“Hundred percent of my friends are Kashmiri Muslim,” said the 29-year-old who lives in the densely packed downtown area of Srinagar. Theirs...
“Hundred percent of my friends are Kashmiri Muslim,” said the 29-year-old who lives in the densely packed downtown area of Srinagar. Theirs is in the only Kashmiri Pandit family in the locality.
He lives with his mother and sister in their ancestral home in downtown Srinagar, one of the few Kashmiri Pandit families who stayed back after the 1990s, when targeted killings forced a mass migration of the community. “It’s impossible to live here alone without the support of the majority. We always felt safe here,” he explained.
That may have changed over the last few weeks. Since October 2, nine civilians have been shot dead by militants. Six belonged to minorities in the Valley – two were Kashmiri Pandit, two were Hindu migrant workers from Bihar, one was a Muslim migrant worker from Uttar Pradesh and one a Sikh school teacher. While three Kashmiri Muslims have also been killed by militants, there is panic in the Valley that religious minorities are being singled out.
Over the last few years, thousands of Kashmiri Pandits employed by the government had been accommodated in transit camps in the Valley. About 1,500 such employees are believed to have fled to their homes in Jammu. Of the 808 Kashmiri Pandit families...
