The scars of the exiled Kashmiri Pandit community have not healed in 32 years. They have not, however, given up hope of returning to their homeland in the future. It has been 30 years since the Valley’s minority Hindu Kashmiri Pandit population “exodus.” The widely debated circumstances of their flight between January and March 1990, as well as the numbers and problem of their return, are a major aspect of the Kashmir saga that has flowed into Hindu-Muslim polarisation in India over the years, fueling the Hindu-Muslim split in the Valley. In a peaceful parade at Gawkadal on January 20, CRPF machine bullets killed around 50 Kashmiri Muslim protestors and wounded dozens more. The 21st of January is remembered by Kashmiri Muslims as “the beginning of the genocide” – “the first killing.” Armed men shot and killed Pandit political leader Tika Lal Taploo outside his home in September 1989. In the years that followed, more of them left, until only about 3,000 families remained in 2011. The motivations for this migration are hotly debated. As Kashmiri Muslims’ aspirations for independence from India grew louder in 1989–1990, many Kashmiri Pandits, who saw self-determination as anti-national, felt under pressure. Political violence, particularly the assassinations of a number of Pandit officials in the 1990s, may have shattered the community’s sense of security, though it is thought that some Pandits may have served as agents of the Indian state, based on evidence produced afterward in Indian courts. The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) killed a number of high-profile Pandits in targeted killings. Muslims committed crimes in the area. However, Kashmiri Pandits and Sikhs have had a long-standing friendly relationship. However, the 1990 Pandit exodus was a blemish on the landscape and a deep-rooted religion-based genocide perpetrated by Pakistan in the name of religion. Inquire of the Pandits who fled because they were urged to do so by their Muslim neighbours or certain imams. It is true that some of them have received threats to leave the valley or convert to Islam. It is a well-known truth that Kashmiri Pandits have traditionally had cordial ties with Muslims. Thousands of Pandits continue to live in 8 × 8 refugee communities. The Kashmiri Pandit minority has been unable to return to their native country for more than two decades. They’re all over the place, from Jammu to Johannesburg.
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