The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits
As the insurgency explodes, targeted killings and threats drive almost the entire Kashmiri Pandit community, the valley's Hindu minority, out of their homeland, most of them never to return.
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
- Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits — Rahul Pandita, Random House India (2013)
- 219 Kashmiri Pandits killed by militants since 1989 — Shujaat Bukhari, The Hindu (2010)
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
- Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris — Christopher Snedden, Hurst (2015)
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
Who the Pandits are
The Pandits are Kashmir’s native Hindus, Saraswat Brahmins who speak Kashmiri and trace their roots in the valley back thousands of years, to the world of Kalhana and Abhinavagupta. By 1990 they were a small minority, a few per cent of the valley’s population, but prominent in education and government service. They had lived among Muslim neighbours for centuries, sharing the language, food and many shrines, as well as old resentments: Muslims saw them as a privileged elite under the Dogras, Pandits as a vulnerable minority.
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
- Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris — Christopher Snedden, Hurst (2015)
The killings and the flight
From the autumn of 1989, militants began targeting Pandits, alongside Muslims they saw as collaborators. In September 1989 they shot Tika Lal Taploo, a well-known Pandit lawyer and BJP leader; in November, retired judge Neelkanth Ganjoo, who had sentenced the JKLF founder Maqbool Bhat to death. Hit lists, threatening posters and newspaper warnings followed.
- Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits — Rahul Pandita, Random House India (2013)
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
Pandits remember the night of 19 January 1990, when crowds filled the streets and mosque loudspeakers broadcast slogans for azadi and Islam, as the night they knew they had to leave. Over the next weeks and months, families packed what they could and fled, mostly to Jammu and Delhi, often expecting to return within weeks. Many lived for years in tents and cramped one-room tenements in refugee camps in the heat of Jammu, where many elders died.
- Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits — Rahul Pandita, Random House India (2013)
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
How many
The numbers are fiercely disputed. Alexander Evans estimated that about 160,000–170,000 Pandits lived in the valley in 1990 and that around 95 per cent of them, some 150,000–160,000 people, left that year; other estimates, including some by Pandit organisations and displacement monitors, run to 250,000 or more.
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
- 219 Kashmiri Pandits killed by militants since 1989 — Shujaat Bukhari, The Hindu (2010)
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
Later massacres of Pandits who stayed, such as at Wandhama in 1998 and Nadimarg in 2003, confirmed their fears. Only a few thousand Pandits remained in the valley.
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
- Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris — Christopher Snedden, Hurst (2015)
The argument over memory
How and why the Pandits left is one of the most bitterly contested questions in Kashmir. Many Pandits call it ethnic cleansing or genocide and feel that the world, and many Kashmiri Muslims, never acknowledged their suffering. Many Kashmiri Muslims grieve the loss but resent being collectively blamed, and some believe the governor of the time, Jagmohan, encouraged the departure, which he denied. Historians such as Evans found no evidence of a planned evacuation, and point to fear as the driving force.
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
- Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits — Rahul Pandita, Random House India (2013)
The story has become a national political issue in India, used to argue for a harder line in Kashmir. Government schemes have offered jobs to Pandits willing to work in the valley, but targeted killings of Pandits and other Hindus in 2021–22 made many of them want to leave again. Most Pandits today say they want to go home, but only with safety and dignity.
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
An ethnic cleansing, which many call a genocide: an ancient community driven from its homeland by Islamist militants through killings, threats, posters and slogans from mosque loudspeakers, while many neighbours stayed silent. Decades later there has been almost no justice for the killings, and the world barely noticed.
- Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits — Rahul Pandita, Random House India (2013)
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
The Pandits' departure was a tragedy and a loss to Kashmir, and militants who killed them committed crimes. But many Muslims reject the claim that the community as a whole drove them out, point to Muslims who sheltered Pandit neighbours, and argue that Governor Jagmohan's administration encouraged or facilitated the departure ahead of a crackdown, a claim Jagmohan denied. They note that far more Muslims than Pandits were killed in the conflict.
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
The Pandits were victims of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Successive governments have offered relief, government jobs and transit housing for returnees; the revocation of Article 370 in 2019 was partly presented as a step towards their safe return.
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
- Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy — Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press (2021)
Alexander Evans concluded that fear created by targeted killings and threats was the main cause, that claims of a planned state-organised evacuation lack evidence, and that most Pandits left in early 1990. Numbers killed and displaced remain disputed, and the exodus has been heavily politicised by all sides.
- A Departure from History: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001 — Alexander Evans, Contemporary South Asia (2002)
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
Why it matters today
The exodus is the deepest wound between Kashmir's two main communities. Most Pandits have now spent more than three decades in Jammu, Delhi and beyond; a generation has grown up never having lived in the valley, and their language and rituals are fading. Many Kashmiri Muslims say they miss their Pandit neighbours and feel accused of a crime they did not commit. How you tell this story is one of the most sensitive questions in Kashmir.