As India’s National Highway 1A winds its way towards the soaring peaks of the Pir Panjal Range, changes in the cultural landscape are difficult to miss. Vishnoi dhaba stalls selling “pure veg” fare cede to rickety roadside hotels manned by vendors clad in the distinctive Kashmiri pheran. The 2.85-kilometer Jawahar tunnel – the namesake of the country’s venerated patriarch Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru – effectively bifurcates the two worlds. Security becomes overweening, and the demographic transition coarse. This wasn’t always the case.
Image Credit: REUTERS/Danish Ismail
Between the late 1980s and the present approximately 137,000 Hindu Pandits left the Kashmir valley. Their departure, facilitated by state forces, was a result of multiple factors, including intimidation and violence related to the onset of the separatist insurgency, as well as economic and social concerns. In a 1999 ruling of the National Human Rights Commission, the factors motivating the community’s dislocation were said to have fallen short of those present during acts of genocide. On the basis of this judgment, Kashmiri Pandits have since been denied status as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). India’s recognition of IDP rights – whether in Manipur, Gujarat or Assam – has, however, been uniformly poor: politics, rather than principle, has been decisive.
