Author- Rahul Kilam , Content Writing
More than three decades after their forced displacement, Kashmiri Pandits remain internal refugees. Justice delayed has become justice denied—and the silence around their suffering continues to erode India’s moral and constitutional promise.
In a 53-page judgment delivered on May 18, 2015, Justice Rajiv Shakdher of the Delhi High Court opened with a haunting line: “The petitioners before me are children of a lesser God.” The case concerned 232 Kashmiri Pandit migrant teachers—mostly women—seeking relief from the Delhi government. Yet the words transcended service conditions. They captured the enduring tragedy of an entire community—displaced, diminished, and abandoned.
Nearly a decade later, that description remains painfully accurate.
The Kashmiri Pandits—among India’s oldest and most intellectually vibrant communities—continue to live as internal refugees, exiled from their homeland, sustained by assurances but denied justice. Their suffering has not ended; it has merely been normalised.
This neglect was starkly reinforced when the Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking investigation into the mass killings, sexual violence, and targeted persecution of Kashmiri Pandits during the insurgency of the late 1980s and 1990s. The reason offered—that the plea came “too late”—raises a disturbing question: since when does the passage of time absolve the state of its duty to investigate grave human rights violations?
Under Indian constitutional principles and international law alike, crimes such as ethnic cleansing, targeted killings, and mass sexual violence do not expire. Accountability is not subject to limitation. Justice delayed may be tragic—but justice denied is indefensible.
This dismissal was not merely procedural; it was symbolic. It conveyed that some histories are too inconvenient to confront, some victims too expendable to remember. That while certain injustices provoke national outrage and institutional action, others are quietly consigned to oblivion.
The irony is difficult to ignore. In its 2023 judgment upholding the abrogation of Article 370, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul expressly acknowledged the historical trauma of the Kashmiri Pandit community and underscored the need for their rehabilitation. Yet sympathy without follow-through is little more than rhetorical consolation.
Significantly, during the same hearings, Justice Kaul went further—calling for an impartial examination of human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir dating back to the 1980s.
“I recommend the setting up of an impartial Truth and Reconciliation Committee to investigate and report on the violations of human rights both by the state and non-state actors at least since the 1980s and recommend measures for reconciliation,” he observed.
“To move forward, wounds require healing. Inter-generational trauma is felt by people. The first step towards healing the wounds is the acknowledgment of the acts of violations done by the state and its actors.”
That such a constitutionally articulated roadmap remains unimplemented only highlights the gulf between judicial wisdom and political will.
The exodus of over 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits was no accident of history. It followed a systematic campaign of terror—marked by assassinations, intimidation, and chilling slogans such as “Raliv, Galiv ya Chaliv” (Convert, Leave, or Die). By every credible definition, this amounted to ethnic cleansing. Yet more than three decades later, there has been no commission of inquiry, no comprehensive investigation, no meaningful accountability.
Every year on January 19, the nation commemorates the events of 1990 that forced Kashmiri Pandits to flee their ancestral homes. The remembrance, however, rings hollow when justice and dignified return remain distant promises. Ensuring both remains among the gravest moral and political challenges before the Indian state.
What makes this failure especially damning is the bipartisan consensus around inaction. Governments across the political spectrum have alternately instrumentalised Pandit suffering for momentary gain or ignored it altogether. The community has been a convenient talking point—and an inconvenient responsibility.
The silence extends beyond politics. Large sections of civil society, academia, and the media—otherwise quick to mobilise around injustice—have largely looked away. Perhaps because this tragedy does not fit comfortable narratives. Perhaps because some victims are easier to empathise with than others.
India cannot credibly claim democratic maturity while an entire community remains displaced within its own borders. It cannot speak of pluralism or moral leadership while ignoring one of the most profound internal displacements since Partition.
What is required is not radical
Only just: a judicially monitored investigation into the targeted violence of the 1990s; a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to formally acknowledge the scale of injustice; a time-bound, dignified return and rehabilitation policy framed with community participation; and institutional safeguards to protect the religious, cultural, and linguistic heritage of Kashmiri Pandits.
The measure of India’s democracy will not lie in proclamations or commemorations, but in whether it finally delivers truth, justice, and dignity to those it has long left behind.
19th — Exodus Day. A Holocaust our community remembers. Forced out of our homeland, still counting our days in exile. India’s so-called secularism failed us in Kashmir, where the real aborigines were killed, raped, and driven out.
