11/09/2026
Kashmiri Pandits: The Truth About an Unfinished Ethnic Cleansing
An Opinion by Veer Ji Raina
General Secretary, J&K Thinkers Forum
For Kashmir Media Trust
For more than three decades, the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits has remained one of the most painful and contested chapters of Kashmir’s modern history.
Thousands of families were uprooted from their ancestral homes during the rise of armed militancy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Yet the tragedy is still sometimes reduced to the claim that the entire exodus was merely “engineered by Jagmohan.”
That explanation is far too simplistic.
The exodus occurred amid armed insurgency, targeted killings, threats and intimidation against members of the Kashmiri Pandit community. The role of Jagmohan can and should be debated historically, but attributing the entire displacement to one Governor does not explain the killings, threats and fear that drove families to abandon their homes, land, businesses and generations-old connections to Kashmir.
At the same time, the perpetrators of terrorism must not be confused with the entire Kashmiri Muslim community. Many Kashmiri Muslims themselves suffered terribly during the years of militancy. Responsibility for targeted violence belongs to militants, their organisations and those who participated in or enabled such crimes—not to an entire religious community.
But this distinction must never become an excuse to dilute the suffering of the Pandits.
Wandhama, Chittisinghpora, Sangrampora, Nadimarg and other targeted attacks remain painful reminders of the violence that claimed Kashmiri Pandit lives. Those who remained in the Valley were not necessarily safe.
And even today, the language of intimidation has not completely disappeared.
Reports in August and September 2026 of fresh threats attributed to a Lashkar-e-Taiba-linked group against Kashmiri Pandit employees working in Kashmir are deeply disturbing. When members of a community displaced decades ago are again threatened with death and told to leave their jobs, such threats must be taken with the utmost seriousness.
The real test of rehabilitation is therefore not merely the number of government jobs created or houses constructed. It is whether a Kashmiri Pandit can live and work in Kashmir without fear of becoming a terrorist target.
The tragedy of the Pandits should neither be weaponised against Kashmiri Muslims nor erased for political convenience.
Both truths can coexist: ordinary Kashmiri Muslims cannot collectively be blamed for terrorism, and the targeted persecution and displacement of Kashmiri Pandits cannot be denied or minimised.
Whether one describes the Pandit experience as genocide or uses another legal or historical terminology, the central reality remains: an indigenous minority was driven from a substantial part of its historic homeland amid terror and violence.
Justice requires more than sympathy. It requires preservation of historical truth, investigation of unresolved killings, action against property encroachment, protection of those who remain or return, and accountability for those responsible.
The displaced Kashmiri Pandit does not seek charity.
The community seeks what every displaced citizen has a right to expect:
Truth. Justice. Security. Dignity. And the right to return to the land of their ancestors.
The return of the Pandits cannot be reduced to a government package or a political slogan. It must become a national commitment to ensure that their history is neither forgotten nor repeated.
— Veer Ji Raina
General Secretary, J&K Thinkers Forum
