Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus

Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus
Political map of the disputed Kashmir region, showing the Indian-administered Kashmir Valley or Vale of Kashmir from which a large proportion of Hindus have migrated out
DateEarly 1990.[1][2]
LocationKashmir Valley, Indian-administered Kashmir
Coordinates34°02′00″N 74°40′00″E / 34.0333°N 74.6667°E / 34.0333; 74.6667
Outcome
  • 90,000–100,000 Pandits of an estimated population of 120,000–140,000 fled the Valley between January and March 1990, according to several scholarly estimates.[3][4][5][6][7]
  • Other scholars have suggested a higher figure of approximately 150,000 for the exodus.[8][9][note 1]
Deaths
  • 30–80 Kashmiri Pandits had been killed by insurgents by mid-year 1990 when the exodus was largely complete, according to several scholars.[7][12][13]
  • Indian Home Ministry data records 217 Hindus civilians fatalities during the four-year period, 1988 to 1991;[14] another scholar estimates 228 Pandit civilian fatalities.[15] Government of Jammu and Kashmir recorded 219 Pandit fatalities between 1989 and 2004.[16][17]

The Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus,[note 2] or Pandits, is their early-1990[1][2] migration,[19] or flight,[20] from the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley in Indian-administered Kashmir following rising violence in an insurgency. Of a total Pandit population of 120,000–140,000 some 90,000–100,000 left the valley[3][5][4][7] or felt compelled to leave by the middle of 1990,[21][note 3] by which time about 30–80 of them are said to have been killed by militants.[7][12][13]

During the period of substantial migration, the insurgency was being led by a group calling for a secular and independent Kashmir, but there were also growing Islamist factions demanding an Islamic state.[24][25][26] Although their numbers of dead and injured were low,[27] the Pandits, who believed that Kashmir's culture was tied to India's,[6][28] experienced fear and panic set off by targeted killings of some members of their community—including high-profile officials among their ranks—and public calls for independence among the insurgents.[29] The accompanying rumours and uncertainty together with the absence of guarantees for their safety by the state government might have been the latent causes of the exodus.[30][31] The descriptions of the violence as "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" in some Hindu nationalist publications or among suspicions voiced by some exiled Pandits are widely considered inaccurate and aggressive by scholars.[32][33][34][35]

The reasons for this migration are vigorously contested. In 1989–1990, as calls by Kashmiri Muslims for independence from India gathered pace, many Kashmiri Pandits, who viewed self-determination to be anti-national, felt under pressure.[36] The killings in the 1990s of a number of Pandit officials, may have shaken the community's sense of security, although it is thought some Pandits—by virtue of their evidence given later in Indian courts—may have acted as agents of the Indian state.[37] The Pandits killed in targeted assassinations by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) included some high-profile ones.[38] Occasional anti Hindu calls were made from mosques on loudspeakers asking Pandits to leave the valley.[39][40] News of threatening letters created fear,[41] though in later interviews the letters were seen to have been sparingly received.[42] There were disparities between the accounts of the two communities, the Muslims and the Pandits.[43] Many Kashmiri Pandits believed they were forced out of the Valley either by Pakistan and the militants it supported or the Kashmiri Muslims as a group.[44] Many Kashmiri Muslims did not support violence against religious minorities; the departure of the Kashmiri Pandits offered an excuse for casting Kashmiri Muslims as Islamic radicals,[45] thereby contaminating their more genuine political grievances,[46] and offering a rationale for their surveillance and violent treatment by the Indian state.[47] Many Muslims in the Valley believed that the then Governor, Jagmohan had encouraged the Pandits to leave so as to have a free hand in more thoroughly pursuing reprisals against Muslims.[48][49] Several scholarly views chalk up the migration to genuine panic among the Pandits that stemmed as much from the religious vehemence among some of the insurgents as by the absence of guarantees for the Pandits' safety issued by the Governor.[26][50]

Kashmiri Pandits initially moved to the Jammu Division, the southern half of Jammu and Kashmir, where they lived in refugee camps, sometimes in unkempt and unclean surroundings. At the time of their exodus, very few Pandits expected their exile to last beyond a few months.[51] As the exile lasted longer, many displaced Pandits who were in the urban elite were able to find jobs in other parts of India, but those in the lower-middle-class, especially those from rural areas languished longer in refugee camps, with some living in poverty; this generated tensions with the host communities—whose social and religious practices, although Hindu, differed from those of the brahmin Pandits—and rendered assimilation more difficult.[52] Many displaced Pandits in the camps succumbed to emotional depression and a sense of helplessness.[53] The cause of the Kashmiri Pandits was quickly championed by right-wing Hindu groups in India,[54] which also preyed on their insecurities and further alienated them from Kashmiri Muslims.[55] Some displaced Kashmiri Pandits have formed an organization called Panun Kashmir ("Our own Kashmir"), which has asked for a separate homeland for Kashmiri Hindus in the Valley but has opposed autonomy for Kashmir on the grounds that it would promote the formation of an Islamic state.[56] The return to the homeland in Kashmir also constitutes one of the main points of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's election platform.[57][note 4] Although discussions between the Pandits and the Muslims have been hampered by the insistence on the part of each of their deprivation, and a rejection of the other's suffering, the Pandits who have left Kashmir have felt separated and obliterated.[58] Kashmiri Pandits in exile have written autobiographical memoirs, novels, and poetry to record their experiences and to understand them.[59] 19 January is observed by the Kashmiri Hindu communities as Exodus Day.[60][61]

  1. ^ a b
    • Bose, Sumantra (2021), Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-century conflict, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 373, ISBN 978-0-300-25687-1, Some Pandits constituted a privileged class under the princely state (1846–1947). When insurrection engulfed the Valley in early 1990, approximately 120,000 Pandits lived in the Valley, making up about 3 per cent of the Valley's population. In February–March 1990, the bulk of the Pandits (about 90,000–100,000 people) left the Valley for safety amid incidents of intimidation and sporadic killings of prominent members of the community by Kashmiri Muslim militants; most moved to the southern, Hindu-majority Indian J&K city of Jammu or to Delhi.
    • Rai, Mridu (2021), "Narratives from exile: Kashmiri Pandits and their construction of the past", in Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (eds.), Kashmir and the Future of South Asia, Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, Routledge, pp. 91–115, 106, ISBN 9781000318845, Beginning in January 1990, such large numbers of Kashmiri Pandits – the community of Hindus native to the valley of Kashmir – left their homeland and so precipitously that some have termed their departure an exodus. Indeed, within a few months, nearly 100,000 of the 140,000- strong community had left for neighbouring Jammu, Delhi, and other parts of India and the world.
    • Hussain, Shahla (2021), Kashmir in the Aftermath of the Partition, Cambridge University Press, pp. 320, 321, ISBN 9781108901130, The Counter-narrative of Aazadi: Kashmiri Hindus and Displacement of the Homeland (p. 320) In March 1990, the majority of Kashmiri Hindus left the Valley for "refugee" camps in and outside the Hindu-dominated region of Jammu.
    • Duschinski, Haley (2018), "'Survival Is Now Our Politics': Kashmiri Pandit Community Identity and the Politics of Homeland", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 172–198, 179, ISBN 9781108226127, Although various political stakeholders dispute the number of Kashmiri Pandits who left the Valley at that time, Alexander Evans estimates on the basis of census data and demographic figures that over 1,00,000 left in a few months in early 1990, while 1,60,000 in total left the Valley during the 1990s
    • Gates, Scott; Roy, Kaushik (2016) [2011], Unconventional Warfare in South Asia, 1947 to the Present, Critical Essays on Warfare in South Asia, 1947 to the Present, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 9780754629771, LCCN 2011920454, India's response has been more brutal than ever before. The government's efforts to roll back the insurgency and the militants' armed resolve to "liberate" Kashmir have produced daily deaths. The Muslims constitute a majority of those killed, primarily by India's armed forces but also by armed Muslim militants silencing dissenters in their own community. The number of Hindus killed would have been greater if most of them had not migrated to camps in Jammu and Delhi. Some left after losing kith and kin to Islamic militants, others after receiving death threats, but most departed in utter panic between January and March 1990—simply to preempt death. Of the more than 150,000 Hindus, only a few are left in the valley.
  2. ^ a b
    • Kapur, S. Paul (2007), Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia, Stanford University Press, pp. 102–103, ISBN 978-0-8047-5549-8, When the Kashmir insurgency began, roughly 130,000 to 140,000 Kashmiri Pandits, who are Hindus, lived in Kashmir Valley. By early 1990, in the face of some targeted anti-Pandit attacks and rising overall violence in the region, approximately 100,000 Pandits had fled the valley, many of them ending up in refugee camps in southern Kashmir.
    • Braithwaite, John; D'Costa, Bina (2018), "Recognizing cascades in India and Kashmir", Cacades of violence:War, Crime and Peacebuilding Across South Asia, Australian National University Press, ISBN 9781760461898, ... when the violence surged in early 1990, more than 100,000 Hindus of the valley—known as Kashmiri Pandits—fled their homes, with at least 30 killed in the process.
    • Kumar, Radha; Puri, Ellora (2009), "Jammu and Kashmir: Frameworks for a Settlement", in Kumar, Radha (ed.), Negotiation Peace in Deeply Divided Societies: A Set of Simulations, New Delhi, Los Angeles and London: SAGE Publications, p. 292, ISBN 978-81-7829-882-5, 1990: In January BJP strongman Jagmohan is reappointed Governor. Farooq Abdullah resigns. A large number of unarmed protesters are killed in firing by the Indian troops in separate incidents. 400,000 Kashmiris march to the UN Military Observers Group to demand implementation of the plebiscite resolution. A number of protestors are killed after the police fires at them. A number of prominent Kashmiris are killed by militants, among whom Pandits form a substantial number. Pandits begin to be forced out of the Kashmir valley. The rise of new militant groups, some warnings in anonymous posters and some unexplained killings of innocent members of the community, contribute to an atmosphere of insecurity for the Kashmiri Pandits. Estimated 140,000 Hindus, including the entire Kashmiri Pandit community, flee the valley in March.
    • Hussain, Shahla (2018), "Kashmiri Visions of Freedom", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 89–112, 105, ISBN 9781107181977, In the winter of 1990, the community felt compelled to mass-migrate to Jammu, as the state governor was adamant that in the given circumstances he would not be able to offer protection to the widely dispersed Hindu community. This event created unbridgeable differences between the majority and the minority; each perceived aazadi in a different light.
  3. ^ a b Bose, Sumantra (2021), Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-century conflict, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 373, ISBN 978-0-300-25687-1, Some Pandits constituted a privileged class under the princely state (1846–1947). When insurrection engulfed the Valley in early 1990, approximately 120,000 Pandits lived in the Valley, making up about 3 per cent of the Valley's population. In February–March 1990, the bulk of the Pandits (about 90,000–100,000 people) left the Valley for safety amid incidents of intimidation and sporadic killings of prominent members of the community by Kashmiri Muslim militants; most moved to the southern, Hindu-majority Indian J&K city of Jammu or to Delhi.
  4. ^ a b Kapur, S. Paul (2007), Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia, Stanford University Press, pp. 102–103, ISBN 978-0-8047-5549-8, When the Kashmir insurgency began, roughly 130,000 to 140,000 Kashmiri Pandits, who are Hindus, lived in Kashmir Valley. By early 1990, in the face of some targeted anti-Pandit attacks and rising overall violence in the region, approximately 100,000 Pandits had fled the valley, many of them ending up in refugee camps in southern Kashmir.
  5. ^ a b Rai, Mridu (2021), "Narratives from exile: Kashmiri Pandits and their construction of the past", in Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (eds.), Kashmir and the Future of South Asia, Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, Routledge, pp. 91–115, 106, ISBN 9781000318845, Beginning in January 1990, such large numbers of Kashmiri Pandits – the community of Hindus native to the valley of Kashmir – left their homeland and so precipitously that some have termed their departure an exodus. Indeed, within a few months, nearly 100,000 of the 140,000-strong community had left for neighbouring Jammu, Delhi, and other parts of India and the world. One immediate impetus for this departure in such dramatically large numbers was the inauguration in 1989 of a popularly backed armed Kashmiri insurgency against Indian rule. This insurrection drew support mostly from the Valley's Muslim population. By 2011, the numbers of Pandits remaining in the Valley had dwindled to between 2,700 and 3,400, according to different estimates. An insignificant number have returned.
  6. ^ a b Metcalf, Barbara D.; Metcalf, Thomas R. (2012), A Concise History of Modern India, Cambridge Concise Histories (3 ed.), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 308–309, ISBN 978-1-107-02649-0, The imposition of leaders chosen by the centre, with the manipulation of local elections, and the denial of what Kashmiris felt was a promised autonomy boiled over at last in the militancy of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a movement devoted to political, not religious, objectives. The Hindu Pandits, a small but influential elite community who had secured a favorable position, first under the maharajas and then under the successive Congress governments, and who propagated a distinctive Kashmiri culture that linked them to India, felt under siege as the uprising gathered force. Upwards of 100,000 of them left the state during the early 1990s; their cause was quickly taken up by the Hindu right. As the government sought to locate 'suspects' and weed out Pakistani 'infiltrators', the entire population was subjected to a fierce repression. By the end of the 1990s, the Indian military presence had escalated to approximately one soldier or paramilitary policeman for every five Kashmiris, and some 30,000 people had died in the conflict.
  7. ^ a b c d Braithwaite, John; D'Costa, Bina (2018), "Recognizing cascades in India and Kashmir", Cacades of violence:War, Crime and Peacebuilding Across South Asia, Australian National University Press, ISBN 9781760461898, ... when the violence surged in early 1990, more than 100,000 Hindus of the valley—known as Kashmiri Pandits—fled their homes, with at least 30 killed in the process.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference evans-migration-1990 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference talbot-singh-pandits-exodus-numbers was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Madan 2008, p. 25
  11. ^ "South Asia. India". The World Factbook – Central Intelligence Agency. 21 December 2021.
  12. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference sumantra-bose-mortality was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ a b Joshi, Manoj (1999), The Lost Rebellion, Penguin Books, p. 65, ISBN 978-0-14-027846-0, By the middle of the year some eighty persons had been killed ..., and the fear ... had its effect from the very first killings. Beginning in February, the pandits began streaming out of the valley, and by June some 58,000 families had relocated to camps in Jammu and Delhi.
  14. ^ Swami 2007, p. 175.
  15. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 19–37, 23: "The Indian government figures are set out in its Profile of Terrorist Violence in Jammu & Kashmir (New Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs, March 1998). Between 1988 and 1991, the government claims 228 Hindu civilians were killed. Even if the bulk of government officials and politicians killed over the same period were Hindus and this is added, this figure would increase by a further maximum of 160. Hence the figure of 700 appears deeply unreliable."
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference fp219 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Manzar, Bashir (2013), "Kashmir: A Tale of Two Communities, Cloven", Economic and Political Weekly, XLVIII (30): 177–178, JSTOR 23528003, Official records suggest that 219 Kashmiri Pandits had been killed by militants since 1989.
  18. ^ ""Exodus, n."", Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford University Press, 2021
  19. ^
    • Evans 2002, p. 20(p. 19) The present article is structured as follows. First, it tries to explain what happened to KPs in 1990 and beyond. (p. 20) Examining the fall-out of the mass migration, it then looks at the extremist politics that followed, before concluding with an assessment of the contemporary situation. (p. 22) There is a third possible explanation for what happened in 1990; one that acknowledges the enormity of what took place, but that examines carefully what triggered KP migration: KPs migrated en masse through legitimate fear. (p. 24) While decennial growth rates rose between 1961 and 2001, the same period saw a degree of migration of KPs from Jammu & Kashmir.
    • Zia, Ather (2020), Resisting Disappearnce: Military Occupation and Women's Activism in Kashmir, University of Washington Press, p. 60, ISBN 9780295745008, In the early 1990s the Kashmiri Hindus, known as the Pandits (a 100,000 to 140,000 strong community), migrated en masse from Kashmir to Jammu, Delhi, and other places.
    • Hussain, Shahla (2018), "Kashmiri Visions of Freedom", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 89–112, 105, ISBN 9781107181977, The rise of insurgency in the region created a difficult situation for the Kashmiri Hindu community, which had always taken pride in their Indian identity. Self-determination was not only seen as a communal demand but as a secessionist slogan that threatened the security of the Indian state. The community felt threatened when Kashmiri Muslims under the flag of aazadi openly raised anti-India slogans. The 1989 targeted killings of Kashmiri Hindus who the insurgents believed were acting as Indian intelligence agents heightened those insecurities. In the winter of 1990, the community felt compelled to mass-migrate to Jammu, as the state governor was adamant that in the given circumstances he would not be able to offer protection to the widely dispersed Hindu community.
    • Duschinski, Haley (2014), "Community Identity of Kashmiri Hindus in the United States", Emerging Voices: Experiences of Underrepresented Asian Americans, Rutgers University Press, The mass migration of Kashmiri Hindus from Kashmir Valley began in November 1989 and accelerated in the following months. Every family has its departure story. Many families simply packed their belongings into their cars and left under cover of night, without words of farewell to friends and neighbours. In some cases, wives and children left first, while husbands stayed behind to watch for the situation to improve; in other cases, parents sent their teenage sons away after hearing threats against them, and followed them days or weeks later. Many migrants report that they entrusted their house keys and belongings to the Muslim neighbours or servants and expected to return to their homes after a few weeks. Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus left Kashmir Valley in the span of several months. There are also competing perspectives on the factors that led to the mass migration of Kashmiri Hindus during this period. Kashmiri Hindus describe migration as a forced exodus driven by Islamic fundamendalist elements in Pakistan that spilled across the Line of Control into the Kashmir Valley. They think that Kashmiri Muslims had acted as bystanders to violence by not protecting lives and properties of the vulnerable Hindu community from the militant ... The mass migration, however, was understood differently by the Muslim religious majority in Kashmir. These Kashmiri Muslims, many of whom were committed to the cause of regional independence, believed that Kashmiri Hindus betrayed them by withdrawing their support from the Kashmiri nationalist movement and turning to the government of India for protection at the moment of ... This perspective is supported by claims, articulated by some prominent separatist political leaders, that the Indian government orchestrated the mass migration of the Kashmiri Hindu community in order to have a free hand to crack down on the popular uprising. These competing perspectives gave rise to mutual feelings of suspicion and betrayal—feelings that lingered between Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Hindus and became more entrenched as time continued.
    • Bhatia, Mohita (2020), Rethinking Conflict at the Margins: Dalits and Borderland Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 9, ISBN 9781108883467, Despite witnessing a prolonged spell of insurgency including a few incidents of selective killings, Jammu was still considered to be a relatively safe refuge by the Hindu community of Kashmir, the Pandits. As a minuscule Hindu minority community in the Muslim-majority Kashmir (around 3 per cent of Kashmir's population), they felt more vulnerable and noticeable as insurgency peaked in Kashmir. Lawlessness, uncertainty, political turmoil along with a few target killings of Pandits led to the migration of almost the entire community from the Valley to other parts of the country
    • Bhan, Mona; Misri, Deepti; Zia, Ather (2020), "Relating Otherwise: Forging Critical Solidarities Across the Kashmiri Pandit-Muslim Divide.", Biography, 43 (2): 285–305, doi:10.1353/bio.2020.0030, S2CID 234917696, ...the everyday modes of relating that existed between Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims in the period leading up to the "Migration," as the Pandit departures have come to be called among Kashmiris, both Pandit and Muslim.
    • Duschinski, Haley (2018), "'Survival Is Now Our Politics': Kashmiri Pandit Community Identity and the Politics of Homeland", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 172–198, 178–179, ISBN 9781108226127, The Kashmiri Pandit migration: (p. 178) The onset of the armed phase of the freedom struggle in 1989 was a chaotic and turbulent time in Kashmir (Bose, 2003). Kashmiri Pandits felt an increasing sense of vulnerability
    • Zutshi 2003, p. 318 Quote: "Since a majority of the landlords were Hindu, the (land) reforms (of 1950) led to a mass exodus of Hindus from the state. ... The unsettled nature of Kashmir's accession to India, coupled with the threat of economic and social decline in the face of the land reforms, led to increasing insecurity among the Hindus in Jammu, and among Kashmiri Pandits, 20 per cent of whom had emigrated from the Valley by 1950."
  20. ^
    • Bose, Sumantra (2021), Kashmir at the Crossroads, Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, Yale University Press, pp. 119–120, As insurrection gripped the Kashmir Valley in early 1990, the bulk – about 100,000 people – of the Pandit population fled the Valley over a few weeks in February–March 1990 to the southern Indian J&K city of Jammu and further afield to cities such as Delhi. ... The large-scale flight of Kashmiri Pandits during the first months of the insurrection is a controversial episode of the post-1989 Kashmir conflict.
    • Talbot, Ian; Singh, Gurharpal (2009), The Partition of India, New Approaches to Asian History, Cambridge University Press, pp. 136–137, ISBN 9780521672566, Between 1990 and 1995, 25,000 people were killed in Kashmir, almost two-thirds by Indian armed forces. Kashmiris put the figure at 50,000. In addition, 150,000 Kashmiri Hindus fled the valley to settle in the Hindu-majority region of Jammu.
    • Metcalf & Metcalf 2006, p. 274The Hindu Pandits, a small but influential elite community who had secured a favourable position, first under the maharajas, and then under the successive Congress regimes, and proponents of a distinctive Kashmiri culture that linked them to India, felt under siege as the uprising gathered force. Of a population of some 140,000, perhaps 100,000 Pandits fled the state after 1990
  21. ^
    • Brass, Paul (1994), The Politics of India Since Independence, The New Cambridge History of India (2 ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 222–223, ISBN 978-0-521-45362-2
    • Hussain, Shahla (2018), "Kashmiri Visions of Freedom", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 89–112, 105, ISBN 9781107181977, In the winter of 1990, the community felt compelled to mass-migrate to Jammu, as the state governor was adamant that in the given circumstances he would not be able to offer protection to the widely dispersed Hindu community. This event created unbridgeable differences between the majority and the minority; each perceived aazadi in a different light.
    • Snedden, Christopher (2021), Independent Kashmir: An Incomplete Aspiration, Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 126, ISBN 978-1-5261-5614-3, This is because many Pandits have left Kashmir, or felt compelled by militants' violence and antipathy against them to leave, since Muslim Kashmiris began their anti-India uprising in 1988
    • Dabla, Bashir Ahmad (2011), Social Impact of Militancy in Kashmir, New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, p. 98, ISBN 978-81-212-1099-7, The third migration from rural-urban areas of one place to urban areas of other places involved people who felt compelled to migrate due to political, religious, ethnic, and other such factors. The migration of ... Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir to different parts of JK state and India in 1990–91 fit in this type of migration.
    • Rajput, Sudha G. (4 February 2019), Internal Displacement and Conflict: The Kashmiri Pandits in Comparative Perspective, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 9780429764622, The grandfather recalled that the state officials, too, had warned the Pandits that 'not every house could be protected from militants.' In the interest of protecting the family from harm and having reached the 'threshold of tolerance and constant mental abuse inflicted by the militants," the grandfather felt compelled to flee the Valley.
    • Hardy, Justine (2009), In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir: One Family in a Changing World, New York and London: The Free Press, p. 63, ISBN 978-1-4391-0289-3, Children born in Kashmir since 1989 have not heard that song of symbiosis. Just as the young Pandits in the refugee camps have only their parents' memories to portray the homes they felt forced to leave, so, too, do young Kashmir Valley Muslims have only stories and photograph albums as proof of how it used to be before they were born.
    • Sokefeld, Martin (2013), "Jammu and Kashmir: Dispute and diversity", in Berger, Peter; Heidemann, Frank (eds.), Anthropology of India: Ethnography, themes, and theory, London and New York: Routledge, p. 91, ISBN 978-0-415-58723-5, Since the time of Madan's fieldwork. the situation of the Kashmiri Pandits has changed dramatically. Instead of 5 per cent, they now make up less than 2 per cent of the Valley's population. After the beginning of the insurgency, in early 1990, most of the Pandit families left Kashmir for Jammu, Delhi or other places in India. It is still disputed whether the Pandits' exodus was caused by actual intimidation by the (Muslim) militants or whether they were encouraged to leave by the Indian governor Jagmohan, a 'hardliner' who was deputed to Kashmir by the government in Delhi in order to counter the insurgency. Alexander Evans concludes that the Pandits left out of fear, even if not explicitly threatened by the insurgents, and that the administration did nothing to keep them in the Valley (Evans 2002). Since then the ethnography of the Kashmiri Pandits has had to be tuned into the ethnography of exile.
  22. ^ Duschinski, Haley (2014), "Community Identity of Kashmiri Hindus in the United States", Emerging Voices: Experiences of Underrepresented Asian Americans, Rutgers University Press, p. 132, Another key point of contention is the community's status as migrants. Kashmiri Hindus are not considered refugees because they have not crossed an international border to seek sanctuary in another country. This means that they are not covered by a well-defined body of international laws and conventions. They would like to be considered Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) because they believe that this designation would give them some leverage to assert their basic rights in their dealings with the Indian state. The government of India refuses to grant them IDP status because it does not want to facilitate international involvement in its internal affairs.<<Footnote 22>> According to this logic, legally classifying the displaced Kashmiri Hindus as IDPs might attract international attention, initiate third-party involvement in the conflict, and prompt international scrutiny of the government's handling of the Kashmir situation. Kashmiri Hindus are thus classified as migrants, meaning that international agencies such as the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) do not play a role in their situation. Kashmiri Hindus vehemently dispute their classification as migrants because they believe that it carries the connotation that they have left their homeland of their own will, and are able to return freely, without threat of harm.
  23. ^ Duschinski, Haley (2014), "Community Identity of Kashmiri Hindus in the United States", Emerging Voices: Experiences of Underrepresented Asian Americans, Rutgers University Press, p. 141, –<<Footnote 22>>: In 1995, the Kashmiri Samiti Delhi issued a petition to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) demanding that authorities extend to the Kashmiri Pandit community facilities and rights—such as nonrefoulement, humanitarian assistance, and the right to seek asylum—on the basis of their internal displacement. The petition also demanded that the government implement the recommendations of the representative of the UN secretary-general on IDPs and invited the NHRC to meet representatives of the displaced community. The NHRC issued a notice to the state government to respond to the petition. The government, in its response to the NHRC, argued that the Kashmiri Pandits are appropriately described as "migrants" since the word favors the community's return when the situation becomes more conducive. After reviewing the petition and the government's response to it. the NHRC indicated that the Kashmiri Pandits did not meet the typical definition of IDPs in light of the government's benevolent attitude toward them.
  24. ^
    • Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (2001), Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy, London and New York: Routledge, p. 226, ISBN 0-415-16951-8, In 1989 and the early 1990s a popularly backed armed insurgency was orchestrated by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, which called for a secular and sovereign Kashmir. Kashmiri cultural and linguistic identity appeared to be more potent than Islamic aspirations or pro-Pakistan sentiment in the Vale of Kashmir. In time, however, the balance of firepower among the rebels shifted to the Hizbul Mujahideen, which received more support from Pakistan. The Indian state deployed more than 550,000 armed personnel in the early 1990s to severely repress the Kashmir movement.
    • Staniland, Paul (2014), Networks of Rebellion: Explaing Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp. 73–76, ISBN 978-0-8014-5266-6, The early years of JKLF activity, especially in 1988, involved coordinated, publicly symbolic strikes carried out by a relatively small number of fighters. Central control processes at this point were handled by the four original organizers. Crackdowns by the Indian government spurred mobilization, and "within two years, the previously marginal JKLF emerged as the vanguard and spearhead of a popular uprising in the Kashmir Valley against Indian rule. It dominated the first three years of the insurgency (1990–92)."! Even to the present day, "most commentators agree that among Muslims in the Valley, the JKLF enjoys considerable popular support." This was especially the case in the early 1990s, when contemporary observers argued that "the predominant battle cry in Kashmir is azadi (freedom) and not a merger with Pakistan'"and that "the JKLF, a secular militant group, is by far the most popular. The support for the JKLF was clearly substantial and greater than that of its militant contemporaries. ... In the early years of the war in Kashmir, the JKLF was the center of insurgency, but I will show later in this chapter how the social-institutional weakness of the organization made it vulnerable to targeting by the Indian leadership and dissention from local units. The Hizbul Mujahideen became the most robus organization in the fight in Kashmir. While its rise to dominance occurred after 1990, its mobilization during 1989–1991 through networks of the Jamaat-e-Islami laid the basis for an integrated organization that persisted until it shifted to a vanguard structure in the early to mid-2000s.
    • D'Mello, Bernard (2018), India After Naxalbari: Unfinished History, New York: Monthly Review Press, ISBN 978-158367-707-0, The Kashmir question, centered on the right to national self-determination, cannot be dealt with here, but to cut a long story short, the last nail that the Indian political establishment hammered into the coffin of liberal-political democracy in Kashmir was the rigging of the 1987 state assembly elections there. The Muslim United Front would have electorally defeated the Congress Party-National Conferencecombine if the election had not been rigged. Many of the victims of this political fraud became the leaders of the Kashmir liberation (azaadi) movement. In the initial years, 1988–1992, the movement, led by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), a secular organization, seemed to have unequivocally taken a stand for the independence of J&K from the occupation of India and Pakistan. But for this stand of the JKLF, it had to bear a heavy cost in terms of human lives and sustenance
    • Kumar, Radha; Puri, Ellora (2009), "Jammu and Kashmir: Frameworks for a Settlement", in Kumar, Radha (ed.), Negotiation Peace in Deeply Divided Societies: A Set of Simulations, New Delhi, Los Angeles and London: SAGE Publications, p. 292, ISBN 978-81-7829-882-5, 1990–2001: An officially estimated 10,000 Kashmiri youth crossover to Pakistan for training and procurement of arms. The Hizb-ul Mujahedeen (Hizb), which is backed by Pakistan, increases its strength dramatically. ISI favours the Hizb over the secular JKLF and cuts off financing to the JKLF and in some instances, provides intelligence to India against the JKLF. In April 1991, Kashmiris hold anti-Pakistan demonstrations in Srinagar following killing of a JKLF area commander by the Hizb. In 1992, Pakistani forces arrest 500 JKLF marchers led by Amanullah Khan in Pakistan held Kashmir (PoK) to prevent a bid to cross the border. India also uses intelligence from captured militants. JKLF militancy declines.
    • Phillips, David L. (8 September 2017), From Bullets to Ballots: Violent Muslim Movements in Transition, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 9781351518857, Consistent with the concept of Kashmiriyat, the JKLF was essentially a secular organization that aspired to the establishment of an independent Kashmir where both Muslims and Hindus would be welcome. This ideal is anathema to Pakistan-based fundamentalists as well as to Afghan and Arab fighters who care far less about Kashmiri self-determination than they do about establishing Pakistani rule and creating an Islamic caliphate in Srinagar.
    • Morton, Stephen (2008), Salman Rushdie: Fictions of Postcolonial Modernity, New British Fiction, Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 143–144, ISBN 978-1-4039-9700-5, Yet if General Kachhwaha's military campaign of terror against Kashmiri Muslims in the Valley of Kashmir gives the lie to Nehru's legacy of secularism and tolerance by exposing the hegemonic and military power of India's Hindu majority, Rushdie's account of the secular nationalism of the Jammu Kashmir liberation front in Shalimar the Clown seems to embody what the postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha calls subaltern secularism (Bhabha 1996). For the secular nationalism of the Jammu and Kashmir liberation front (JKLF) is precisely subaltern in the sense that it reflects the view of the Kashmiri people rather than the elite, a people 'of no more than five million souls, landlocked, preindustrial, resource rich but cash poor, perched thousands of feet up in the mountains'
    • Tompkins, Paul J. Jr. (2012), Crossett, Chuck (ed.), Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare, Volume II, 1962–2009, Fort Bragg: United States Army Special Operations Command and The Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory, pp. 455–456, OCLC 899141935, More than the relatively simple denial of civil and political rights that characterized the Kashmiri government for more than four decades, the events of 1990, when Governor Jagmohan and the Indian government stepped up their counterinsurgency efforts, developed into a pronounced human rights crisis"—there were rampant abuses such as unarmed protestors shot indiscriminately, arrests without trial, and the rape and torture of prisoners. Jagmohan whitewashed the security forces' role in human rights violations, laying the blame for atrocities at the feet of "terrorist forces. In February, he also dissolved the Assembly. Combined with the severe, indiscriminate harassment of the population, whereby all citizens were treated as potential suspects, the January massacre, and Jagmohan's draconian policies, support for the JKLF skyrocketed!"... However, it was JKLF, an ostensible secular, pro-independence movement, that dominated the field at the onse of the insurgency.
  25. ^
    • Lapidus, Ira A. (2014), A History of Islamic Societies (3 ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 720, ISBN 978-0-521-51430-9, By the mid-1980s, however, trust between Delhi and local leaders had again broken down, and Kashmiris began a fully fledged armed insurgency led by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front calling for an independent and secular Kashmir. As the military struggle went on, Muslim—Hindu antagonism rose; Kashmiris began to define themselves in Muslim terms. Pro-Muslim and pro-Pakistan sentiment became more important than secularism, and the leadership of the insurgency shifted to the Harakat and the Hizb ul-Mujahidin. To achieve its strategic objectives the Pakistani military and its intelligence services supported militant Islamist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, who attacked Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir and more recently attacked civilians in India. Saudi influences, more militant forms of Islam, and the backing of the Pakistani intelligence services gave the struggle in Kashmir the aura of a jihad. The fighting escalated with the deployment of more than 500,000 Indian soldiers to suppress the resistance.
    • Metcalf, Barbara D.; Metcalf, Thomas R. (2012), A Concise History of Modern India, Cambridge Concise Histories (3 ed.), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 308–309, ISBN 978-1-107-02649-0, The imposition of leaders chosen by the centre, with the manipulation of local elections, and the denial of what Kashmiris felt was a promised autonomy boiled over at last in the militancy of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a movement devoted to political, not religious, objectives. ...As the government sought to locate 'suspects' and weed out Pakistani 'infiltrators', the entire population was subjected to a fierce repression. By the end of the 1990s, the Indian military presence had escalated to approximately one soldier or paramilitary policeman for every five Kashmiris, and some 30,000 people had died in the conflict.
    • Varma, Saiba (2020), The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir, Durham and London: Duke University Press, p. 27, ISBN 9781478009924, LCCN 2019058232, In 1988, the JKLF, an organization with secular, leftist roots, waged a guerrilla war against Indian armed forces with the slogan Kashmir banega khudmukhtar (Kashmir will be independent). Other organizations, such as the Jama'at Islami and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), supported merging with Pakistan. In 1988, Kashmiris began an armed struggle to overthrow Indian rule. Because some armed groups received assistance from Pakistan, the Indian state glossed the movement as Pakistani-sponsored "cross-border terrorism," while erasing its own extralegal actions in the region. Part of India's claim over Kashmir rests on its self-image as a pluralistic, democratic, and secular country. However, many Kashmiris feel they have never enjoyed the fruits of Indian democracy, as draconian laws have been in place for decades. Further, many see Indian rule as the latest in a long line of foreign colonial occupations.
    • Sirrs, Owen L. (2017), Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate: Covert action and internal operations, London and New York: Routledge, p. 157, ISBN 978-1-138-67716-6, LCCN 2016004564, Fortunately for ISI, another option emerged from quite unexpected direction: the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Frong (JKLF). A creature of its times, the JKLF was guided by a secular, nationalistic ideology, which emphasized the independenc of Kashmir above union with Pakistan or India. This fact alone meant that JKLF was not going to be a good match for ISI's long-term goal of a united Kashmir under the Pakistan banner. Still, in lieu of any viable alternative, the JKLF was the best short-term expedient for ISI plans.
    • Webb, Matthew J. (2012), Kashmir's Right to Secede: A Critical Examination of Contemporary Theories of Secession, London and New York: Routledge, p. 44, ISBN 978-0-415-66543-8, The first wave of militancy from 1988 through to 1991 was very much an urban, middle-class affair dominated by the secular, pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).
    • Thomas, Raju G. C, ed. (4 June 2019), Perspectives On Kashmir: The Roots of Conflict in South Asia, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 978-0-367-28273-8, The exception in this case, which is also the largest group among the nationalists, is the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). The JKLF claims to adhere to the vision of a secular independent Kashmir. ... The JKLF committed to an independent but secular Kashmir, is willing to take the Hindus back.
    • Chandrani, Yogesh; Kumar, Radha (2003), "South Asia: Introduction", The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad, New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press, p. 396, ISBN 0-231-12711-1, Decades of misrule and repression in Indian-held Kashmir had led to a popular and armed uprising in 1989. In its initial stages, the uprising was dominated by the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), a secular movement that demanded Kashmir's independence from Indian rule. The Indian government deployed the army and brutally suppressed the uprising. The Pakistani security establishment at first supported the JKLF and then began to seek more pliable allies.
    • Sokefeld, Martin (2012), "Secularism and the Kashmir dispute", in Bubandt, Nils; van Beek, Martijn (eds.), Varieties of Secularism in Asia: Anthropological Explorations of Religion, Politics, and the Spiritual, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 101–120, 109, 114, ISBN 978-0-415-61672-0, (p. 109) Like the Plebiscite Front, the JKLF portrayed the Kashmir issue as a national issue and Kashmir as a multi-religious nation to which Muslims, Hindus and members of other religions belonged. While Pakistan was considered as a 'friend' of the Kashmiri nation, the purpose of the JKLF was not accession with the state but the independence of Kashmir from both India and Pakistan. In the mid-1980s, the JKLF became a significant force among (Azad) Kashmiris in Britain. Towards the end of the decade, with the support of Pakistani intelligence agencies, the JKLF extended into Indian administered Kashmir and initiated the uprising there. (p. 114) In writings about the Kashmir dispute, secular political mobilisation of Muslim Kashmiris is frequently disregarded. Even when it is mentioned it is often not taken seriously. ... The Kashmir issue is much more complex than the orthodox view on the problem concedes. It is neither simply a conflict between India and Pakistan nor an issue between religion/Islam on the one hand and secularism on the other. ... In the 1980s and early 1990s Kashmiri nationalists, especially those of the JKLF, considered Pakistan a kind of natural ally for their purposes. But when Pakistani agencies shifted their support to Islamist militants ('jihadis') in Kashmir, most nationalists were alienated from Pakistan.
    • Sharma, Deepti (2015), "The Kashmir insurgency: multiple actors, divergent interests, institutionalized conflict", in Chima, Jugdeep S. (ed.), Ethnic Subnationalist Insurgencies in South Asia: Identiies, interests and challenges to state authority, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 17–40, 27–28, ISBN 978-1-138-83992-2, The JKLF, with its indigenous roots, had insider credentials and its secular ideology appealed to a population that had learned to equate ethnic nationalism with Sheikh Abdullah's version of Kashmiriyat. After the insurgency was in full swing, the Islamist groups made progress with their superior experience in militancy and greater resources. At this point, the JKLF's secular ideology and its popularity became an obstacle in their path to complete control of the insurgency. In 1992, Pakistan arrested more than 500 JKLF members, including Amanullah Khan, a JKLF leader in PoK. It is alleged that Pakistan also provided intelligence on JKLF members to the Indian military, which led to the JKLF members being either arrested or killed.
  26. ^ a b
    • Ganguly, Sumit (2016), Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century, Cambridge University Press, p. 10, ISBN 9780521125680, In December 1989, an indigenous, ethno-religious insurgency erupted in the Indian-controlled portion of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir.
    • Ganguly, Sumit (1997), The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War; Hopes of Peace, Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, pp. 107–108, ISBN 9780521655668, However, two factors undermined the sense of security and safety of the pandit community in Kashmir. First, the governor hinted that the safety and security of the Hindu community could not be guaranteed. Second, the fanatical religious zeal of some of the insurgent groups instilled fear among the Hindus of the valley. By early March, according to one estimate, more than forty thousand Hindu inhabitants of the valley had fled to the comparative safety of Jammu.
  27. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 19–37, 23: "While the numbers of dead and injured were low, militant attacks between 1988 and 1990 induced panic within the Pandit community. There was widespread fear and a sense of impending trouble, fuelled by extremist propaganda on both sides. By late March 1990, the ASKPC (All India Kashmiri Pandit Conference) was appealing to the administration to assist Pandits in ‘shifting to Jammu’."
  28. ^ Hussain, Shahla (2018), "Kashmiri Visions of Freedom", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 89–112, 105, ISBN 9781107181977, The rhetoric of aazadi did not hold the same appeal for the minority community. The rise of insurgency in the region created a difficult situation for the Kashmiri Hindu community, which had always taken pride in their Indian identity.
  29. ^ Hussain, Shahla (2018), "Kashmiri Visions of Freedom", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 89–112, 105, ISBN 9781107181977, The community felt threatened when Kashmiri Muslims under the flag of aazadi openly raised anti-India slogans. The 1989 targeted killings of Kashmiri Hindus who the insurgents believed were acting as Indian intelligence agents heightened those insecurities.
  30. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 19–37, 23: "KPs migrated en masse through legitimate fear. Given the killings of 1989 and 1990, and the ways in which rumour spread fast in the violent conditions of early 1990, might KPs have been terrified by uncertainty as much as by direct threats? There was collective unease at the situation as it unfolded. While the numbers of dead and injured were low, militant attacks between 1988 and 1990 induced panic within the Pandit community. There was widespread fear and a sense of impending trouble, fuelled by extremist propaganda on both sides. By late March 1990, the ASKPC (All India Kashmiri Pandit Conference) was appealing to the administration to assist Pandits in ‘shifting to Jammu’."
  31. ^ Hussain, Shahla (2018), "Kashmiri Visions of Freedom", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 89–112, 105, ISBN 9781107181977, In the winter of 1990, the community felt compelled to mass-migrate to Jammu, as the state governor was adamant that in the given circumstances he would not be able to offer protection to the widely dispersed Hindu community. This event created unbridgeable differences between the majority and the minority; each perceived aazadi in a different light.
  32. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 19–37, 23: "My own interviews with a number of KPs in Jammu, many of whom hold Pakistan responsible, suggest suspicions of ethnic cleansing or even genocide are wide of the mark. The two conspiracy theories already described are not evidence based. As Sumantra Bose observes, those Rashtriya Swayam Sevak publications’ claims that large numbers of Hindu shrines were destroyed and Pandits murdered are largely false, to the extent that many of the shrines remain untouched and many of the casualties remain unsubstantiated."
  33. ^ Bose, Sumantra (2021), Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-century conflict, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 122, ISBN 978-0-300-25687-1, In 1991 the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the movement's parent organisation, published a book titled Genocide of Hindus in Kashmir.<Footnote 38: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Genocide of Hindus in Kashmir (Delhi: Suruchi Prakashan, 1991).> It claimed among many other things that at least forty Hindu temples in the Kashmir Valley had been desecrated and destroyed by Muslim militants. In February 1993 journalists from India's leading newsmagazine sallied forth from Delhi to the Valley, armed with a list of twenty-three demolished temples supplied by the national headquarters of the BJP, the movement's political party. They found that twenty-one of the twenty-three temples were intact. They reported that 'even in villages where only one or two Pandit families are left, the temples are safe . . . even in villages full of militants. The Pandit families have become custodians of the temples, encouraged by their Muslim neighbours to regularly offer prayers.' Two temples had sustained minor damage during unrest after a huge, organised Hindu nationalist mob razed a sixteenth-century mosque in the north Indian town of Ayodhya on 6 December 1992.<Footnote 39: India Today, 28 February 1993, pp.22–25>
  34. ^ Bhatia, Mohita (2020), Rethinking Conflict at the Margins: Dalits and Borderland Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir, Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 123–124, ISBN 978-1-108-83602-9, The dominant politics of Jammu representing 'Hindus' as a homogeneous block includes Padits in the wider 'Hindu' category. It often uses extremely aggressive terms such as 'genocide' or 'ethnic cleansing' to explain their migration and places them in opposition to Kashmiri Muslims. The BJP has appropriated the miseries of Pandits to expand their 'Hindu' constituency and projects them as victims who have been driven out from their homeland by militants and Kashmiri Muslims.
  35. ^ Rai, Mridu (2021), "Narratives from exile: Kashmiri Pandits and their construction of the past", in Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (eds.), Kashmir and the Future of South Asia, Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, Routledge, pp. 91–115, 106, ISBN 9781000318845, Among those who stayed on is Sanjay Tickoo who heads the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (Committee for the Kashmiri Pandits' Struggle). He had experienced the same threats as the Pandits who left. Yet, though admitting 'intimidation and violence' directed at Pandits and four massacres since 1990, he rejects as 'propaganda' stories of genocide or mass murder that Pandit organizations outside the Valley have circulated.
  36. ^ Hussain, Shahla (2021), Kashmir in the Aftermath of the Partition, Cambridge University Press, pp. 320, 321, ISBN 9781108901130, The Counter-narrative of Aazadi: Kashmiri Hindus and Displacement of the Homeland (p. 320) The minority Hindu community of the Valley, which had always presented itself as a group of true Indian patriots wedded to their Indian identity, now found itself in an extreme dilemma as the tehreek-i-aazadi threatened their security. The community felt safer as a part of Hindu-majority India, as it feared political domination in Muslim-majority Kashmir. It had thus often opposed Kashmiri Muslim calls for self-determination, equating this with anti-nationalism.
  37. ^ Rai, Mridu (2021), "Narratives from exile: Kashmiri Pandits and their construction of the past", in Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (eds.), Kashmir and the Future of South Asia, Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, Routledge, pp. 91–115, 106, ISBN 9781000318845, An important element in the recollections of many Pandits is the effect the killing in the early 1990s of a number of Pandit officials had in shaking their sense of security. Various groups of militants claim that their targets were Indian government 'agents' and so, in eliminating them, they were essentially waging war against the state. Contrariwise, Pandits insist that the targets being exclusively Hindu indicated a 'communal' threat. It is only common sense that not every Pandit could have been an informer or a spy. But what is perplexing is that while the connection of numerous Pandits with the state's intelligence apparatus is denied in discussions relating to their roles in Kashmir, it is well advertised when making demands upon the state's resources in Indian law courts. The latter became an important arena for shaping Pandit narratives. ... At any rate, these testimonies freely given in Indian courts corroborate the claim of militants that at least some Pandits did act as agents of the state in Kashmir; of course, this does not offer justification for killing them.
  38. ^ Bose, Sumantra (2021), Kashmir at the Crossroads, Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, Yale University Press, pp. 119–120, JKLF's series of targeted assassinations that began in August 1989 (see Chapter 1) included a number of prominent Pandits. Tika Lal Taploo, the president of the Hindu nationalist BJP's Kashmir Valley unit, was killed in September 1989, followed in November by Neelkanth Ganjoo, the judge who had sentenced the JKLF pioneer Maqbool Butt to death in 1968 (the execution was carried out in 1984). As the Valley descended into mayhem in early 1990, Lassa Koul, the Pandit director of the Srinagar station of India's state-run television, was killed on 13 February 1990 by JKLF gunmen. The murders of such high-profile members of the community may have spread a wave of fear among Pandits at large.
  39. ^ Snedden, Christopher (2021), Independent Kashmir: An Incomplete Aspiration, Manchester University Press, p. 132, ISBN 9781526156150, Some other slogans were clearly directed against pro-India Kashmiri Pandits. ... by the end of January 1990, loudspeakers in Srinagar mosques were broadcasting slogans like 'Kafiron Kashmir chhod do [Infidels, leave our Kashmir]
  40. ^ Zutshi, Chitralekha (8 November 2017). Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation. Cambridge University Press. p. 230. ISBN 978-1-108-40210-1. Anti-Hindu announcements in neighbourhood mosques, such as, 'Kashmir kiske liye? Mussalman ke liye' (Kashmir is for whom? For the Muslim), resulted in a large, almost total exodus of most of the Valley's Hindu (Pandit) population.
  41. ^ Hussain, Shahla (2021), Kashmir in the Aftermath of the Partition, Cambridge University Press, pp. 320, 321, ISBN 9781108901130, The polarized political positions that the two communities had adopted since 1947 reached a breaking point in the new political climate of the 1990s, when Kashmiri Muslims openly invoked anti-India slogans and demanded aazadi. As the new valorization of armed resistance gripped the region, targeted killings of prominent members of the Kashmiri Hindu community whom the JKLF insurgents believed to be Indian intelligence agents sent shivers down the spine of the minority community. Stories of Kashmiri Pandits, branded as "informers," and killed in their own homes or in their alleys, and survived by grieving wives and children, had a tremendous impact on the psyche of the minority community. Their fears were heightened as religious slogans merged with the cry for independence emerging from the mosques of Kashmir. Certain militant groups even wrote threatening letters to the Kashmiri Hindu community, asking them to leave the Valley.
  42. ^ Evans 2002, p.23: "P. S. Verma echoes this; his interviews with migrant Pandits found few who had actually been personally harmed or threatened to leave the Valley (and many who had been begged to stay by their Muslim neighbours). A research study conducted by postgraduate politics students at the University of Jammu in 2001 found that 2% of KPs surveyed had received threatening letters; however, over 80% had not received any form of direct threat. Nevertheless, as Verma states, most of these migrants 'felt very much threatened in an atmosphere of unabated violence, particularly during January–February 1990 when the major exodus took place'. My own interviews with a number of KPs in Jammu, many of whom hold Pakistan responsible, suggest suspicions of ethnic cleansing or even genocide are wide of the mark."
  43. ^ Datta 2017, p. 61–63: "While most accounts of events in Kashmir featured militancy and demonstrations against the Indian state, few references are made to the Pandits. The slogans the Pandits refer to have never been reported or recorded officially at the time and suggest a gap between what was recorded and what the Pandits describe.... Yet conversations [with Kashmiri Muslims] regarding the Pandit exodus were complicated by their insistence that the Pandits were not targeted by the Muslims. They denied hearing (p.63) the slogans, even those threatening women, from the demonstrations which the Pandits draw attention to."
  44. ^ Evans 2002, p. 20: "Most KPs believe that they were forced out of the Kashmir Valley; whether by Pakistan and the militant groups it backed, or by Kashmiri Muslims as a community. Representing the latter variant, Pyarelal Kaul contends that the Pandit departure was a clear case of communal intimidation by Muslims, designed to expel Hindus from the Valley. Mosques 'were used as warning centres. Threatening the Hindus and conveying to them what terrorists and many Muslims of Kashmir wanted to achieve.'"
  45. ^ Verma, Saiba (2020), The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir, Duke University Press, p. 26, ISBN 9781478012511, Although Kashmiri Muslims did not support violence against religious minorities, the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits (who are Hindus) and their unresolved status continues to be a pain often "weaponized" by the Indian state to cast Kashmiris Muslims as Islamic radicals.
  46. ^ Zutshi, Chitralekha (2019), Kashmir, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-099046-6, These developments subverted the popular nature of the insurgency, tarnishing the very real political grievances that underlay it with the brush of criminality and Islamic radicalism.
  47. ^ Verma, Saiba (2020), The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir, Duke University Press, p. 62, ISBN 9781478012511, Soon after Jammu and Kashmir became a disturbed area in 1990, the change registered in the landscape. Armed forces occupied protected forests, temples, orchards, and gardens. Cricket grounds became desiccated ovals in the middle of the city. Historical sites became interrogation centers; cinemas became military bunkers. Counterinsurgency tactics, such as sieges, crackdowns, and cordon-and-search operations, transformed village after village. Checkpoints, roadblocks, and identity checks became everyday realities.
  48. ^ Bhan, Mona; Duschinski, Haley; Zia, Ather (20 April 2018), "Introduction. 'Rebels of the Streets': Violence, Protest, and Freedom in Kashmir", in Duschinski, Haley; Bhan, Mona; Zia, Ather; Mahmood, Cynthia (eds.), Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 25–27, ISBN 9780812249781, . Their stories of departure are deeply contested; while many in Kashmir view their departure from Kashmir as Governor Jagmohan Malhotra' grand design to exterminate Muslims once Kashmir's Hindu minority had fled the valley, many Kashmiri Pandits track the onset of Kashmir's armed rebellion in 1989 to a new brand of Islamic extremism, which in their view posed a grave threat to Kashmir's Hindu minority (Duschinski 2008).
  49. ^ Hussain, Shahla (2021), Kashmir in the Aftermath of the Partition, Cambridge University Press, pp. 320, 321, ISBN 9781108901130, In this violent and unstable atmosphere, rumors spread that the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus was the machinations of the state governor who planned to use unrestrained force to suppress Kashmiri Muslim resistance and thus viewed the presence of the Kashmiri Hindus in the neighborhoods as a hindrance to the army in quickly and efficiently carrying out its plan.'!" Many Kashmiri Muslims claimed to have "witnessed departing Pandits boarding vehicles organized by the state," and felt fearful about their own security. A senior Indian administrator, Wajahat Habibullah, posted in Kashmir at this critical juncture, denied the involvement of the government in a coordinated plan for Kashmiri Hindu departure. However, he emphasized that the state governor did little to stop the Pandits from leaving the Valley. Jagmohan remained adamant that he would not be able to offer protection to the Valley's widely dispersed Hindu community, and rejected Habibullah's suggestion to televise "the request of hundreds of Muslims to their Pandit compatriots not to leave the valley." Instead, the government reassured Pandits of their support in settling them in refugee camps in Jammu and paying the civil servants their salaries, if the community decided to leave
  50. ^ Evans 2002, p. 22: "There is a third possible explanation for what happened in 1990; one that acknowledges the enormity of what took place, but that examines carefully what triggered KP migration: KPs migrated en masse through legitimate fear. Given the killings of 1989 and 1990, and the ways in which rumour spread fast in the violent conditions of early 1990, might KPs have been terrified by uncertainty as much as by direct threats? There was collective unease at the situation as it unfolded. While the numbers of dead and injured were low, militant attacks between 1988 and 1990 induced panic within the Pandit community. There was widespread fear and a sense of impending trouble, fuelled by extremist propaganda on both sides. By late March 1990, the ASKPC was appealing to the administration to assist Pandits in 'shifting to Jammu'. The public rhetoric of some of the more Islamist militants in the Valley, with calls for an Islamic state, although aimed primarily at Indian rule, struck a chilling chord with KPs. This in turn sparked off an exodus, which was not actively combated by Governor Jagmohan's administration (during whose tenure, almost 90% of the departures took place)."
  51. ^ Evans 2002, p. 23: "Once it became clear that the government could not protect senior KP officials—and would pay their salaries in absentia—many other KPs in state employment decided to move. At the outset, few of these migrants expected their exile to last more than a few months."
  52. ^ Hussain, Shahla (2021), Kashmir in the Aftermath of the Partition, Cambridge University Press, p. 323, ISBN 9781108901130, Interestingly, themes of omission, anger, and betrayal are absent from the narratives of those Kashmiri Pandits who stayed in the Valley and refused to (p. 323) migrate. Even though life was extremely difficult without the support of their own community, their stories emphasize human relationships that transgressed the religious divide, and highlighted the importance of building bridges between communities. Pandits' experience of displacement varied depending on their class status. While the urban elite found jobs in other parts of India, lower-middle-class Hindus, especially those from rural Kashmir, suffered the most, many living in abject poverty. The local communities into which they migrated saw their presence as a burden, generating ethnic tensions between the "refugees" and the host community.' Adding to the tension, Kashmiri Hindus from the Valley, mostly Brahmans, had their own social and religious practices that differed from the Hindus of Jammu. They wanted to retain their own cultural and linguistic traditions, which made it difficult for them to assimilate into Jammu society.
  53. ^ Rai, Mridu (2021), "Narratives from exile: Kashmiri Pandits and their construction of the past", in Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (eds.), Kashmir and the Future of South Asia, Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, Routledge, pp. 91–115, 106, ISBN 9781000318845, According to the Indian home ministry's annual report for 2009–10, 20 years after the exodus, there were 57,863 Pandit refugee families, of whom 37,285 resided in Jammu, 19,338 in Delhi, and 1,240 in other parts of the country. Countless writers have described the miserable conditions of the Pandits living in camps, especially those who are still languishing in those established in and around Jammu. Unwelcomed by their host communities, entirely deprived of privacy and basic amenities, many succumbed to depression, ageing-related diseases, and a sense of desperate helplessness. Needless to say, there were some who fared better – those with wealth and older connections – but for those many others with none of these advantages, it was as being plunged with no safety net. Ever since 1990, Indian politicians promised much and delivered next to nothing for the camp-dwellers.
  54. ^ Metcalf & Metcalf 2006, p. 274: "Their cause was quickly taken up by the Hindu right."
  55. ^ Hussain, Shahla (2021), Kashmir in the Aftermath of the Partition, Cambridge University Press, p. 323, ISBN 9781108901130, The Pandits' situation was further complicated by the indifference of Indian political parties, especially the Congress and the 1989-90 National Front government.' Kashmiri Pandits perceived themselves as "true patriots" who had "sacrificed greatly for their devotion to the Indian nation." As such, they saw the inability of the state to provide support in exile as a moral failure and a betrayal. This vacuum was filled by Hindu rightist groups, who, while advocating for Kashmiri Pandits, preyed on their insecurities and further alienated them from Kashmiri Muslims.
  56. ^ Hussain, Shahla (2021), Kashmir in the Aftermath of the Partition, Cambridge University Press, p. 323, ISBN 9781108901130, Some Kashmiri Pandits adopted a radical approach and organized the "Panun Kashmir" (Our Own Kashmir) movement, demanding a homeland carved out from the Valley. Panun Kashmir claimed that the entire Valley had originally been inhabited by Hindus, giving them a right to it in the present. The movement argued that to prevent the total disintegration of India, Kashmiri Pandits "who have been driven out of Kashmir in the past" or "who were forced to leave on account of the terrorist violence in Kashmir" should be given their own separate homeland in the Valley. The movement's slogan was "Save Kashmiri Pandits, Save Kashmir, and Save India. Kashmiri Hindus, according to its leaders, had borne the cross of Indian secularism for several decades and their presence had played a major role in the restoration of the Indian claim on Kashmir. The organization warned India that restoring any form of autonomy to the state would indirectly mean conceding the creation of an Islamic state. As historian Mridu (p. 324) Rai has argued, ironically, while "Panun Kashmir opposes demands for Aazadi as an illegitimate demand of Islamist separatists, their own territorial claims are no less separatist." The exclusionary nature of their organization was immediately visible from their maps, which depicted a Valley denuded of Muslim religious sites. As Rai argues, maps such as Panun Kashmir's are "fashioned to enable easy pleating into that of India, the status quo power in the Valley."
  57. ^ Bhan, Mona; Duschinski, Haley; Zia, Ather (2018), "Introduction. 'Rebels of the Streets': Violence, Protest, and Freedom in Kashmir", in Duschinski, Haley; Bhan, Mona; Zia, Ather; Mahmood, Cynthia (eds.), Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 26, ISBN 9780812249781, Since the mid-1990s, Kashmiri Pandits have become caught up in the nationalist movement more so than before, as the idea of return to homeland constitutes one of the main points in Modis BJP mandate. The manifesto emphasizes the BJP's long-standing commitment to the return of Kashmiri Pandits to "the land of their ancestors" with "full dignity, security and assured livelihood" (Bharatiya Janata Party 2014, 8). The recurring call for separate security zones for Kashmiri Pandits reveals the extent to which notions of security have become Hinduized in Kashmir. Community leaders of small but vocal and politically positioned groups such as Panun Kashmir, headquartered in Delhi and Bombay, have all along demanded a separate homeland for Kashmiri Pandits, carved out of the existing state of J&K. The BJP's return to power has reenergized such groups.
  58. ^ Datta, Ankur (2023), "The Blank Space Between Nationalisms: Locating the Kashmiri Pandits in Liberal and Hindu Nationalist Politics in Relation to Kashmir and India", in Duschinski, Haley; Bhan, Mona; Robinson, Cabeiri deBergh (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of New Directions in Kashmir Studies, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 365–380, ISBN 978-3-031-28519-6, (page 370) This competitive aspect in asserting victimhood and dismissing suffering of other communities seems to undercut discussions. Muslims may deny Pandit assertions and Pandits may deny Muslim aspirations. Once political posturing is suspended, blame is withheld and dominant theories are kept aside, perhaps an understanding can be reached—an understanding that the displacement of the Kashmiri Pandits is marked by a sense of what Nishita Trisal (2020) refers to as an incomprehensible 'sense of loss and erasure.'
  59. ^ Hussain, Shahla (2021), Kashmir in the Aftermath of the Partition, Cambridge University Press, p. 321, ISBN 9781108901130, Several displaced Kashmiri Pandits wrote autobiographies, novels, and poetry to record their experiences of violence and give their community an outlet to make sense of their forced "exile."
  60. ^ "When will we finally return home, ask displaced Kashmiri Pandits". Firstpost. 19 January 2016.
  61. ^ "Kashmiri Pandits recreate "exodus" through Jan 19 exhibition". The Hindustan Times. 18 January 2020.


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