When some Pandits, speaking with the quiet anguish of displacement, asked me why they were made to flee the Valley they once called home, their question pierced like an arrow through time. “Why did our neighbours turn against us?” they asked, not accusingly, but with the sadness of those searching for meaning in the ruins of memory.
Your question, my dear Pandit friends, is profoundly painful. Its answer is deeply complex. It speaks not only of your forced migration but also of the displacement of many Kashmiri Muslims. The tragedy did not erupt overnight. It was the outcome of decades of political decay, moral erosion, and a trust deficit between the rulers and the ruled, and between neighbours.
Global Tremors, Local Reverberations
To understand 1990, we must look beyond the Valley. The year 1979 was a turning point. The Iranian Revolution awakened a new religious consciousness, while the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan militarised that consciousness, flooding the region with weapons, rhetoric, and men hardened in ideological fire.
These convulsions did not spare Kashmir. The Valley’s youth saw Muslim nations rise against perceived tyranny and occupation. A new belief and fervour emerged that Azadi could be achieved through armed struggle, not ballots. Many began to view this struggle as morally justified and practically viable.
Borders grew porous. Young men crossed over for training. Guns and war songs circulated under the nose of Indian security agencies. Whether this was negligence or design remains unanswered, but the seeds of rebellion were sown during this decade.
The Death of Faith in Democracy
As the 1980s progressed, corruption and decay had deepened in Kashmir. Delhi’s patronage suffocated its political institutions. Farooq Abdullah, though charismatic, headed a government that was estranged from its people. Politics became theatrical, in turn rendering democracy hollow.
The 1987 elections were the final rupture. Delhi, in alliance with Farooq’s National Conference, ensured the Muslim United Front (MUF) was denied its rightful share in power. Ballot boxes were stuffed, candidates beaten and jailed, and hope in peaceful politics shattered.
The Pandit community, by and large, identified with Delhi’s position, perhaps believing it would preserve peace. But even a token MUF presence in the Assembly could have kept faith alive. Instead, the rigging provided Pakistan a golden opportunity. Islamabad saw in the Valley’s disillusionment a chance to avenge 1971 and bleed India strategically. Under the banner of liberation, Kashmiri youth were trained and armed. Political despair became armed rebellion.
The Collapse of Order
By the late 1980s, dissent was criminalised and administration paralysed. Delhi’s answer was militarisation. In January 1990, when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed pressed for Jagmohan’s return as Governor, believing that only a man of his stern nature could restore order and block the return of the Abdullahs to power, many hoped for stability. But Jagmohan arrived not as a healer, but as a hardliner. His governance, steeped in coercion, confirmed the fears that Delhi viewed Kashmir as a territory to be subdued.
Blood in the Jhelum
The turning point came swiftly. On 21 January 1990, at Gaw Kadal, security forces opened fire on unarmed protesters, killing over fifty. The Jhelum ran red, and whatever little trust between people and the state existed till then, perished.
A few days later, mourners carrying the body of Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq were met with bullets. The Mirwaiz, a moderate voice for dialogue, was silenced, marking the triumph of extremism over reason.
The Night of Exodus
In this climate of fear and rage came the night of 19 January 1990. Rumours, curfews, slogans, and targeted killings created panic in Pandit neighbourhoods. Militants did issue threats, but the decisive failure was the absence of state protection. In subsequent days, instead of ensuring safety, Jagmohan’s administration encouraged evacuation.
Between 1990 and 1992, 90–95% of the Pandit population, nearly 100,000 people, left the Valley. About 200-300 Pandits (as per different estimates) were killed in targeted fear-spreading attacks. But the tragedy did not spare the majority. 20,000 to 40,000 Kashmiri Muslims (according to different estimates), mostly civilians, were killed in the first decade of militancy.
Empty Pandit homes were no triumph for those left behind. This marked the death of Kashmir’s composite soul, and devastation of its civilizational stockpile. For centuries, Muslims and Pandits were cultural siblings, bound by language, art, and memory. Their separation was civilisational loss.
The Double Victimhood
It is a grave distortion to view this tragedy solely through a communal lens. Both communities were victims of the same betrayal. The Pandit lost his home. The Muslim lost his homeland.
One was displaced by fear; the other suffocated by militarisation. Delhi turned the Pandit tragedy into a political instrument, invoking their pain to justify repression while having done precious little to protect them in the first place. This was the cruelest paradox. The tragedy was used as a pernicious policy.
The Moral Collapse of Governance
From the Maharaja’s hesitant accession (1947) to the dismissal of Sheikh Abdullah (1953), from the erosion of autonomy to rigged elections and coercive rule, every blow weakened the Valley’s political soul and faith in democracy.
Farooq Abdullah reflected internal decay. Mufti Mohammad Sayeed reflected Delhi’s misreading of Kashmir. Jagmohan embodied Delhi’s punitive instinct.
History Must Be Remembered Honestly
To understand the wound, we must avoid selective memory.
Yes, history remembers darker periods, such as Sultan Sikandar’s time. Yet here too misconceptions persist. Sikandar is also credited with constructing the Ganpatyar Temple, confirmed by an inscription on a stone slab recovered from there. And the belief that only eleven Pandit families survived is contradicted by contemporary sources (Baharistan-i-Shahi) noting around twelve hundred Pandit families then living in Kashmir.
Likewise, during Sikh and Dogra rule, Kashmiri Muslims suffered oppression, land dispossession, exclusion from education, and begaar (forced labour), from which Pandits were exempt. Such forms of oppression were, however, common in the feudal structures of Kashmir across Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim eras.
History’s lesson is clear. Pain in Kashmir has never been one-sided. The tragedy of 1990 was not victory of one community over another. It was the failure of shared humanity.
Towards Healing
Today, Pandits remain scattered, longing for snow-clad alleys and ancestral courtyards. Muslims live under surveillance and suspicion, their dignity eroded. Healing requires more than rhetoric.
Delhi must restore justice, not mere administration. Pandits must be guaranteed belonging, not simply accommodation. Muslims must be restored dignity, not merely watched.
Healing will come when we remember the wisdom of Lal Ded and Nund Rishi, who taught that compassion is our highest faith.
The Valley will not heal through control. It will heal through trust.
The day a Pandit lights a diya again in his ancestral courtyard and his Muslim neighbour embraces him in warmth and tears, that day Kashmir will begin to reclaim its soul. Until then, the Chinars will continue shedding red leaves each autumn, whispering to the Jhelum the same lament that the paradise, once lost to beauty, is now lost to betrayal.
Efforts at reconciliation are hardly visible. Governments have been speaking of return in terms of housing colonies and administrative packages etc. But reconciliation is not architecture. It happens not through policy announcements, but through sincere actions, acknowledgement, social interaction, and empathy.
Reconciliation cannot remain a mere hope suspended in the air. It requires moral and emotional restoration. It must actually translate to result-oriented actions which must begin in the collective hearts of Kashmiris of all hues, not in power corridors where politics has the edge over reason and societal good. Politics can at best create frameworks of safety. It cannot create trust, and mutual affection.
Trust is born in mohallas, among neighbours, in shared meals on Eid and Shivratri, and in honest conversations, just as it once existed. For healing to be genuine, the majority must make space and extend assurance, not as charity, not as apology, but as recognition of shared belonging.
Such a movement can begin in small circles of intellectuals, writers, teachers, community elders, young people. A simple, honest collective statement, “You are ours, and the Valley is incomplete without you. We could not protect you once; but we will stand with you now” would mean more than a thousand government proclamations.
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