Uncertain Journeys: Return migration, home, and uncertainty for a displaced Kashmiri community

Abstract

This article explores situations in which forced migrants revisit places and homes they had fled from, drawing on research carried out among Kashmiri Hindus, better known asPandits, who were displaced following the outbreak of conflict in Jammu and Kashmir in 1990. Due to the breakdown of law and order, selective attacks, and a climate of fear, most of the community had relocated from the Kashmir valley to the south in Jammu and to even cities such as New Delhi, constituting one of the most prominent groups of Internally Displaced Persons in the region. While there is an interest in repatriation/resettlement in scholarship and policy, the experiences of the Pandits reveal the multiple meanings ‘return’ holds for the displaced. This article will draw on the experiences of Pandit forced migrants in Jammu who have returned to visit Kashmir. Their experiences will be situated with work on return migration, the Kashmir conflict, and the political location of the Pandits in the region. The article argues that return migration is an inconclusive phenomenon that critically raises questions of home and uncertainty, and provides a way to understand how the displaced locate themselves in the world.

Digital footprints of Kashmiri Pandit migration on Twitter

“…This then led to a wave of migration of 90,000-100,000 out of 120,000-140,000 Pandits from the Kashmir Valley to escape the threats and violence (Bose, 2021;Sarkaria, 2009, p. 197;Sawhney, 2019;Singh, 2015), despite some Kashmiri Muslim delegations and neighbors asking them to stay (Evans, 2002). The Kashmiri Pandits are officially termed 'migrants,' by the Government of India and that of Jammu and Kashmir (Datta, 2016, p. 53;2017, p. 1099.…”