This is a very charged topic, especially in India, but I’ve been wanting to write about it for a long time because Kashmiri Pandits are one group of refugees that everyone seems to have forgotten about. Having Kashmiri Hindu friends in New York City who themselves or whose parents had to leave Kashmir, gave this topic an added importance to me. Finally, I want to make clear that talking about tragedies isn’t a zero sum game. Just because I am talking about Kashmiri Pandits doesn’t mean there aren’t numerous other refugee tragedies in the world. And just because I am focusing on Kashmiri Pandits in this essay doesn’t mean that other communities in Kashmir or elsewhere in India haven’t also suffered terrible tragedies. Discussing one tragedy shouldn’t minimize or take away the importance of other tragedies. It isn’t a competition. And it is impossible to give equal weight to every single tragedy in the world in any one essay.
Kashmiri Pandits are Hindus belonging to the Brahmin caste. The Indo-Iranian peoples who would go on to practice Hinduism came to the Indian subcontinent 4000-5000 years back. As such, Kashmiri Pandits have been dwelling in the Kashmir Valley since the Bronze Age. Although Arabs, Turks, and Persian armies started invading India from the 8th century onward, Kashmir didn’t completely fall into Muslim hands till around the 14th century. Inevitably, subjects in any land start following the beliefs of their rulers. As such, through force, necessity and choice, Hindus of the Valley had started converting to Islam, or had started leaving the Valley. Incidentally, it was Akbar – one of the most tolerant rulers of medieval India, who gave the Kashmiri Brahmins the title of “Pandit” – a learned scholar. And when Akbar’s son Jahangir saw the Valley for the first time, he was mesmerized by the beauty of the land to utter his famous words – “If there is ever a heaven on Earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.”
After nearly 500 years of Muslim rule, and as the Mughal Empire was on its downward spiral, the Sikh Empire conquered Kashmir. But only a few decades later in the Anglo-Sikh war, Kashmir was annexed by the East India Company and then sold to a Hindu dynasty. By the 19th century the demographics of the Valley had changed, where Muslims now comprised over 90% of the population. Between 1948 and 1950, in inter-religious violence after independence and other land reforms, led to a huge exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley. Alleged vote-rigging in local elections in 1987 in favor of the ruling party disillusioned Kashmiri youths and was a primary motivator for the rise in militancy against the Indian government. As the Soviet retreated from Afghanistan in 1989, militants and resources used to fight the Soviets were in turn directed towards Indian-held Kashmir, and also for the creation of the Taliban. Deadly attacks against Pandits increased in 1989, and in early January 1990 Urdu newspapers in the Valley asked the Pandits to leave. On the night of 19th January 1990, messages from the mosques blared out across the Valley – convert, be killed, or leave but leave your women behind. Within a few weeks, somewhere from 100,000 to over 160,000 Kashmiri Pandits had left Kashmir and become refugees in their own country and around the world. By many accounts, from 1947 to 1990 nearly half a million Hindus had migrated from Kashmir. Today there are only a few thousand Pandits left in the Kashmir Valley. The tragedy is the Indian State’s inability to protect its own citizens in its own country. Nearly a quarter million Pandits are living in Jammu in refugee camps. Many have moved to Delhi, elsewhere in India, or abroad. Even after 26 years, successive Indian governments have failed the Kashmiri refugees. And worst, having over half a million people and their descendants living as refugees in India seems to have been forgotten from the national conscience.
This story isn’t unique. This has been happening throughout our history, and will keep happening in the foreseeable future. The well known example is the plight of Arabs who became refugees in the partition of Mandatory Palestine. One problem with the creation of countries based on identity politics or beliefs is that it makes indigenous people refugees or second-class citizens in their own land. 700,000 Arabs became refugees in their own land. Similar number of Jews were made to leave Muslim lands. 7.5 million each Hindus and Muslims became refugees in the Partition of India. People had to leave lands their ancestors had been living for centuries or since the beginning of civilization. Yet this is human history. Every group has been conquerors, and unfortunately it has led to a loss of the indigenous culture and beliefs. Today Christianity is nearly gone from the Middle-East. Jewish kingdoms no longer exist there. Indigenous Arab and North African religions are extinct. One of the great ancient religions – Zoroastrianism, that has influenced Abrahamic and Dharmic religions, is nearly gone from Iran. European colonialism has led to the decimation of indigenous religions in the Americas and Africa. Even the propagation of Hinduism in South Asia came on behalf of conquerors from present-day Iran. Outsiders come, start calling the land their own, and it slowly erodes away the beliefs and cultures of the conquered peoples. As someone who loves pluralism, I find that to be a great loss of history. But no one is to be blamed except human nature. Everyone has been a conqueror, and everyone has been conquered.
We cannot change the past. But we can learn from it, and we can definitely be more aware so we don’t forget tragedies. And such awareness can prevent us from having a false sense of reality where the only story we read is that of victors and conquerors, who glorify themselves and dehumanize or erase the conquered people. I don’t see a realistic pathway for over half a million or more Kashmiri Pandits to return to Kashmir. It becomes harder with the passage of time. But we can at least remember their tragedy and not forget it in the dustbin of history.