Accounting for Displacement
Accounting for Displacement
The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits
This chapter provides the historical background to Jammu and Kashmir from the establishment of the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir in the mid-nineteenth century to the inception of the ‘Kashmir question’ in 1947 and finally to the conflict which began in 1989–90. The chapter then discusses the Kashmiri Pandits who have their own history of the region. There is controversy with regards to the causes of the Pandit exodus, with blame laid at both Kashmiri nationalists and the Indian state. The account of the Pandit exodus is thus subject to confusion and denial. This chapter attempts to reconstruct a narrative of the exodus through newspaper archives and interviews and conversations with the Pandits themselves. The emergent narrative, while partial reveals the fissures with regards to location of the Pandits in Kashmiri and Indian politics and also raises questions regarding accounts of violence in South Asia at large.
Keywords: history, memory, narrative, flight, violence, displacement, South Asia, Jammu and Kashmir, Kashmiri Pandits
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
