On March 6, 1990, Ranjan Jyotshi's family locked the door of their home in Bijbehara, wondering if they’d ever be able to step back in after putting the big padlock from the outside. The house had taken two years to build, and they moved in after its completion in 1988. It had sixteen rooms. Its wooden balconies were carved intricately. By 1997, they sold it for four lakh Rupees. Today, that same property is worth crores.
"After migration, we shifted to a single room in a rented accommodation," Jyotshi said. "The contrast was hard to believe."
His story is not unusual. Across the Kashmir Valley, thousands of families like his left in the same season, in the same panic, with the same intention of returning. Most never did. And the homes they left behind - once filled with ornate woodwork, spacious rooms, prayer corners and courtyards where children played - have slowly come apart over the decades.
They either got new owners, or they live like relics in decay – of homes that were.
Kashmir is more than its mountains. For centuries, the valley carried within it a layered world of learning, ritual, poetry, and shared cultural life. Although the region has a dominant Muslim-majority population, Kashmiri Hindus, known as Pandits, formed its largest minority community and remained woven into that fabric for generations. Two communities living together in one geography with one shared inheritance.
The mass exodus of the 1990s tore through that inheritance. According to official figures, around 154,080 Kashmiri Pandits fled the valley amid political turmoil and unrest, leaving behind ancestral homes and a heritage rooted in centuries of history. The political upheaval that produced that migration remains one of the most significant crises in Kashmir's modern history.
Its multiple consequences can be counted, in cracked walls, in the fraying facades of houses and in the missing traditions and festivals.
Abandoned Homes
Across villages in Anantnag, Kulgam, Mattan, and beyond, the abandoned homes of Pandit families stand in varying stages of ruin. Some have been destroyed by fire. Others have collapsed into mud and rubble. Many simply stand roofless, crumbling walls, rain-soaked, with gaping holes where windows and doors once stood and wild grass covering the base of the walls. Balconies that were once a home's most beautiful feature have rotted away.
The exact number of such houses remains unknown. Though a grievance portal was launched in 2021 for people to report encroachment or distress sale but no systematic, proactive government audit of abandoned Pandit properties has been conducted. Pandit families who spoke to the Kashmir Times confirmed that none exists, making an explicit distinction between registering complaints and assessing the ground reality.
The existing government policy on Pandit properties evolved over the decades. The Jammu and Kashmir Migrant Immovable Property (Preservation, Protection and Restraint on Distress Sales) Act, 1997, was enacted to prevent illegal encroachment on migrant Pandit properties, curb distress sales, and empower authorities to remove unauthorized occupants.
In 2021, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha launched the "Kashmir Migrants Immovable Properties" online portal, allowing migrants to register complaints about encroachment, distress sale, or other property disputes.
It was framed as a step toward fuller implementation.
In practice, implementation has reportedly fallen short. The Minister of Disaster Management, Relief, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction stated that of 210 complaints filed by Kashmiri Pandits over property encroachment, only five had been resolved under the Act, suggesting either a gap between complaints and implementation, or prevalence of exaggerated complaints.
Several Pandit families interviewed said no regular, systematic government audit of abandoned properties takes place. While the portal allows them to report grievances, they noted that proactive on-ground assessment by authorities, rather than a complaint-driven process, would have given them clearer visibility into the actual state of their properties, and with it, more confidence in the process.
"Every part of the house carried a memory," said one displaced Pandit living in Jammu since 1990s. "The trees in the courtyard were planted by my father. Today, only the central part remains," he says of his house in Mattan. He visits Kashmir periodically to just check on the house but adds that it is almost unthinkable to settle here – not because of the dilapidated condition of the house but because of what he says, “uncertain nature of the prevailing situation in Kashmir.”
These homes do not merely exist as silent structures, they are, as one sociology professor put it, "silent symbols of memory, grief, displacement, and continuing connection between displaced people and the land they were based in." Speaking on condition of anonymity, he added: "they continually carry identity, belonging, and the collective history of the families who once lived within them."
Nazir Ahmad Buland, a local from Anantnag, is among those who witnessed the departures and have spent the years since waiting for returns that have not come.
"Once home to many families, these houses have become too vulnerable to live in," he said. "Leaving the houses behind is more unsettling and painful. We are hoping they will come back so that we could mutually revive the memories of solidarity."
His long-held and modest hope points toward something that has remained elusive. The abandoned homes, standing in their silence, are caught inside that history.
The Temples They Once Thronged
Not far from where the Jyotshi family once lived, at the centre of Bijbehara town, stands the Vijeshwar Temple, also known as the Harishchandra Temple. The ancient town itself is believed to have taken its name from this shrine: Bijbehara derived from Vijeshwara, or Vijayeshwara, in honour of Lord Shiva, the deity worshipped there.
Before the migration, the temple complex was a place of communal gathering and sacred ritual. In its courtyard, among the religious scriptures, sat a remarkable object - a conch-shaped stone monument, shrinking at one end, weighing roughly 70 to 80 kilograms – a Shiv Lingam. In Kashmiri parlance, it was called the "Kah-Kah-Pal" stone. "Kah" means eleven; "Pal" means stone or rock. The name referred to a practice that had grown into local legend: if precisely eleven people placed their fingers on the stone and chanted "kah, kah, kah" - eleven, eleven, eleven - the stone was believed to rise into the air or become effortless to lift.
The temple's dome, according to local lore, was of such extraordinary height that its shadow at certain hours stretched as far as Mattan, Vodur, and Awantipora.
The initiative "Revival, Restoration, Preservation and Maintenance of Heritage in J&K," launched in 2021–22, is restoring and renovating heritage sites across the Union Territory, including temples, forts, and other religious sites. The scheme is being executed by the Directorate of Archives, Archaeology and Museums.
According to a government statement, 45 projects are currently underway. A second phase has identified 73 additional projects for restoration and preservation, and a planned third phase is expected to cover more than 400 sites.
Ranjan’s father, Loknath Jyotshi, who grew up visiting the Vijeshwar temple in Bijbehara, says, “We often would visit the temple premises. Eleven people would come together and observe the scene." "That precious stone, which had a sacred connotation, also went missing after we migrated. It is a significant loss of heritage."
The stone was not the only thing that disappeared. After the migration, Jyotshi says, divine and cultural artefacts vanished from across the valley. Cremation grounds were encroached upon. A pond called Pamposh Sar, where lotus flowers once grew and were offered at temples, was converted into a parking area. Burial sites of young children were cleared. Bus yards were built where the dead had been laid to rest.
"These government encroachments have significantly undermined our heritage sites and memories," he said.
Lost Rituals
The losses are not only physical. For Kashmiri Pandits, identity has always been carried through ritual and the disruption of that ritual, sustained across decades, has left deep marks.
Herath, one of the community's most significant festivals, is observed over three days of prayer, fasting, and traditional food. Mutton curry, fish, cheese, and vegetable dishes are prepared according to custom. Walnuts are soaked overnight in clay pots filled with water - a ritual act believed to invoke abundance, fertility, and divine blessing. It was then distributed the following morning among family members, relatives, and guests. The act of sharing those walnuts holds within it centuries of community bonds and memory.
For those who stayed in the valley, that memory has grown harder to hold. The mass migration, and the communication gaps it created, have diluted the shared heritage that once connected Pandit communities across generations.
"We don't celebrate our social and religious festivals in the similar manner as we used to celebrate them before migration," said Badrinath Raina, a local Pandit from Kulgam, whose family was among the very few in their village who did not leave in the 1990s. They stayed, surrounded by their Muslim neighbours, and credit that solidarity for their survival. Still, something has changed. The festivals are observed, but the shared atmosphere in which they once took place has thinned.
For those who left, the rupture feels sharper. "Displacement from Kashmir has substantially marked the death of our cultural identity," said one displaced Pandit, Yogesh. "The Pandit cultural and ritualistic practices are highly at stake of extinction. The bonds that once connected us to our heritage were ripped away, leaving us burdened to protect and safeguard our identity and sense of belonging."
Return Under PM Package
Under the Prime Minister's Employment Package for displaced communities, launched in 2009 and implemented in 2010, some 5,868 Kashmiri migrants were designated posts out of a total 6,000 sanctioned positions in the valley. The scheme was not limited to Pandits. It extended to all those who had suffered displacement, including Muslims and Sikhs.
For many, the package is welcome but insufficient. "We have been witnessing a greater sense of insecurity," said one migrant Pandit, who asked not to be named. "We expect from the government to ensure some resettlement and rehabilitative measures for our entire survival."
Rakesh Pandita was around sixteen when his family left. He is among those who took up a position in the valley under the PM’s Package, despite pressure from friends and relatives to remain in the city.
"We have faced the disturbed scenes and challenges, both during and after the displacement," he said. "But I feel deeply connected to my roots, and living in Kashmir evokes a sense of belonging in me."
However, several Pandits who availed the same package to get jobs in the Valley complain of the shabby housing conditions.
"Initially, we lived in temporary huts in Veerwan Pandit Colony, where even basic amenities were absent despite assurances of rehabilitation. Since 2014, we have been moved to the migrant colony at Khwajabagh, but the reality remains starkly different. The accommodation is inadequate and unsuitable for families. It is more than a betrayal of our expectations. If the administration has been unable to meet the needs of just 6,000 migrant employees, how credible are its claims of ensuring the survival and rehabilitation of an entire community?" said Ashish, a migrant Pandit (name changed).
Speaking to other employees in the colony, several described the package as a symbol of political rhetoric, used for electoral gains while genuine rehabilitation remains neglected. They said they were appointed under a scheme explicitly intended for relief and rehabilitation but argued this cannot be called true rehabilitation - rather, survival under a different form of displacement.
They added that while they still hold ownership of their ancestral properties, they rarely visit their native places, where their abandoned homes now lie in ruins. "There is always an underlying fear of acceptance," said Yogesh, another migrant employee.
According to local Pandits from Mattan in Anantnag, a small number of displaced families managed to restore their properties following the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. But some remain tied up in legal and financial disputes, the houses caught between claimants and courts.
Rakesh Pandita said his family's land became entangled in a property dispute after being placed under the management of an appointed power of attorney following their migration from the Valley. His father's mental health deteriorated after migration, and he died in 2012. Rakesh's elder brother then took over management of the land until his own death in 2024, after which complications surfaced. His sister-in-law alerted him to discrepancies in the land's status, prompting Rakesh to file an online grievance. A local Patwari subsequently informed him that the land had already been sold to other parties by those holding the power of attorney.
"I was deeply saddened, as the documents clearly mention an attorney-in-fact arrangement, and we were also meant to be compensated annually, which we never received," Rakesh claims. "This issue requires a proper legal investigation. I am looking to file an RTI and take the case forward. As a rightful heir, I have the right to demand this property."
Task of Remembering
Among those who left, the work of remembering falls increasingly to those who were young when they left or were born after.
Aakriti Chatta, a Kashmiri Pandit now living in Haryana, keeps the traditions going - cooking Kashmiri food, observing festivals, and speaking the language - with the deliberate effort to “remain connected to our roots and culture regardless of where we live today”.
"Kashmir remains deeply present in our lives through stories," she said. "We continue to sustain our heritage through traditions. Displacement took away our homes, not our identity. We make sure that the stories are heard and remembered by our younger generation."
Sonika Raina carries those same practices to Germany, where she now lives. Herath is still observed, though not with the scale it once had in Kashmir, where entire communities would come together.
"While the grandeur is not the same as it once was," she said, "we continue to keep our cultural practices alive and pass them on to the next generation."
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