Kashmiri Pandits Research Articles

An Exploratory Study on Bonding and Bridging Social Capital Among the Non-Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir, India

In this exploratory study, we investigate two forms of social capital, bonding and bridging social capital among the non-displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir, India. In addition, we attempt to understand how displacement impinged the bonding and bridging social capital of non-displaced Kashmiri Pandits. The study uses a qualitative and ethnographic research design to elicit information from the participants. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 non-displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir, comprising 19 men and 11 women. The study concludes that the bonding social capital of non-displaced Kashmiri Pandits is plagued by a lack of interconnectedness caused by physical distance. In addition, the bridging social capital is restricted to a few Muslim neighbors and friends whom non-displaced Kashmiri Pandits have known for generations. The research findings suggest that if the bridging social capital of the non-displaced Kashmiri Pandit community is extended to the majority of the Kashmiri Muslim community, it will integrate both communities at large.

Pilgrimization of the return and re-acculturation of the returnee: A study of homecoming among Kashmiri Pandits

Return migration is a complex phenomenon of reassessment of one’s place in a supposedly familiar environment that migrants stand removed from often for extended periods of time. The process possibly runs deeper than the physical act of relocation either facilitated though institutionalized schemes or done at an individual level. Post return ‘re-acculturation’ into the host society and a subsequent ‘reacceptance’ by the host community are imperative for the return to take roots. Through an ethnographic study carried out in Kashmiri Valley, Jammu city and Delhi, I explore the particular case of ‘homecoming’ of (a section of) Kashmiri Pandit migrants who have returned to their ‘homeland’ after a claimed ‘exile’ of thirty plus years, following their conflict induced mass migration from Kashmir Valley in 1989 to 1990. The returnee expectations are heavily influenced by the celebratory connotations of a destined and permanent homecoming that have long been a part of the community discourse especially to foster a sense of identity and meaning in the dispersed community. It is challenged by the process of negotiation and adaptation that many migrants, especially the younger generations are faced with on return to their homeland. It often stands in contrast to the one they imagined based on vicarious narrations that tend to romanticize return as a pilgrimage to an unchanged, unaltered ‘center’ or a home immune to temporal dilutions. In doing so, the paper engages with the lacunas in the under- researched field of return migration, that tends to harbor on what counts as a permanent return.

Understanding the Kashmir Conflict: A Complex Multiplicity Perspective

Understanding the Kashmir Conflict: A Complex Multiplicity Perspective

“Our moon has these blood clots, and it is no use hiding them”: In conversation with Rahul Pandita

ABSTRACT Rahul Pandita is an acclaimed Indian writer and journalist. He is a 2015 Yale World Fellow, and the author of multiple bestselling non-fiction books, including Hello, Bastar: The Untold Story of India’s Maoist Movement (2011) and Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits (2013). He is known chiefly for his reportage on Maoist insurgencies in central and eastern India and the issues pertaining to Kashmiri Pandits in Northern India. His works focus on violence, displacement, and life for those with experience of forced migration. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is one of the first books to portray the events of the Kashmiri Pandit exodus and its aftermath. This conversation focuses on Pandita’s perspective on his writings and the plight of the exiled Kashmiri Pandits. It also covers the trauma experienced by the community, especially in exile, and the question of their approach towards a better future.

The limits of recovery: coming of age, aspirations and (im)mobility among displaced Pandit youth in Jammu

ABSTRACT How do the displaced recover tangible and intangible losses incurred in displacement? What does the process of recovery involve, especially for members of displaced families who come of age after displacement and face the burden of recovery? This paper engages with these questions in relation to the Hindu minority of the Kashmir valley, better known as the Kashmiri Pandits. Following the outbreak of conflict, the vast majority of this community fled the Kashmir valley in 1990. The paper will explore the biographies of two Kashmiri Pandit men who were children at the time of displacement and came of age in exile. By drawing on their experiences, set in the context of ethnographic research in the city of Jammu in Jammu and Kashmir, this paper examines the process of ‘growing up’ in a non-metropolitan urban area and balancing the recovery of loss alongside the aspirations of the youth. While existing scholarship on societies affected by violence discusses how recovery takes place in engaging with ordinary life, this process has to contend with the limits of ordinary life. The paper argues that the displaced are forced to come to terms with the limits of recovery and confront the dead-endedness of ordinary life.

The Kashmiri Pandits’ 1990s exodus: An interview with Siddhartha Gigoo

ABSTRACT In this interview, Indian multi-genre author and documentary film-maker Siddhartha Gigoo describes the alienation and trauma experienced by Kashmiri Pandits following their exodus from Kashmir in the 1990s. The interview explores the insurgency in Kashmir, which led to the exile of the Kashmiri Pandits, referring to his 2010 novel, The Garden of Solitude. Gigoo elaborates on the challenges faced by Kashmiri Pandits post-migration in an alien land, where they struggled for food and shelter in the camps and as one-room tenants while also bearing the traumatic past as a heavy load. He discusses the growing sense of insecurity which the Kashmiri Pandits endured as a disconcerting consequence of forced migration and genocide. Underscoring their silent trauma, which had a deep impact on their physical and mental health, he concludes that after 33 years of exile, Kashmiri Pandits still cling to the hope of returning to their homeland.

The Unforgettable Plight: Bollywood's Wilful Amnesia Towards Kashmiri Pandits

The delineation of Kashmiri Pandits in Bollywood cinema has been a subject of both intrigue and controversy. Bollywood has always been apathetic towards the Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. To understand the significance of Bollywood's portrayal of Kashmiri Pandits, it is crucial to grasp the historical context. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a wave of violent insurgency swept through the Kashmir Valley, leading to the displacement of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits. The paper will make an attempt to show how Bollywood has been extremely apathetic to the trauma and suffering of the Kashmiri Pandits, reflecting the bias and political agenda in not portraying the Multiple Exoduses of the Kashmiri Pandits at different points in time. The paper will compare different cinematic works revolving around the primary theme of Kashmir. The paper also attempts to analyse how most of the Bollywood movies centre around the other issues of Kashmir like insurgency and terrorism, and how they have deliberately blindfolded themselves towards the cause of the Kashmir Pandits.

Paradise Lost?

This article examines the memorial aesthetics of loss in Madhulika Jalali's documentary film Ghar ka Pata (Home Address, 2021). The article examines the documentary as a memory project made by a Kashmiri Pandit filmmaker of the “1.5 generation”—a woman who left Kashmir with her family at the age of six in the wave of Kashmiri Pandit migrations that followed the beginning of armed rebellion in Kashmir. The article examines the film's memorial aesthetics and politics by attending to the archival features of the film, and shows how the film, in a conventional diasporic mode, reconstructs idealized memories of Kashmir as a “lost paradise,” animating a fading sense of home for the filmmaker and future generations of her family (and, by extension, for future generations of Kashmiri Pandits). But while Ghar ka Pata mobilizes the family's visual archive to document familial loss with great emotional and pedagogical impact, its fixation on vertical genealogical descent at the level of both blood and memory leads it to enshrine a bordered and vulnerable Kashmiri Pandit family, obscuring the violence of the family itself, ruling out a horizontal examination of Kashmiri Pandits' historical relationship to Kashmiri society at large. This in turn curtails other modes of affiliation outside the family that could be much more generative for a future of coexistence in Kashmir.

Conflict-induced migration in Kashmir: A phenomenological study of lived experiences of non-migrant Kashmiri Pandits

This interpretative phenomenological study addressed the question, “what are the lived experience of Non-Migrant Kashmiri Pandits who have witnessed the mass migration during the insurgency period of 1989 in Indian administered Kashmir?” Literature indicated that the insurgency of 1989 in Kashmir resulted in the mass migration of the Kashmiri Pandit population from the valley to Jammu and other parts of India. Current academic discourse about migrant Kashmiri Pandits highlights their social, economical, and psychological repercussions of migration however there is minimal exact work on non-migrant Kashmiri Pandits. This study captured the lived experiences of the non-migrant Kashmiri Pandit population. From the analysis of the data, four themes emerged were; A period of Victimization and Uncertainty, Perceived Isolation, Potential threat to Identity and, Kashmiriyat: Co-existence and brotherhood. Key findings from the study found that migration has caused severe injury to social, cultural, and religious identities of non-migrant Kashmiri Pandit. However, the inter-group relations with Kashmiri Muslim community was found to be positive source of living in Kashmir

The BJP Government and the Kashmiri Pandits: Managing the Politics of Displacement in India

ABSTRACT After the Kashmiri Pandits were driven from their homes by a violent insurgency in the 1990s, the issue of their displacement and potential rehabilitation has featured prominently in mainstream Indian political discourse, and particularly in the messaging of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP subsequently became the leading political force in India and as the governing party has had ample opportunity to respond to the Pandits’ plight. The displacement and possible rehabilitation of the Pandits is thus an appropriate case study to consider how the BJP in government has managed a grievance-based issue that served the party well while it was building its political base. In this article, I apply a critical discourse analysis methodology to the BJP’s handling of the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits. I argue that the government has used the plight of the Pandits for electoral advantage while doing little to resolve the issue and failing to create favourable conditions for the community’s rehabilitation. The BJP’s approach, and the consequent exacerbation of regional and religious polarisation, has instead led to further insecurity for the displaced Pandits.

Insurgency and Migration: Examining the Experiences of Home and Belonging among Non-Migrant Kashmiri Pandits Living in Indian Administered Kashmir

ABSTRACT This study examines how non-migrant Kashmiri Pandits from the upper caste Hindu community construct the meaning of home and belonging via their lived experiences in relation to the insurgency of 1989 in Kashmir which led to the migration of their community. Literature indicates the meaning of the loss of home and belonging migrant Kashmiri Pandits construct while living in the host places yet the least scholarship is available for non-migrant Kashmiri Pandits. An interpretative phenomenological approach was used to explore the experiences of the participants. A total of 19 participants were selected purposively for the present study. Participants described their experiences pre- and post-insurgency period of 1989. The analysis of the data resulted in two subordinate themes: home and belonging as an emotional space and home and belonging as a socio-political space. These findings, which are based on a phenomenological approach, help to better comprehend the feeling of being a non-migrant Kashmiri Pandit and the anguish that comes with conflict-induced migration.

Content analysis of minority killings in Kashmir

As the valley lost its special status, the Modi government introduced a series of policies for the development of the state and some benefits were given to the minority population of the Kashmir. These benefits for the minority also included the Kashmiri Pandit population living in several parts of India. These comprised introduction of domicile certificates for anyone across the Indian continent, who is a domicile of Kashmir, amendments to land ownership rights, and online portal for property-related grievances specifically for Kashmiri Pandits, who sold their houses in haste or because of pressure from their Muslim counterparts who wanted to buy their property after they left Kashmir. These policies then engendered resentment amongst the majority population in Kashmir and with the increased number of homegrown terrorists in the valley; this resentment endangered the lives of the minority community living in the Kashmir valley. The onset of autumn in 2021 in Kashmir which usually is picturesque scenery of golden- crimson colors of the chinar leaves saw bloody color on the streets; 22 killings took place in 12 days in the October month. These killings created a stir at the local as well as at the national level. This analysis the issues involved and how the national newspaper reported these minority killings through content analysis.

(Enforced) Migration, (Up)rootedeness, (In)separability and (Post)memory in The Garden of Solitude and The Infidel Next Door

TThis article argues that expressions of postmemory—a form of relationship that a generation has with its antecedants, as proposed by Marianne Hirsch—are writ large in the descendants of the Kashmiri Pandits who fled from the Kashmir Valley in the 1990s and before then. Through a close reading of two novels by Kashmiri writers, Siddhartha Gigoo’s The Garden of Solitude and Rajat Mitra’s The Infidel Next Door, this article analyses the prevalence of guilt, curiosity and the yearning to (re)connect with a lost home that is evident amongst subsequent generations in relation to their parents’ and grandparents’ forced migration from Kashmir. We demonstrate that the idea of postmemory provides a useful framework for understanding the feelings of simultaneous attachment to and generational distance from the past.

Insurgency and Displacement: A Study of Kashmiri Pandits

Insurgency and Displacement: A Study of Kashmiri Pandits

Through an observer’s eyes: A conversation with author Siddhartha Gigoo

ABSTRACT In this interview, the Indian novelist, short story writer, poet, anthologist, and film-maker Siddhartha Gigoo recalls his early development as a writer and comments on his approach to the writing of “resistance literature”, noting how contemporary Kashmiri writers were born and brought up in the midst of a conflict that has impacted their writing as well as their political consciousness. He characterizes his own writing as an “act of preservation”. When discussing the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, their experience of persecution and eviction from the Kashmir Valley, he describes how his stories and films emerge out of a sense of longing for Kashmir. He credits his family as the source of his story-writing skills and explains what creative writing means to him in terms of inspiration, style and choice of genre. The interview began in a coffee house in New Delhi in March 2019 and continued via email in subsequent months.

AGITATIONAL DYNAMICS IN THE KASHMIR VALLEY AND ITS IMPACT

The state of Jammu and Kashmir (now a UT after the abrogation of article 370) is not only the casus belli of three wars between India and Pakistan but is also a possible nuclear flashpoint. Thus the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is a cause of concern not only for the two states but also for South Asia and the entire world. The state-sponsored proxy war in J&K and the resultant militarization of the entire state has turned the situation into a vicious spiral that threatens to go out of control every few years since the 1980s. The dynamics of Kashmir valley have also oscillated from peaceful marches on one end to the forced exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, mass murders by the terrorists, heavy-handedness by the security forces, and violent protests across the Kashmir valley. Amongst this melee of constant violence and curbs on a day to day freedom, the ultimate losers are the people of the state. The aspirations and happiness of these common people have somehow been lost on the state and national governments, the curbs on the flourishing of civil society, and the environment of fear generated by the so-called militants and militarization of the state. An analysis of these mass protests gives out the general mood of the public if not the actual aspirations of the people. The factors causing the security situation in the valley to deteriorate need to be taken cognizance of not only in the domain of law and order but also in the modifications to the approach required to renew and reestablish a compact with the people of the state.

Cultural Shift and Adaptive Quality in Migrant Kashmiri Pandits

Cultural Shift and Adaptive Quality in Migrant Kashmiri Pandits

Effects of Migration on the Health of Kashmiri Pandits

Kashmiri Pandits (KPs), the Hindu community from the state of Jammu & Kashmir of India, are distinct from rest of the Hindu community of India. They have their own customs and rituals that broadly differ from the customs that are prevalent in the Hindu community. The community has its own language, social customs and a rich cuisine. The community had to migrate in the late 1980’s due to the onset of conflict in the state. They had to live in refugee camps in Jammu where the sanitation facilities were minimal. It caused a lot of health issues among the migrants. The change in the geographical environment led to the KPs suffers with skin diseases. There was a major difference between the climatic conditions of Jammu and the valley. Valley being cold and Jammu warm. The current study focuses on the health conditions of Kashmiri Pandits after migration.

Internally Displaced Kashmiri Pandits: Negotiation and Access to Cultural Capital

A large-scale displacement of Kashmiri Pandits occurred in 1989–90 when Kashmir came under the control of secessionist groups. The successful resettlement of these refugees was dependent on their access to cultural and social capital. For the migrants from rural areas of Kashmir, resettlement was accompanied by occupational rupture because they had lost their immovable assets such as land and crops. By contrast, Kashmiri migrants from urban areas had greater access to cultural and liquid capital, which enhanced their ability to pick up their lives. This paper demonstrates that access to educational qualifications, and social and cultural capital, had a determining effect in perpetuating class inequalities among Kashmiris in their new locales.

Immigration and Pediatrics Are in My Blood … the AAP Embraces Both

My family wanted me to go to the United Kingdom for postgraduate training. I wanted to come to the United States because I believed that America offered the best training and the latest in medicine. My family relented.My family is no stranger to immigration. The paternal side of my family hails from Rajasthan, India. In the late 1400s our clan reverted to Islam and had to move. Being a martial race of India, we migrated to Kashmir as part of the Mughal military. The maternal side of my family were Kashmiri Pandits and had also reverted to Islam. My mother’s great grandfather migrated to present-day Kenya in the 1800s. In 1947, some of our family migrated to Lahore in present-day Pakistan.So coming to the United States, immediately after completing my education at King Edward Medical College in Lahore, Pakistan, was a fulfillment of my dream of exceptional training and to live in this great country. I trained at 4 outstanding pediatric institutions: Cincinnati, Akron, Cardinal Glennon, and St Louis Children’s hospitals. As I mentioned earlier, migration was not new to my family. Once I migrated, my parents followed me. My wife and I have family on 5 continents: North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.I always and only wanted to be a pediatrician. This was greatly influenced by my own pediatrician, who was so good with my parents when I got seriously ill as a 14-year-old and was in a coma for 3 days. Our pediatrician is a model that I try to emulate every day.I got engaged in organized medicine and found my professional home with the AAP, which has a strong commitment to diversity, inclusion, equality, and equity. What got me addicted to the AAP was that it not only advocated for pediatricians but, more importantly, also for children. I have had the privilege of serving on several task forces, sections, and committees of the AAP. Currently I serve as the AAP District X vice chair.I have served on 2 other editorial boards of AAP publications. I am having the most fun on the editorial board of PIR. I have used PIR as the main source for my general pediatrics board, which I still proudly maintain. I encourage trainees to do the same. During my travels, I have recommended to trainees around the world to use PIR for their ongoing education.