Institute for Social and Economic Change |
Working Paper: 237
Migration of Kashmiri Pandits: Kashmiriyat Challenged?
Khalid Wasim Hassan
Abstract
The post-1988 period saw the re-emergence of the ‘self-determination movement’ in Kashmir. The secular nationalist voice within this movement propagates the idea of Kashmiriyat - a shared cultural identity of people from different faiths. The migration of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley in the early 1990s seems to pose a challenge to the claims of secular nationalists and to the whole concept of ‘Kashmiriyat’. This paper will attempt to briefly look at the concept of Kashmiriyat and its conceptualisation by Kashmiri Nationalists, while in detail it will look at the various narratives around Pandit migration to see if and how this migration poses challenges to Kashmiriyat.