When Ranjan Jotshi stepped outside his home in Vessu, South Kashmir, he couldn’t help but imagine that a gunman was waiting around the corner to assassinate him. “My own shadow now frightens me”, admits this pundit, the name given to the Hindus of this Muslim-majority region of India. Since early May, at least four members of this community have been shot dead, triggering a wave of panic and protests.
On May 12, Rahul Bhat, a government employee, was shot and killed in his office in Budgam district, central Kashmir. Then, in the space of a few days, between the end of May and the beginning of June, three more Hindus were murdered. Two police officers and a local influencer, all three Muslims, are also among the victims of this recent series of attacks.
The multiplication of the assassinations of civilians raises the specter of the violence of the past on the Himalayan territory disputed by India and Pakistan. Since 1989, the part administered by New Delhi has been rocked by a separatist insurgency. And, in 1990, a wave of terror had driven tens of thousands of Hindu families. A traumatic exodus that saw between 200,000 and 300,000 people leave the valley.
From 2008, Pandits began to resettle in Kashmir, encouraged by a rehabilitation program set up by the government of Manmohan Singh. The security situation was improving as a result of heavy militarization of the region while the government guaranteed employment and housing assistance to returning families.
“It’s hard to live there”
Narendra Modi’s current cabinet, for which the rehabilitation of pundits is a priority, has for its part facilitated access to employment and property. Separatist groups and opponents have accused him of wanting to change the demographics of the region, which is nearly 70% Muslim. Since 2008, some 4,000 Pandits have been able to return to Kashmir with the support of the authorities.
Today, many are ready to turn back. Government employees, they demand their transfer to another region of India. For more than a month, they have abandoned their place of work, for fear of suffering the same fate as Rahul Bhat, murdered in his office.
“We are no longer safe in Kashmir”judge Ranjan Jotshi, who left the village of Vessu, in south Kashmir, where he had been living since 2010, to take temporary refuge some 200 kilometers away, in the predominantly Hindu city of Jammu. Like him, hundreds of Hindu families have already fled Kashmir in recent weeks. “The government is telling the world that peace is back, but it’s hard to live there. Whether one is Hindu or Muslim, no one is safe”believes this 46-year-old father, who had become friends with the Muslim community of his locality.
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