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Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus

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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,[21] and about 30 were
killed.[7][12][note 3] 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 envisioning
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 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 India's federal 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,
aggressive, or propaganda by scholars.[32][33][34][35]

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

Date Early 1990.[1][2]

Location Kashmir Valley, Indian-

administered Kashmir

Coordinates 34.0333°N 74.6667°E

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 Kashmir Valley, which is a part of the larger

Kashmir region that has been the subject of a
dispute between India and Pakistan from 1947, has
been administered by India from approximately the
same time.[36][37] Before 1947, during the period of
British Raj in India when Jammu and Kashmir was a
princely state, Kashmiri Pandits, or Kashmiri Hindus,
had stably constituted between 4% and 6% of the
population of the Kashmir valley in censuses from
1889 to 1941; the remaining 94 to 95% of the
population was Kashmiri Muslim.[38] By 1950, a large
number of Pandits—whose elite owned over 30% of
the arable land in the Valley—moved to other parts
of India in the face of land reforms planned by the
incoming administration of Sheikh Abdullah, the
threat of socio-economic decline, and the unsettled
nature of Kashmir's accession to India.[39][40] In
1989 a persisting insurgency began in Kashmir. It
was fed by Kashmiri dissatisfaction with India's
federal government over rigging an assembly
election in 1987 and disavowing a promise of greater
autonomy. The dissatisfaction overflowed into an ill-
defined uprising against the Indian state. The
Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), an
organization that had generally secular antecedents
and the predominant goal of political independence,
[6][25][41] led the uprising but did not abjure violence.
[42][43] In early 1990, the vast majority of Kashmiri
Hindus fled the valley in a mass-migration.[44][45][46]
[note 4][note 5] More of them left in the following years
so that, by 2011, only around 3,000 families
remained.[8] 30 or 32 Kashmiri Pandits had been
killed by insurgents by mid-March 1990 when the
exodus was largely complete, according to some
scholars.[7][12] Indian Home Ministry data records
217 Hindu civilian fatalities during the four-year
period, 1988 to 1991.[14][note 6]

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.[49] 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.[50] The Pandits killed in targeted
assassinations by the Jammu and Kashmir
Liberation Front (JKLF) included some high-profile
ones.[51] Occasional anti Hindu calls were made
from mosques on loudspeakers asking Pandits to
leave the valley.[52][53] News of threatening letters
created fear,[54] though in later interviews the letters
were seen to have been sparingly received.[55]
There were disparities between the accounts of the
two communities, the Muslims and the Pandits.[56]
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.[57]
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,[58] thereby
contaminating their more genuine political
grievances,[59] and offering a rationale for their
surveillance and violent treatment by the Indian
state.[60] 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.[61]
[62] Several scholarly views chalk 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][63]

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.[64] 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.[65] Many displaced
Pandits in the camps succumbed to emotional
depression and a sense of helplessness.[66] The
cause of the Kashmiri Pandits was quickly
championed by right-wing Hindu groups in India,[67]
which also preyed on their insecurities and further
alienated them from Kashmiri Muslims.[68] 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.[69] The
return to the homeland in Kashmir also constitutes
one of the main points of the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party's election platform.[70][note 7] Kashmiri Pandits
in exile have written autobiographical memoirs,
novels, and poetry to record their experiences and
to understand them.[71] 19 January is observed by
the Kashmiri Hindu communities as Exodus Day.[72]
[73]

Background

Insurgency activity

Aftermath

Rehabilitation

In popular culture

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

Last edited 4 days ago by TrangaBellam

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