Migration and Society

The rise of militancy and selective killings of kashmiri Pandits in late 1989, followed by a terror campaign launched through letters, posters, pamphlets and newspapers, and issuing death threats and warnings to the Pandits to leave and the Kashmir valley in a short and specified time, had created feeling of fear and insecurity. Its immediate and major fallout has been the unprecedented en masse migration of nearly one lakh (minority) Hindu Pandit families from Kashmir to Jammu and other parts of India. This is the largest disp[lacement of people in the history of independent India. Worsening security situation, which shows no signs of improvement, discourages these people from returning to their homeland. In the post-1989-90 period there have been a plethora of books on Kashmir but much that has been written is polemical in style and rhetorical in substance. There has thus been an urgent need for a thoughtful and scholarly study of migration of Kashmiri pandits, the kind of life led by them, probable solutions about the betterment of their conditions, and absolute need for meeting and solving their problem ‘ as a whole. The present book is humble attempt to fill in this gap and is pioneering work in this regard. It is the first one done by a geographer.