July 13, 1931 for political expediency, given that Dogra rulers command widespread following and respect in the Jammu region.

Others, however, believe that the chief minister was trying to strike a neutral line on the ‘contentious issue’ that has divided Jammu and Kashmir sharply along communal lines in recent years.

Historian Mridu Rai writes that the date’s “emblematic importance drew from the fact that a gathering of Kashmiri Muslims had openly challenged” the Dogra regime for the first time since 1846, when Dogra ruler Gulab Singh bought the region from the British for 7.5 million Nanakshahi rupees.

“Whereas, July 13, 1931 was conspicuously memorialised ever since it was marked by death symbolised as sacrifice, until 1947 it had been annexed to the struggle against the Dogra monarchy. After 1947, it came to be marshalled for quite a different need in Kashmir; that of nation building,” Rai writes in ‘Memorialising Kashmir.’

Rai told The Wire that Abdullah’s statement “strangely divested the Dogra monarchy” of any responsibility “for their many faceted oppression”. “Surely, even Omar Abdullah knows July 13 as a revolt against the Dogra maharaja Hari Singh’s rule. Why is he eliding the criticism of Dogra rule that his grandfather (Sheikh Abdullah) so convincingly made? Is it due to a pact with the Hindu right?” she asked.

History of July 13, 1931

Rekha Chowdhary, senior academic and former professor of political science at the University of Jammu, said that Martyrs' Day was a “contested issue” not only between the ruling party and the BJP-led Union government, but also between the two distinct regions of Jammu and Kashmir.

“There are not only different perspectives in which the day July 13 is viewed but very conflicting ones,” she said.

At an event in Srinagar on June 25, 1931 to elect a representative body of Kashmiri Muslims who had a long list of grievances against the Dogra monarchy, Abdul Qadeer, a cook of a British army major vacationing in Kashmir whose origin remains veiled in mystery, “incit[ed] his hearers to kill Hindus and burn their temples” while urging them to bring down the Dogra king Hari Singh’s palace.

“An unknown entity suddenly appears on the political scene, intrudes in a meeting of Kashmiris, delivers a lecture calling for violence. ‘Eent se eent baja do’ (raze to the ground) was what he said, pointing his finger towards Hari Singh's palace,” Ashiq Hussain, a Srinagar-based political analyst, said.

Much to the dismay of Kashmiris, Qadeer was promptly arrested and booked for sedition. Rai notes that his arrest shook Kashmir. As his trial was underway at the Srinagar central jail on July 13 that year, thousands of Kashmiris gathered outside the jail, with some determined ones attempting to enter the penitentiary.

In his book Inside Kashmir, Kashmiri Pandit scholar and politician Prem Nath Bazaz writes about how widespread discontent among the Muslim population of Jammu and Kashmir against the Hari Singh's tyrannical policies acted as the “driving force” for the agitation that broke out at the Srinagar central jail.

“The attack on the jail was in no way directed against the Hindus, and those who laid down their lives at the jail gate did so fighting against an unsympathetic government … It was a fight of the tyrannised against their tyrants, of the oppressed against the oppressors,” Bazaz, who has criticised “Dogra imperialism” in his works, writes.

Political expediency

Jammu-based political analyst and editor Zafar Choudhary said that what happened on Martyrs' Day was a political reaction “entirely with relation to the regime of the day, which is the Dogra authorities”.

“There is no other way to understand the event and the subsequent political process. In fact the Dogras have over the decades blamed the British for instigating Kashmiris against Hari Singh,” he said.

Chowdhary of the University of Jammu said that Abdullah was seemingly trying to “chalk a neutral line” by linking July 13 with the British. “He is certainly in an unenviable situation, caught between his Kashmiri constituency and the implications of his political response for Jammu on the one hand and Delhi on the other. Of all the issues that can be seen to be controversial and conflicting – this is the most difficult one,” she said.

Hussain said that Abdullah was trying to “ensure his political existence” after allegedly failing to deliver on his party’s promises made in its election manifesto, such as the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir's statehood. “His gimmicks have turned to dust, thanks to the BJP. Now he is trying to frighten them,” he said.

He said that Abdullah’s grandfather and NC founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah explicitly states in his autobiography Aatash-e-Chinar that he had forbidden those people who his grandson is now eulogising from assembling at the jail on the fateful day of July 13, 1931.

Choudhary said that Abdullah appears to have “chosen not to sound offensive to his ideological rivals” and that he “apparently wants to keep the constituency of political hostility to him at its minimum”.

With his hands tied even after assuming office as chief minister, Abdullah has stuck to his conciliatory approach towards the Union government, especially on the question of the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir's statehood, which has earned him brickbats from the opposition.

“To say that Kashmiris fought against British paramountcy is the distortion of history in a possible bid to keep the Dogras in good humour. However, the BJP, which enjoys a sweeping electoral mandate from the Dogra heartland, minces no words in calling the martyrs of 1931 as rioters and criminal thugs,” Choudhary said.

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