Talk:Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus

Bibliography

Books

• Bose, Sumantra (1997), The challenge in Kashmir: democracy, self-determination, and a just peace, New Delhi: Sage Publications, ISBN 978-0-8039-9350-1
• Bose, Sumantra (2003), Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-01173-1
• Bose, Sumantra (2013), Transforming India, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-72819-6
• On Uncertain Ground: Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir, Oxford University Press, 2017, ISBN 9780199466771
• Faheem, Farrukh (2018), "Interrogating the Ordinary: Everyday Politics and the Struggle for Azadi in Kashmir", in Duschinski, Haley; Bhan, Mona; Zia, Ather; Mahmood, Cynthia (eds.), Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 230–247, ISBN 978-0-8122-9496-5
• Hussain, Shahla (2015), "Kashmiri Visions of Freedom: The Past and the Present", in Zutshi, Chitralekha (ed.), Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1107181977
• Jagmohan (2006) [September 1991]. My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir (7 ed.). Allied Publisher. ISBN 9788177649956.
• Madan, T. N. (2008), "Kashmir, Kashmiris, Kashmiriyat: An Introductory Essay", in Rao, Aparna (ed.), The Valley of Kashmir: The Making and Unmaking of a Composite Culture?, pp. 1–36
• Malik, Iffat (2005), Kashmir: Ethnic Conflict, International Dispute, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-579622-3
• Metcalf, Barbara; Metcalf, Thomas R. (2006), A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge Concise Histories), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. xxxiii, 372, ISBN 978-0-521-68225-1
• Rai, Mridu (2004), Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir, Princeton University Press/Permanent Black, ISBN 978-81-7824-202-6
• Tikoo, Colonel Tej K. (2013). Kashmir: Its Aborigines and Their Exodus. Lancer Publishers LLC. ISBN 978-1-935501-58-9.
• Pandit, T. N. (2005-01-01). Kashmiri Pandits: A Contemporary Perspective. APH Publishing. pp. 3, 9, 63–. ISBN 9788176488129.
• Swami, Praveen (2007), India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad: The Covert War in Kashmir, 1947–2004, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-134-13752-7
• Wilhelm, Sandhya (2010). Can India Give Up Kashmir: An Option or a Risk? (PDF) (Thesis). Georgetown University.
• Zutshi, Chitralekha (2003), Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, ISBN 978-1-85065-700-2

Journals

• Evans, Alexander (2002). "A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001". Contemporary South Asia. 11 (1): 19–37. doi:10.1080/0958493022000000341. ISSN 0958-4935. S2CID 145573161.
• Duschinski, Haley (2008). ""Survival Is Now Our Politics": Kashmiri Hindu Community Identity and the Politics of Homeland". International Journal of Hindu Studies. 12 (1): 41–64. doi:10.1007/s11407-008-9054-z. ISSN 1022-4556. JSTOR 40343840. S2CID 143490357.

Semi-protected edit request on 21 July 2021

An user has removed the content[1] with a vague edit summary. The source is still available and has been archived[2] for verification. Please restore it. 77.242.16.178 (talk) 20:21, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

 Done. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 19:53, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Diary

The attack and threats section gives feel of an investigation diary. Kautilya3 or some other editor can edit it into something better? TrangaBellam (talk) 09:53, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Forced Migration

An article by Human Rights Watch about the UN report on Kashmir from 2019 read:

The report also decried the lack of justice for past abuses such as killing and forced displacement of Hindu Kashmiri Pandits, enforced or involuntary disappearances, and alleged sexual violence by Indian security forces personnel.

There are other sources too which refer to the "exodus" of Kashmiri Hindus as being an internal displacement. or imply that it was a forced migration.

Since "exodus" does not necessarily mean forced migration or expulsion, the fact that the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus was forced should be reflected in the opening sentence; and it should be changed from "emigration of Hindus" to "forced migration / forced displacement of Hindus".

– Yuyutsu Ho (talk) 14:08, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

I have no objections about your choice of words but this article is not restricted to the event of '90. TrangaBellam (talk) 14:17, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

However much of this article seems to be about the background and aftermath of the events of the 90s. Yuyutsu Ho (talk) 14:34, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

First, far and away the major violence in Kashmir for nearly two centuries has been committed against the Muslims there, violence in which the Pandits themselves have been complicit, i.e. not necessarily actively, but in passive compliance. There are dozens of scholarly sources that attest.Wikipedia has imperatives of due weight. There is no comparison.

Second, there is no reason that the exodus should have a starting date of 1990. Pandits have been emigrating out for centuries. How else did the Nehrus (formerly Kauls) happen to have a house along a canal (Persian nahar) on the outskirts of Delhi in the reign of Shah Jahan? The Pandits, many of whom were landowners, left in fairly large numbers between 1947 and 1951 in the face of impending land reforms. Common estimates are 20%

Third, it is not clear that all emigration was forced, i.e. if there wasn't a demonstration effect or if the reasons were of an economic inconvenience and its resolution by emigration than fear of bodily harm.

Fourth, you are touting the UN Human Rights report 180 sections of which 170 sections are about violence against the Muslims, and one about the departure of the Pandits. If I remember correctly, the mention of the Pandits (in the report published in 2019) is not about current events but about legal issues still unresolved from the 1990s. It doesn't mention numbers. It is quite possible that some were forced to flee, but whether the group was forced is not clear (as I've already stated). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:35, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Also, the uprising in Kashmir in the 1990s began as one against the governments imposed on the state by the Federal government in India; its aim at the outset was not to drive the Hindus out as (if I remember correctly) the leaders of the uprising belong to secular groups. Describing the feeling of the Pandits as "forced migration," not only distorts the reasons for the flight but also the aims of the anti-India (federal government) insurgency. I'm sure there are references for that. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:49, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

for nearly two centuries has been committed against the Muslims there, violence in which the Pandits themselves have been complicit

How is that relevant?

Pandits, many of whom were landowners, left in fairly large numbers between 1947 and 1951 in the face of impending land reforms. Common estimates are 20%

Why is this mentioned only in the references?

it is not clear that all emigration was forced

It would seem that all emigration since the 90s was forced. Do you have sources which claim otherwise?

you are touting the UN Human Rights report 180 sections of which 170 sections are about violence against the Muslims, and one about the departure of the Pandits.

Because there has never been a report by the UN solely focusing on Kashmiri Hindus, and this Wikipedia article is about Kashmiri Hindus?

its aim was not to drive the Hindus out as (if I remember correctly) the leaders of the uprising belong to secular groups.

So Hindus being driven out was a side-effect? Even if it was, I haven't come across any source that doesn't say that they were forced to migrate.

— Yuyutsu Ho (talk) 15:02, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

See for example:

"The imposition of the leaders chosen by the centre, with the manipulation of the local elections contests, and the denial of what Kashmiris felt was a promised 'autonomy', boiled over at last into the militancy of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a secular movement devoted to political, not religious, objectives. The Hindu Pandits, a small but influential elite community who had secured a favourable position, first under the maharajas and then under successive Congress regimes, and proponents of a distinctive Kashmiri culture that linked them to India, felt under siege as the uprising gathered force. Of a population of some 140,000, perhaps some 100,000 Pandits fled the state after 1990; their cause was quickly taken up by the Hindu right. The Kashmiri Muslims, although only uncertainly committed to secession from India, were nevertheless subjected to fierce repression. By decade's end the Indian military presence in the state has escalated to approximately one armed soldier or policeman for every five Kashmiris, and some 30,000 people had died in the conflict." from Metcalf, Barbara D.; Metcalf, Thomas R (2016), A Concise History of Modern India, 4th edition, Cambridge University Press, p. 274, ISBN 0-521-68225-8

Would you like us to change the name of the page to "The killing of 30,000 Muslim Kashmiris in mistaken reprisal for the emigration of 100,000 Kashmiri Pandits because the latter felt under siege from a secular uprising?" Because that is what the source says.

Please also read WP:TERTIARY which states, "Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks are regarded as tertiary sources because they sum up multiple secondary sources. Policy: Reliable tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources, and may be helpful in evaluating due weight." Metcalf and Metcalf is one of the most widely read undergraduate textbooks on modern Indian history. It is a lot more reliable and DUE than one section of a 180-section UN report (which in any case is a primary source). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:26, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

emigration of 100,000 Kashmiri Pandits because the latter felt under siege from a secular uprising?

And why does it mean that the "secular uprising" didn't force the Kashmiri Pandits to migrate?

Are you saying that it's a good thing that they migrated because the "Hindu oppression of Muslims" has more weight or something? XD

Also, I added the UN report because you can't get more politically neutral than the United Nations.

— Yuyutsu Ho (talk) 18:58, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Again, please read about undue weight. Please also note that beyond a certain point, on-the-fly persistence in promoting a WP:POV, which flies moreover in the face of WP rules and conventions constitutes WP:DISRUPTION. This page is the subject of ARBIPA discretionary sanctions. This is as far as I go in patiently explaining things to you. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:39, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Undue Weight —

Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.

It is about giving due weight to each viewpoint, not weighing which community has been oppressed more. And even your source says that Kashmiri Hindus felt under siege as the "secular" uprising gathered force, and hence were forced to migrate. I am not promoting a WP:POV, while you on the other hand couldn't even answer my questions on why certain points have been excluded.

@Fowler&fowler: you don't need to threaten me with sanctions, because I know it's pointless to waste time with people who are clearly biased. Have a good day! ^_^

— Yuyutsu Ho (talk) 16:35, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

References

Removal of content

I am going ahead and removing this entire uncited paragraph- In order to undermine his political rival Farooq Abdullah who at that time was the Chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, the Minister of Home Affairs Mufti Mohammad Sayeed convinced Prime Minister V. P. Singh to appoint Jagmohan as the governor of the state. Abdullah resented Jagmohan who had been appointed as the governor earlier in April 1984 as well and had recommended Abdullah's dismissal to Rajiv Gandhi in July 1984. Abdullah had earlier declared that he would resign if Jagmohan was made the Governor. However, the Central government went ahead and appointed him as Governor on 19 January 1990. In response, Abdullah resigned on the same day and Jagmohan suggested the dissolution of the State Assembly. DTM (talk) 11:40, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Query

Is a partial or complete list available anywhere? — Sheikh Abdullah's government changed the names of about 2,500 villages from their native names to new Islamic ones DTM (talk) 09:10, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I am in favor of removing the line - it is sourced to the absolutely unreliable K. N. Pandita. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:57, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

One Tara Kartha copied the "2,500" figure from us (in all likelihood) into her Routledge chapter. In support, she cited a book that was published in 1971 as a description of 1980s' Kashmir. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:16, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

JPRS Report: Near East & South Asia, Issue 93029, Foreign Broadcast Service, p. 29 has someone holding this to be BJP propaganda. They cite numerous name changes to the opposite effect - Babarpur to Joharpur etc. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:22, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Khalid Bashir Ahmed (p. 253) notes this charge to be a widely circulated story without any substantiation. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

2,500 is certainly WP:EXCEPTIONAL, and we would need multiple high-quality sources for it.

There is only one name that I know about: Anantnag to Islamabad. (Both the names were in use earlier.) Bakshi Ghulam Ahmed is said to have changed it back to Anantnag. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:52, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Anantnag was not Islamabad but a small region in it. Both names were hardly in equal use - almost all British correspondence and Dogra revenue records mention Islamabad. It was indeed Bakshi G's idea to rename it to Anantnag. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:03, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Aurel Stein says the town was called by both the names.

Secondly, I wonder if the name fiddling was to the district name rather than the town's name. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:55, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree. It is established that names may change due to various reasons. However here, with specific mention to this article, we have to understand what will make the name changing notable enough to mention... and there should be references.

Digressing, there is a joke by Vivek Muralidharan- change Ma Tujhe Salaam to Ma Tujhe Pranaam. DTM (talk) 05:51, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Of interest

This book is of interest—

• Raina, B. K.; Sadhu, S. L. (2000). Place Names in Kashmir. Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA). Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. ISBN 8172761708.

The book is also based on a study conducted by the Indian Council of Social Science Research titled "Study of Place Names in Kashmir". The book uses sources including Rajatarangini. Other books go far back taking references to topics such as the Burzahom archaeological site. DTM (talk) 05:51, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Names of people... and other stuff

See also: Onomastics

While this started out as a list of 2,500 villages... name evolution also applies to people...and other stuff. The Book of Indian Names (Rupa, 1994) has some interesting related tidbits-

• A mere shifting of the family name to the first place in the name also makes a significant difference. Thus Ali Mohammad Sheikh may become Sheikh Ali Mohammad and likewise Mohammad Maqbool Mir may change to Mir Mohammad Maq- bool. Sheikh at the third place can even mean a sweeper and Sheikh at the first place is a title of scholars...In a few cases people try to invent a link between their family names and some alien families of some consequence. (pg 12)
• Kaul, Bhat and Pandit are essentially Hindu family names retained by Muslims even after their conversion to Islam. (pg 8)

Reminds me of identity theft....
Khalid Bashir Bhat writes in Countercurrents.org—

• Another old and iconic place subjected to name change – several times – is the famous hill in Srinagar crowned with an ancient stone temple. What we are told is that the hill’s name was ‘Islamized’ from Shankaracharya to Takht-i-Sulaiman or Koh-i-Sulaiman. You often come across this premise in the writings, and posts on social media, of people subscribing to a particular view on Kashmir’s past. Those who hold and propagate this view do so without any regard for history.

Since we are talking of name changing..."Shere-e-Kashmir Cricket Stadium will also get a new name: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium" (The Wire, 2019). DTM (talk) 05:51, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

References

Image query

While I have placed this image File:News, Report,.jpg of a news clipping also present in Sarwanand Koul Premi's article, I am not sure which newspaper this is. DTM (talk) 05:26, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Anmolsharma.141 was the uploader. TrangaBellam (talk) 05:50, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Anmolsharma.141: ping; I will remove the image from this particular article until a newspaper is identified. DTM (talk) 06:46, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Revert related to numbers

Ok, I wonder what Noorani in Dawn was up to. Just one question, can we use a footnote/efn to explain this? Which goes something like this,

1. Higher figures have been stated OR
2. Higher figures have been stated which include... ref1 ref2 ref3
3. edit Higher and lower figures have been stated

I know the footnote is not there to fill with less noteworthy stuff, but I can't wrap my head around Noorani using this figure. The talk page discussion you have linked is very helpful. However, you talk of due weight. Clearly, 700,000 would be beyond what would constitute due weight by Wikipedia policy. How about we look at this from the viewpoint of the higher figures... then... we replace 700,000 your above statement with 100,000— Clearly, 100,000 would be beyond what would constitute due weight by Wikipedia policy. But then when we couple this with your second point, census data, your line of argument acquires due weightage.

In the revert a few more lines were taken out as collateral damage, I assume. I will restore this particular one, In 2021, the Jammu and Kashmir relief office recorded 39,782 Hindu migrant families who had migrated from the valley due to security reasons since 1990. This is out of a total of 44,167 registered Kashmiri migrant families. These figures from the JK Relief Office also contradict Noorani and other high counts more than 500,000. Not only 500,000 and above, even 100,000 and above, even if we assume that 50% of exiled refugees have not registered themselves. This is a quick comment, I do not know how the JK Relief Office functions. DTM (talk) 06:43, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, we should definitely mention the number of "registered refugees", but these are most likely those that live in refugee camps in Jammu. They wouldn't cover the people who have migrated out of J&K. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:24, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

References

Importance and lack of importance of numbers

If one person was part of the exodus from Kashmir, we wouldn't be bothering about this. 10, no. 10000, maybe but no. 50,000 yes. 60,000 yes. After a certain point, it doesn't matter if it is two million or ten million, both are bad. Then again, the importance of the sub-units of those part of the exodus also matter. DTM (talk) 06:49, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Please read WP:TERTIARY, which states, "Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks are regarded as tertiary sources because they sum up multiple secondary sources. Policy: Reliable tertiary sources can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other." When one of the most widely-used books worldwide on modern Indian history, Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf's A Concise History of Modern India, Cambridge University Press, 2012, says, "When some 100,000 of a total of 140,000 Kashmiri Pandits left the valley, and their cause was quickly taken up by the Hindu right." and two monographs, one by Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: The Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace (Harvard University Press, 2003), and the other by Mridu Rai, Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir, Princeton University Press (2004), mention more or less the same statistics, and a widely used graduate textbook, Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh's The Partition of India, Cambridge University Press, 2009 has an estimate that is only higher by 40,000, our hands are tied.

Noorani's article in the Dawn which begins with a peremptory, "In 1990, on the outbreak of militancy, around 700,000 to 800,000 Pandits fled from Kashmir," i.e. which is 550,000 higher in number, flies in the face of historical statistics. The ratio of Muslims and Hindus in the Kashmir valley remained invariant in all the censuses of the British Indian Empire from 1871 to 1941 (Muslims approx 95%, Hindus approx 4 to 5%).

In the 1941 Census of the British Raj, the population of Muslims in the Kashmir valley was 1,110,127 (See for example: Christopher Sneddon's Independent Kashmir: An Incomplete Aspiration, Manchester University Press, 2021, Appendix II). Back calculating from Noorani, would put the Hindu population in 1941 to be 330,000, which is approximately 23%).

I'm sorry but in the matter of Kashmir, all sources are not equal. It is very important that third-party academic sources be used. I've added some more sources and made the lead more NPOV. No one is saying that what happened to the Kashmiri Pandits was not awful, even if as you rightly say, only 10,000 were driven out. Ethnic cleansing, if that is what caused it, is ethnic cleansing, and should be anathematized. But equally, numbers need to be accurate and the history of the evolution needs to be accurately stated. In what they did to the Muslims for nearly a century and a half, the Hindus were not entirely innocent. The pressure had been building up. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:29, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Changes /Shuffling in the lead

An editor @Jhy.rjwk: has shuffled the paragraphs in the lead and removed some sentences. I submit that they need to make a case here for their edits per WP:BRD. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:25, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Case about a Sentence Change: Hi Fowler&fowler Please note that the sentence "The Kashmiri Hindus left in much greater numbers in the early 1990s,[7]" is misleading in it's tone which suggests voluntary leaving, while the the cited BBC source clearly mentions "driven out" and "forced exodus" due to the increased threat of militancy To get the correct tone and perspective, please refer to the cited BBC source,more specifically "In the beginning there was a lot of fear, nights were eerily silent. If a cat jumped on to the roof we thought militants had come to kill us", Mr Tikku tells the BBC.

Therefore, it should be replaced by a more relevant sentence, supported by sources, such as: In the early 1990s, a large scale exodus the Kashmiri Hindus happenned [7], with the increased threat of militancy in the region Jhy.rjwk (talk) 20:15, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jhy.rjwk: You do have a point, but the sources you've added are not reliable ones. In my view, in the matter of Kashmir, third-party sources, i.e. not from South Asia are best, and scholarly ones among those are to be preferred. Please give me a day or two to look for the sources and see how they describe the evolution of the exodus. As you very likely know, the Kashmiri Hindus were not entirely innocent. For decades they had supported Indian government policies even when they fell foul of Kashmiri nationalism (a la Sheikh Abdullah) and when they were brutal. As you also likely know, earlier, before the land reforms of 1950, a majority of the landlords in the princely state were Hindus, and in the valley, a good proportion were Pandits, though there were poor Pandits too. My point is that, this is a complicated history and simply talking about the final event without the history of how it happened introduces its own POV. Obviously both India and Pakistan, even their leading liberal intellectuals, have blind spots when it comes to Kashmir. So, please give me a couple of days as I look for the scholarly sources. Thanks, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:09, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Fowler&fowler for being open to discussion and looking at all given facts of the case. I agree that any historical event is complicated with several POV, and we have to present a neutral POV here. There are many other Kashmir related pages on Wiki that provide information on the evolution of Kashmir conflict. In my humble view, this page should focus more on Exodus of K.Hindus. Kashmiri Hindus may not be innocent but they were driven away after brutal threats and murders by the militants in 1990 -1992, and this is not highlighted in the lead introduction yet.

Also, we may avoid making isolated judgements on WP:RS for highly reputed and widely circulated newspapers like The Indian Express and The Times of India, whoose references are widely accepted on Wikipedia pages; and they should not be rejected just for being from South Asia. Instead, we should make efforts on multiple reliable sources, instead of basing important conclusions on any single source, even if it's a book from third party country. Many Scholars from third party countries also have their biases and therefore single sourced citataions are not very reliable for Kashmir. Again, I appreciate your open view, and look forward to a healthy discussion to provide more neutral lead as per WP:Purpose Jhy.rjwk (talk) 01:18, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Agree with Kautilya3 Restored revision 1061545392 by DiplomatTesterMan (talk): Sorry, Fowler&fowler the lead is not the place for this kind of history.

Kautilya3 Jhy.rjwk (talk) 05:14, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jhy.rjwk: Again, please discuss the issue here as much as you want, but please do not edit war. The Times of India, for example, is not reliable in such matters. See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_287#Times_of_India_RFC. See also 2020 Delhi riots and 2019 Balakot airstrike in the leads of neither of which have South Asian newspapers been used. In fact, I began to edit the Delhi riots article per K3's request on my user talk page, so I do have a reputation of some integrity in these matters. Please allow me to finish. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:14, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Apparently, there is a 1RR restriction on this page, so my hands are tied and I've self-reverted. But edit warring is not the way forward. We can't add a quote from Alexander Evans in the lead to replace a more nuanced statement of the factors that might have caused the exodus. I will edit offline for a while and edit once the 24 hours have elapsed. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:28, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jhy.rjwk:Please also note that I said, "You do have a point." That means I am attempting to change the stress in the lead to highlight the bigger exodus. Please note that what state the lead is in (whether in your recent version here or K3's or DTM's) is the result of the earlier changes I made in the article. Before I edited the article on 14 August 2021, this was the state it was in. By my last edit of 14 August, this is what it had become, and it is more or less the stable version of the article. Earlier, both K3 and DTM had been aware of the article even if they had not edited it substantially (see here and here). Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:27, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

References

Here is the diff of my version from DTM's version from 22 December, which I will call the base line. The added content is quite minimal and well-sourced.

The Pandit exodus is not a well-understood issue, academically. There has been very little attention paid to it. So, I can't accept that tertiary sources are somehow much better at figuring out a good summary. The Talbot-Singh book is especially problematic because its two authors are of vastly different capabilities and standing. Gurharpal Singh is a known POV scholar. So, I would prefer if the lead just stuck to facts. You can add all the theories in the body, and of course the Pandits' own theories would also need to go here. That is what WP:NPOV requires. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:20, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Please allow me to finish. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:47, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

How about using your sandbox? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:14, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

An interesting comment on Gurharpal Singh:

Further, he sometimes overstates the argument that India is a meta-ethnic state (meaning Hindu-dominated) engaged in processes of ‘ethnic oppression’ (p. 203, referring to Kashmir, for example).

I notice that this very opinion has been used in the contested verison of the lead (in addition to being wildly off-topic). -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:00, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

The book I have used is: Partition of India by Talbot and Singh (Cambridge 2009), a major textbook on the partition. It has been cited in 279 other scholarly articles and monographs. Three reviews sum up the book in this fashion:

• Sharma, Jayeeta, "A Review of "The Partition of India" Talbot, Ian, and Gurharpal Singh, New York: Cambridge University Press 224 pp., $29.99, ISBN 978-0521672566 Publication Date: August 2009", History: Review of New Books, 39 (1): 26–27, doi:10.1080/03612759.2011.520189, Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh's book provides an authoritative overview of the partition itself, its complex and contested historiography, its wider implications, and its current ramifications. It is an invaluable resource for scholars of migration, displacement, refugees, decolonization, national politics and memory, and mass violence, as well as area studies in South Asia. The authors introduce their subject with a masterly outline of historiography of partition and show how the contested nature of this historiography both emerges from and has shaped deep-rooted differences in national indentities and political destinies in modern South Asia. ... For historians, this book is a most useful introduction to the rich crop of recent research works on the social and political dimensions of modern South Asia's partition. ... this is a most valuable volume, especially as a tool for classroom teaching.
• Sheikh, Farzana (2011), "Review of THE PARTITION OF INDIA. By Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xvii, 206 pp. (Tables, maps, B&W photos.) US$85.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-521-85661-4; US29.99, paper, ISBN 978-0-521-6756-6.", Pacific Affairs, 84 (1), Ian Talbot is widely respected as a historian of Pakistan and is the author of a number of critically acclaimed studies of Punjab under colonial rule. Gurharpal Singh, who shares a common interest in Punjab, has made valuable contributions to the study of ethnic conflict that are key to a better understanding of Partition. Now working as a team they have skilfully synthesized a vast body of complex historiographical debates on the causes of Partition and sought at every turn to rescue its history from the political agendas of its key protagonists, namely the nation-states of India and Pakistan.
• Major, Andrew (December 2010), "Review of Ian Talbot, Gurharpal Singh. The Partition of India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 206 pp. $29.99, paper, ISBN 978-0-521-67256-6", H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences, In sum, this is a sophisticated work by two eminent scholars that greatly widens and deepens our understanding of India's division in 1947 and of its lasting legacies and significance for the people of India and Pakistan. With its attention to recent advances in Partition historiography, and with the provision of maps, photographs, a glossary, and a chronology of main events from 1937 to 1947, this volume will be appreciated by all teachers and students of modern South Asia.

Per WP policy that is what matters. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:02, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

References

User:Jhy.rjwk It isn't a good idea to cite newspapers when the scholars differ on the subject. You should cite scholarly sources to assert your points. Here is relevant comment from a scholar [3]

The reality was much more complex than as portrayed by simplistic understandings of the reason of the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. Neither it was the case of the Kashmiri Muslims operating in a planned manner to throw Kashmiri Pandits out, so that Kashmir could become an Islamic society, nor the Pandits left because their migration was ‘engineered’. The reality is much more layered and different.

Akshaypatill (talk) 20:50, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Fowler&fowler This book [4] has covered in detail, everything about the policies of the Hindu rulers and how the Hindu rulers favoured only their own people and neglected others.

The Routledge Handbook of South Asian Politics [5] basically iterates the same thing as mentioned by Talbot and Singh about the election, the killings by Army and the detention without trial. Akshaypatill (talk) 21:31, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I've used Mridu Rai in Kashmir-related articles starting a few years after it was published by Princeton in 2003 or 4 and it is cited in this article as well. Rekha Chowdhury's book I've seen, as I have the Routledge Handbook, but I'm sticking to text-books for now (and widely cited monographs such as Rai's) for reasons given in WP:TERTIARY, which states: "Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks are regarded as tertiary sources because they sum up multiple secondary sources. Policy: Reliable tertiary sources can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other." Stick to the widely-used internationally recognized textbooks and only when they disagree are other sources needed. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:09, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

If these passages of Talbot-Singh book are summing up multiple secondary sources, we should be able to find ample secondary sources that state the same views. Where are they? (I am referring in particular to the "decades of ethnic oppression" claim.) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:30, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: If "ethnic" was the problem, you should have simply tagged "ethnic" with an inline {{clarify}}. What was the need for all this drama? As you must know, even the version you have reverted to is hardly DTM's. The wording is all mine. Both you and he were aware of the very poor old version of the article (which I was not), but did not oppose its claims with the energy with which you seem to be opposing mine. This is very uncharacteristic of you. It is not a big deal. When I find time I will integrate more sources. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:19, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler:, My first objection as stated in the edit summary is that "the lead is not the place for this kind of history".

My second objection is that I find Gurharpal Singh a POV scholar and, therefore, his views (or "arguments" as Paul Brass calls them) can be stated only with WP:in-text attribution, never as a fact.

These are the kind of principles that I myself would follow everywhere. So I am not making any new rules here.

The background section can cover more of the background, but again WP:DUE would mean that only those facts and views that are stated in some reliable source as the background to the Exodus can go in there. We can't construct our own narrative. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:21, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• Agree with Kautilya3 that the Talbot-Singh book's wild claims may not be sufficient as a single source.

If these passages of Talbot-Singh book are summing up multiple secondary sources, we should be able to find ample secondary sources that state the same views. Where are they? ("decades of ethnic oppression" claim.)

Hi Akshaypatill I agree that Scholars and Books differ on this subject, which shows that some Scholars & Books may be biased, so it's best to avoid any Single source citation in this subject ,and find support from multiple secondary sources. Also, there is no WP policy that mentions to avoid Reputed Newspapers, so they can be used along with Scholarly work. I agree that a single Newspaper article should not be used as citation.

Hi User:Fowler&fowler We cannot rely on any single book or author as the Final Truth in this contested subject matter. Any single source can be very biased such as your favorite book [6]

User:Fowler&fowler's lead version does not look appropriate for this page, whoose focus should be on K. Hindu Exodus, instead you focussed more on historical oppression of Muslims In Kashmir to justify militancy.

User:Fowler&fowler Please make a new Wikipedia page if you want to discuss the oppression of "Muslim peasants under the Kashmiri Hindu rulers", which is not a direct subject matter of this page. You wide historical knowledge on that topic should be will be better used for separate page on that topic about the K. Hindu Dogra rule from 1846 to 1947, in which mainly Dogras got land grants and even Kashmiri Pandits did not get land grants.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44156274 LANDLORDS, PEASANTS AND THE DOGRA RULE IN KASHMIR Showkat Ahmad Naik 2012

We need multiple secondary sources to provide a neutral view on the issue as per WP:PURPOSE

Therefore, the lead version of Kautilya3 should be kept, and not reverted.

Jhy.rjwk (talk) 03:11, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Jhy.rjwk There is nothing wrong with citing a newspaper. But you are giving undue weight to the newspaper articles. You are comparing a scholar's years worth research and work to a journalist's article. If you are to negate a scholar's work, you need cite another scholar. You will get the same feedback, if this is taken to WP:RSN, which will just waste time. And anyway Fowler has already told that he is considering your point.Akshaypatill (talk) 03:48, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

After reading the different lead versions, I find that Fowler's lead version does not have appropriate focus for this page's topic on Exodus.

Agree with Kautilya3 and K3's lead version which is the most neutral view and should should be kept as per WP:PURPOSE, and not reverted.

Jhy.rjwk (talk) 03:59, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Jhy.rjwk Please indent your reply with an appropriate number of colons. You are making the replies hard to read. See WP:INDENT. Akshaypatill (talk) 04:38, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Fowler should refrain from Reverts to the contested version without discussing on Talk page

K3's lead version is the well cited neutral view and clearly focussed on Exodus, the main topic of this page should be kept. Jhy.rjwk (talk) 05:27, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

If I had the sense that you had made any productive, articulate, or coherent contribution in the discussion above @Jhy.rjwk: I would attempt to reply. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:25, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• Can you all please INDENT your posts for the sake of my eyes? I cannot follow much of anything in this maze of a discussion but I cannot understand why Kautilya3 believes Jugdeem Chima's (decent) review to be some kind of damning indictment of Singh as a "POV-scholar". Brass' remark is more to-the-point. In any case, the argument that India has been a meta-ethnic democracy long before the Modi-regime is not some kind of pioneer thesis (see recent pubs. of Brass, where he concedes more ground) and is increasingly gaining force in scholarship. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:41, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Dropping a quote from Mridu Rai's excellent chapter: "Narratives from exile: Kashmiri Pandits and their construction of the past",

    The reluctance to acknowledge a longer history of drifting relations between Kashmir’s Muslims and Pandits exculpates Pandits from any responsibility for the divisions that have riven the Kashmiri society. They become the hapless victims of an irrationally enraged majority besetting them without provocation [...]

    Members of the Pandit community had relied on the wider Hindu nation to protect their interests well before the exodus. Ironically, when Kashmiri Muslims expressed affinity with the wider world of Islam, the same Pradeep Kaul had labelled them anti-national [...]

    As for the rhetoric, history has demonstrated the pragmatic shifts Pandits have frequently made in their allegiances. After all many had turned into Kashmiri regionalists in the early twentieth century to fend competition from outsiders and then into Indian nationalists from the 1930s to ward off threats to their regional dominance by their more numerous Muslim compatriots. It is, therefore, not anomalous for large numbers among them to have turned into Hindu nationalists more recently. Their shaping of their past has certainly primed many into claiming high status in India as the purest Hindus of all. And with a little help from the saffron brotherhood of India, the clock might yet be turned back and Kashmir made Hindu again.

    TrangaBellam (talk) 19:59, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

    Hi TB, It is not clear to me whether you are proposing any edit to the page, especially the lead. We can't keep arguing for argument's sake. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:27, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

    I wonder if what TB means is that while "ethnic" itself may or may not be the best descriptor, the bulk of Talbot and Singh's summary is not far off the mark if the supporting evidence in Rai is to be believed. There was suppression of Muslim aspirations in Kashmir not just before 1947, but also after. In it, the Pandits were not innocent bystanders. Whereas what happened to them is not to be condoned in the least, the briefest medium-term history of how it happened is important to describe in the lead. In some ways from the mid-1940s, they were more wedded to India than to Kashmir. The Muslims had nowhere else to go, even during the height of Indian brutalization at the end of the century, as well as the violence caused by Pakistan and the insurgents. Manyfold more Muslims were killed in the turmoil of the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s, but very few left Kashmir, in relative numbers. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:41, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

    From TB's proposed addition using Mridu Rai's contested narrative, the only part that is neutral and supported by tertiary sources is:

    Members of the Pandit community had relied on the wider Hindu nation to protect their interests well before the exodus...Kashmiri Muslims expressed affinity with the wider world of Islam.

    Jhy.rjwk (talk) 00:25, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

    Agree with Kautilya3 that the background section can cover more of such background, rather than adding contested historical narratives in the lead version. Jhy.rjwk (talk) 00:43, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

    @Jhy.rjwk: Which tertiary source? In the Kashmir article in the primary encyclopedia in the English language, Britannica, the Pandits are conspicuous by their complete absence. And another tertiary source says:

    The year 1989 marked the beginning of a continuing insurgency, fuelled by covert support from Pakistan. The uprising had its origins in Kashmiri frustration at the state's treatment by Delhi. The imposition of leaders chosen by the centre, with the manipulation of local elections, and the denial of what Kashmiris felt was a promised autonomy boiled over at last in the militancy of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a movement devoted to political, not religious, objectives. The Hindu Pandits, a small but influential elite community who had secured a favorable position, first under the maharajas and then under the successive Congress governments, and who propagated a distinctive Kashmiri culture that linked them to India, felt under siege as the uprising gathered force. Upwards of 100,000 of them left the state during the early 1990s; their cause was quickly taken up by the Hindu right. As the government sought to locate ‘suspects’ and weed out Pakistani ‘infiltrators’, the entire population was subjected to a fierce repression. By the end of the 1990s, the Indian military presence had escalated to approximately one soldier or paramilitary policeman for every five Kashmiris.

    I'm happy to go with that in the lead. Or are we going to say that Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf's widely used undergraduate textbook A Concise History of Modern India, Cambridge University Press, 2012, cited in 839 scholarly works, is also biased? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:40, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

    I wonder if what TB means is that while "ethnic" itself may or may not be the best descriptor, the bulk of Talbot and Singh's summary is not far off the mark if the supporting evidence in Rai is to be believed. - Precisely.

    What happened with the Pandits is absolutely condemnable but as Mridu Rai and many other scholars (I can think of about a dozen) show, that did not foment independently of them oppressing Muslims for decades—actively or passively—, and bonhomie-ing with the Hindu Right as well as an Indian State, hell-bent on Hinduising Kashmir and stripping off their rights.

    If you want more focus on the episode of 90s, which I believe is a valid argument, you need to cover these backgrounds too. Even if not as acutely as Talbot et al put it. TrangaBellam (talk) 15:21, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Again, I agree with K3 that such historical narrative should be added in the Background and not in the lead version.

Given the increasing content for Background, we may rename Background to "Historical background", and add several relevant subsections such as Reign of Sikandar Shah (1389-1413), Mughal Kashmir, Durrani Empire (1752–1819), Dogra rule (1846-1947), 1947 Accession to India, 1950 Land reforms, etc..

Many scholars have noted the Kashmiri Hindu migration in the reign of Sikandar Shah Miri (also known as Sikandar Butshikan), as the first exodus of Kashmiri Hindus.

A related quote from Bill K. Koul, 2020 The Exiled Pandits of Kashmir: Will They Ever Return Home? Page 208 ::: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Exiled_Pandits_of_Kashmir/CW78DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=first+exodus+of+kashmiri+Pandits+Sikandar&pg=PA208&printsec=frontcover

Sultan Sikandar Butshikan initiated the first wave of exodus of many Pandits from the valley.

Please note extensive Citations below mentioning persecution in Kashmir under Sikandar Butshikan.

Extended content

Aggarwal, Neil (2008-07-01), "Kashmiriyat as Empty Signifier", Interventions, 10 (2): 222–235, doi:10.1080/13698010802145150, ISSN 1369-801X, S2CID 143912163 AHMAD, AZIZ (1979), "Conversions to Islam in the Valley of Kashmir", Central Asiatic Journal, 23 (1/2): 3–18, ISSN 0008-9192, JSTOR 41927246 Hasan, Mohibbul (2005), Kashmīr Under the Sultāns, Aakar Books, pp. 59–95, ISBN 978-81-87879-49-7 Slaje, Walter (2019), "A Glimpse into the Happy Valley's Unhappy Past: Violence and Brahmin Warfare in Pre-Mughal Kashmir", Brahma's Curse : Facets of Political and Social Violence in Premodern Kashmir, Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis - 13, p. 5, ISBN 978-3-86977-199-1 Witzel, Michael (September 1991), The Brahmins of Kashmir (PDF) Accardi, Dean (2017), "Embedded Mystics: Writing Lal Ded and Nund Rishi into the Kashmiri Landscape", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 247–264, ISBN 978-1-107-18197-7, retrieved 2021-02-03 Jhy.rjwk (talk) 02:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC) Even Mridu Rai accepts the persecution memories of Sikandar Shah on Page 286 In the course of this mass migration, Kashmiri Pandits have recalled memories of the persecutions of Sultan Sikandar Another quote from D. N. Dhar · 2005 Kashmir, a Kaleidoscopic View - Page 76 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Kashmir_a_Kaleidoscopic_View/p0NuAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=first+exodus+of+kashmiri+Pandits+Sikandar&dq=first+exodus+of+kashmiri+Pandits+Sikandar&printsec=frontcover Kashmiri Pandits... When the first exodus took place during the time of Sikander Butshiken Jhy.rjwk (talk) 06:12, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I think the widely cited oppression of the Kashmiri Hindus in the reign of Sikandar Shah Miri deserves atleast a brief mention in the lead, but Kautilya3 may be in a better position to decide whether to include it in the lead version or just have it in the Background. Jhy.rjwk

User:Jhy.rjwk Apparently, Chitralekha Zutshi's book has called the migration an involuntary migration in the introduction chapter. Here - [7]

Displacement has defined the experience of another group in Jammu and Kashmir, the Kashmiri Pandits, whose responses to their involuntary migration in the wake of the insurgency form the subject of Haley Duschinski’s essay.

Akshaypatill (talk) 08:38, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Fowler&fowler I didn't notice it earlier but, you had wholly neglected the immediate cause of the exodus, which was the insurgence and accompanied militancy, violence, fear etc. I hope you were going to add it. This too has to be weighed accordingly. Akshaypatill (talk) 11:15, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Akshaypatill, Well, I was going to but am not being given a chance by the drama here which has now become unproductive. The version in place right now is also mine, except for four sentences K3 has added, "Alexander Evans states that 'a mere handful' of them remain in the Valley. A number of those that left, live in refugee camps in Jammu, where the conditions are grim. The reasons for their exodus continue to be debated. They range from targeted killings of Pandits by the separatist militants and threats issued in local newspapers, to local government's encouragement." The last paragraph of my version before my attempted expansion already speaks to your description As you will have seen above, the tertiary sources (see WP:TERTIARY) (as Metcalf and Metcalf, Talbot and Singh, Britannica), don't say much about the Pandits, and when they do the description is not one of "being forced to." In other words, it is not clear that they were forced, though they did perceive the conditions to be threatening. The four sentences K3 has added suggest the same in some more detail. Its not a big deal. I'm happy to hold my horses until what I perceive as drama on this page dies down. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:44, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Allright. I didn't know that you had added it. Akshaypatill (talk) 11:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

The KP numbers

user:Van00220 and user:DiplomatTesterMan Please note that my argument Talk:Kashmir#Minor_change_to_one_part_of_the_"Demographics"_section (b) against the figure of 700,000 KPs which I had made off the top of my head is pretty much repeated in Alexander Evans article Evans, Alexander (2002). "A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001". Contemporary South Asia. 11 (1): 19–37. doi:10.1080/0958493022000000341. ISSN 0958-4935., which has been cited in the lead of this page.

On page 26, Alexander Evans says:

The last census to record KPs, as distinct from Kashmiri Hindus, was the 1941 census, which reported that there were 78,800 KPs living in the Kashmir Valley. For there to have been 350,000 KPs by 1990, the growth rate for KPsmust have run at roughly an extraordinary 35% per decade. And if, as some KPs claim, they numbered 700,000 by 1991, their growth rate must have been about a phenomenal 45% per decade. KPs would then have displayed a growth rate unheard of in South Asia. For Panun Kashmir (a KP political party; see below) figures to be accurate, the 1931 and 1941 census operations, managed by Hindus and KPs on behalf of a Hindu Maharaja, must have been biased against Hindus. Also, successive post-1947 Indian census operations must have deliberately undercounted the KP population by as much as several hundred thousand each time. Given that a disproportionate number of KPs were census enumerators, this theory seems dubious. The combination of exceptional conspiracies and extreme demography might carry some weight if the figures of 700,000 KPs today, widely bandied about, were based on any reasonable sources.

Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:00, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Also Bose (2003, pp. 119–120):

According to the government of India's 1981 census, Hindus made up only 4 percent—124,078 of 3,135,000 people—of the Valley's population. The vast majority of these were Kashmiri Pandits, so the Valley's Pandit population was probably 130,000–140,000 in 1989–1990

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:43, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

UNDUE long quotation

I am removing the UNDUE long quotation from this passage:

In the Kashmir valley, the Pandits, at less than 5% of the population owned 30% of the arable land.

References

Obviously, one sentence from this long quotation is required for support and citing a page number would be quite sufficient. The rest of it is really WP:COATRACKing.

I would also like to highlight what Mridu Rai says about it:

Although not all Kashmiri Pandits were by any means wealthy landowners, nor the only members of the landed elite, large landholdings were certainly common among them.[189] It is said that over 30 per cent of the land in the valley belonged to them prior to the reforms, much of which had been obtained at the time of the first settlement of the 1880s. An equally large proportion was obtained through purchase after 1934, when proprietary rights were granted to Kashmiri cultivators following the agitation of 1931-2.[190] Considering that the Pandits comprised approximately 5 per cent of the Kashmiri population, their control of over 30 per cent of the land speaks for significantly large holdings. However, Pandits did not resist the abolition of big landed estates quite as shrilly as did their Dogra counterparts.[191]

I might also add that the reforms of the 1880s and the introduction of land-ownership in 1930's were done at the behest of British instigation. Lest anybody think 5% of the population owning 30% of the land as being abnormal, let me quote the stats for British-ruled Bihar province:

A sample survey of 1951 showed that in Bihar Brahmins and Rajputs together, although comprising only 9.6% of the families surveyed, still made up 78.6% of landowners.

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 02:34, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Kautilya3 (talk) 02:34, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with being abnormal. Bihar never got the land reforms that Kashmir did in 1950. And the reason is that the Constitution of India, newly promulgated but already rendered ineffectual in the realm of land redistribution by conservatives in the constituent assembly, had no power to implement the kind of land reforms that Kashmir, being independent of it, fell subject to.

As for the earlier British land reforms, the British Raj page speaks to that in the context of post-1857 dispensation: "At the same time, it was felt that the peasants, for whose benefit the large land-reforms of the United Provinces had been undertaken, had shown disloyalty, by, in many cases, fighting for their former landlords against the British. Consequently, no more land reforms were implemented for the next 90 years: Bengal and Bihar were to remain the realms of large landholdings (unlike the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh)."

Kashmir, therefore, had the most radical land reforms in South Asia in one hundred years. The Pandits at 5% of the population owned 30% of the land, which means they owned relatively large amounts per capita. Sheikh Abdullah's land reforms of 1950 put the ceiling at 22 acres; the rest was given away to landless peasants and tenant farmers, all of whom were Muslim and low-caste Hindus and had been exploited (in a medieval manner) for 150 years by Sikhs and upper-caste Hindus. In other words, the Pandits stood to lose their wealth in a way that no big landlord in Bihar did. 20% left in the period 1947 to 1950 because they were cutting their losses. They may have been the bigger landholders among the Pandits, but it is unimportant for the purposes of an exodus.

I add long quotes in citations so that articles can be expanded and others can see the paraphrasing in context. Quoting only the very relevant bit promotes cherry-picking of sources and paragraphs that lack cohesion. I do it everywhere. Nothing more to it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:35, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

To give an example of my point. If Alexander Evans had been quoted at greater length is the following manner: Evans, Alexander (2002). "A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001". Contemporary South Asia. 11 (1): 19–37, 20. doi:10.1080/0958493022000000341. ISSN 0958-4935. In early 1990, large numbers of KPs began leaving the Kashmir Valley. Over 100,000 left in a few months; some 160,000 in total have left the Kashmir Valley since. Not all KPs have left; but a mere handful remain today. Most of the original 1990 migrants left for Jammu, where they lived in squalid refugee camps, to begin with, but, by 1997, most had moved on, either to proper homes in Jammu or to cities elsewhere in India. Conditions in the refugee camps were, and still are, grim. We could expand your excellent paraphrasing:

Alexander Evans states that "a mere handful" of them remain in the Valley. A number of those that left, live in refugee camps in Jammu, where the conditions are grim.

to something along the lines of:

Kashmiri Pandits initially moved to Jammu, where they lived in refugee camps among squalor; but by 1997, they had mostly moved to proper housing in Jammu or to urban areas in other parts of India. Writing in 2001, Alexander Evans observed that a small fraction had remained in grim refugee camps and a mere handful were in the Valley."

So, there's an advantage in longer quotes; others can vet, correct, expand on, contextualize, your initial edits.

Officials who happened to be Hindu

Here are some of the people killed by militants in early 1990:

• Satish Tikoo, social activist, 2 February 1990.
• Ashok Qazi, field officer of the agriculture dapartment, 23 February 1990.
• Navin Saproo, telecommunications engineer, c. 30 February 1990.
• Tej Kishan, twenty-year old in Budgam, 27 February 1990.
• B. K. Ganju, telecomm. engineer, Srinagar, 18 March 1990.
• P. N. Handoo, assistant director of state information department, March 1990.
• A. K. Raina, department of civil supplies, March 1990.
• Radha Krishen, 85-year old man from Karan Nagar, April 1990.
• Motilal Pandit, Tankipora. (prob.) April 1990.
• Sarwanand Koul, retired head-master and well-known poet, and his 27-year old son, 30 April 1990.
• Satinder Kumar and Swarup Nath, young men from Baramulla, May 1990.
• Bhushan Lal Kaul, engineer in public works department, Kulgam, May 1990.
• Bansi Lal Zutshi, 23 May 1990. (Body was hacked and dumped in a gunny bag)
• Makhan Lal Raina, medical assistant in a government college, Badgam, May 1990.
• Prof. K. L. Ganju, popular teacher at Sophur agricultural college, May 1990 (and wife raped and killed, while the son fled by jumping into the Jhelum).

Which of these are "officials who happened to be Hindu"? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:56, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

"[O]fficials who happened to be Hindu" is not as good as it should be (maybe, save the nuances for body - ?) but the key idea is that Pandits were not murdered only because they were Hindu. As Mridu Rai shows, most of these people were extensively involved with the state-apparatus and this involvement played a significant role.

For an example, Rai points out the paradox of KP refugees who seeks to return to J&K: when they approach media, they claim to be men of no means who were displaced overnight by a bunch of zealots. However, in court petitions, they declare long histories of collaborating with the state-apparatus in times of militancy and seek to elicit compassion in the judge as patriots par excellence.

According to Evans (2002), and Mishra and Datta (2004), two sets of causes are commonly understood to have precipitated the exodus of the Pandits from Kashmir. One of the reasons for mass migration pertains to the breakdown of law and order following attacks by a number of armed militant groups who targeted individuals and places associated with the Indian state and the actions of the Indian security forces. These attacks included the assassination of several Kashmiri Pandits who held prominent positions in everyday life in the valley. The Indian state’s response caused violence to spiral through the brutal suppression of protests and counter-insurgency operations against militant groups. Large-scale demonstrations demanding independence for Kashmir from India and attacks by militant groups on individual Pandits led the community to feel specifically targeted. For many Pandits the demonstrations did not merely express demands for independence from India, the slogans uttered at the protests specifically demanded that Kashmiri Pandits leave Kashmir. Another cause for the exodus is attributed to the Indian state and especially Jagmohan, the appointed governor of the time who is said to have engineered and encouraged the Pandits to leave the valley to prevent casualties among supporters of the Indian state (p.54) and to discredit the movement for independence (Evans 2002: 212–22; Mishra and Datta 2004: 379–81).
— Accounting for Displacement: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits, On Uncertain Ground: Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir, Ankur Datta, Oxford University Press, 2016

TrangaBellam (talk) 17:42, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I do not think that "calls from mosques that mixed independence and religion" belongs at lead. Rai (p. 102) is skeptical about these claims. Further,

The slogans the Pandits refer to have never been reported or recorded officially at the time and suggest a gap between what was recorded and what the Pandits describe. Rather, news reports of 19 and 20 January 1990 instead focus on ‘mob violence’, casualties due to police action, and large numbers of arrests [..] Kashmiri Muslims denied hearing the slogans, even those threatening women, from the demonstrations which the Pandits draw attention to.
— Accounting for Displacement: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits, On Uncertain Ground: Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir, Ankur Datta, Oxford University Press, 2016

I apologize for appearing to be insensitive to KP memories but as Schofield puts it, their night-of-exodus remains shrouded in mystery. The narrative purveyed by KPs vary significantly from what can be objectively verified. There is nothing in newspapers, there is nothing in the form of FIRs etc. about these slogans; maybe, we have to wait for the eventual declassification of IB records etc. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:22, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Rekha Choudhary quotes Wajahat Habullah, an IAS officer that worked in Kashmir for decades and wrote a book on his experiences [8]:

That the Pandits were apprehensive was hardly surprising.... Places of worship, like the one in Anantnag, where the majority went, were being used to issue threats to them over loudspeakers. I learnt later that these inflammatory sermons, and their reverberating public applause, were audio recordings circulated to mosques to be played over loudspeakers at prayer time. (Habibullah 2015)

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:06, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Hmm. It looks like she quoted the edited extract from The Hindu. Here is the full narration in Habibullah's book. The omitted parts are also important for our purposes:

I asked the delegation if they knew me—one of my earliest postings was in Anantnag in 1971—and, if so, did they believe that I, a Muslim like them, would actually be the instrument of such a plan? Their response was that I had been kept in the dark and that they were privy to "secret" information. I told them quite clearly that it was hardly surprising that Pandits were apprehensive. Any minority would be if places of worship of the majority were continually used to blare strident threats to them over loudspeakers—as every mosque was at the time—and if prominent members of their community had been murdered. (I learned later that these inflammatory sermons and their reverberating public applause were audio recordings circulated to mosques to be played over loudspeakers at prayer time.) I also told them that such use of a sacred place was no less than desecration and contempt for the faith. Local Muslims needed to reassure the Pandits of their safety. The administration would readily provide security whenever a threat to the Pandits was anticipated, but its effectiveness would be doubtful without public support. I assured the group that I would bring this issue to the governor's attention. After some younger members raised objections to my accusation of desecration, the gathering concurred with my approach and dispersed quietly.

I am not impressed with the governor's response by the way. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:13, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

References

• User:Kautilya3 If it is of any worth - [9] -

  The violence that overtook the Valley had created an environment of uncertainty. However, what affected the Kashmiri Pandits the most was the high-profile killings of Kashmiri Pandits. Among these high profile killings included that of Justice Nelkanth Ganjoo (a judge of the High Court of J&tK, who was targeted by the militants for having awarded thedeath sentence to Maqbool Bhat), Tika Lal Taploo (a lawyer by profession and also a member ofthe BJP's national executive body), Lassa Koul (Director, Srinagar Doordarshan), Sarvanand Premi (a noted poet) and Prem Nath Bhat (an advocate by profession and also an RSS activist). Apart from these killings, there were other kinds of targeted killings of Kashmiri Pandits." Manywere killed because they were seen as 'informers' and 'agents of Indian intelligence agenciesBose 2003. 120-121).

  Akshaypatill (talk) 21:37, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks every one for your valuable inputs, especially @Kautilya3:. Yes, as TB notes, it was a bad choice of words. I believe I have incorporated the objections. I have also included some other points of view, all from recent publications. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:47, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Dogras

User:TrangaBellamUser:Fowler&fowler Why there is nothing about Dogras and their discriminatory policies? They deserve a mention. Akshaypatill (talk) 22:04, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

The Dogras were mainly in Jammu. The Pandits were the main Hindu minority group in the Valley. Gulab Singh, who through not inconsiderable deceit of the Sikhs, was able to buy the Valley from the East India Company, was until then the Raja of Jammu. I have incorporated your suggestion cited to a later book by Bose, but he seems to be recycling his material. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:21, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

That is not correct. Dogra officials and Dogra landlords were all over the state. If the Pandits owned 30% of the land, who owned the rest?

It is also worth noting that land-ownership was only 20 years old by 1950. At least half of the Pandit land was purchased after land-ownership was introduced in the 1930s. It is common for middle-class families in India to buy land as investment for retirement, children's education etc. It would have been even more so for Pandits who worked as revenue officials for centuries and knew about land. When the government took away their excess landholding without compensation, they would have been hit hard. Prem Nath Bazaz, whose description Mridu Rai summarised, says this:

With doors of government services virtually slammed against them; with government contracts almost totally denied to them; with trade and commerce in a chaotic condition in the State; with land taken away from them; and, above all, with the insecurity and uncertainty all-round in their homeland, if Kashmiri Pandits found the demons of starvation and destitution staring them in their face there is no wonder in it. Realising that there could be no end to the abnormal conditions so long as the dispute over the accession issue between India and Pakistan continued many Kashmiri Pandits decided to leave their motherland for good.

You can read through the polemic, but it is quite clear that insecurity is what made them leave. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:59, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

A large number were absentee landlords from Jammu. The Dogra officials had permanent ancestral homes in Jammu. They were harder hit by the land reforms as they did not get the option to switch to apple orchards which the Pandits did. As for whether the insecurity was economic or social, I can only go by scholarly summaries of Bazaz, and the source which I have cited (not sure if it was Rai or Zutshi) notes both. I can't summarize him myself. You can see references for the absentee landlords here. It was much worse than East Bengal in 1943, where too absentee Hindu landlords from West Bengal by their exploitation added to the Muslim mortality in the famine. Chris Bayly has some poignant passages in his (and Taylor(?)'s) two books on the wars of the 1940s in Asia. It is unimportant that some of the Pandits were recent landowners in 1950; they still had the same motivations for leaving. The mention of 30% by 5% is not the pointing finger of shame. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:05, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Costliest price

Muslims are said to have paid the "costliest price" in killings by the militants. The statistics don't bear this out. From Manoj Joshi's Lost Rebellion ("Pattern of changing militant attacks shown by the people they killed between January and August 1990"), the numbers killed by the militants between January-June 1990 were as follows:

Hindus: 132 (2 7 14 15 35 27 19 13)

Muslims: 168 (6 5 14 20 44 30 21 28)

Security forces: 90 (20 6 12 6 9 11 13 13)

Unidentified: 48 (2 4 1 1 1 17 17 5)

Given that Hindus made up only 5% of the population, their per-capita loss is much higher. The high number of "unidentified" in June and July also points to the fact that there weren't enough Hindus left in the Valley to identify the dead. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:38, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't know about the source, but I did misread my own sources. I have corrected the sentence. Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:49, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

And yes, the revised sentence is off-topic. No wonder I was having a hard time making it coherent. Good catch, @Kautilya3:! Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:24, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Al safa

On 14 April 1990, another Srinagar based newspaper named Al-safa republished the same warning - Quite not; it was an obscure military commander giving bytes. HM noted him to be a "false militant" (whether he was a part of he organization remains doubtful; it was either a false flag or HM disowning rogue cadres) and the newspaper issued a clarification.

For some background on why the inflammatory piece was carried: Al-Safa's founder M.S. Vakil was a leading figure in the human rights scene (but no saint) and was far from being friends with the establishment. C. late March, CRPF raided the newspaper office and (lit.) lynched their staff - it was the second time in postcolonial Kashmir since '48. Al-Safa provided some of the most detailed coverage of the late 80s and early 90s chronicling exploits of militants and security forces in equal depth with some decent investigative journalism and ignored the (unwritten) convention of mainstream Kashmiri Media to ignore excesses of both sides. To aid in the process, Vakil eased editorial safeguards; news were to be carried by-default rather than the other way round even if the result was a gossip-vine than a respectable newspaper.

Anyways, Jagmohan had the newspaper banned for a few weeks in response to the piece. HM did some kind of "public conference" at Tashgao where it reiterated how this was a Jehad against the state than any community. Ironically, Vakil will fell to militants exactly a year later.

Regrettably, no scholar has bothered to mine Al safa archives till date. A glance at their news-feed shows that KMs fell almost at the same rate as KPs - all it took was for some militant honcho to doubt you as a state apparatchik. I remember that Muslims were often murdered for "pretending" to be militants and oppressing Kashmiris [theft etc.], thus bringing a "dispute" to real militants (or so went the official militant version!)

Long story short, there are many details that are integral to our understanding of KP exodus but are yet to surface out in non-vernacular press. I don't think this is an article worth devoting much time to or losing sleep over; we need scholars who are willing to do their job—rather than recycle the same old narratives and parrot others in a circular fashion—at the first place. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:51, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Evans writes:

Two Srinagar-based newspapers carried threats against the Pandits. These threats, carried in Alsafa and Srinagar Times on 16 April 1990, were allegedly supported by both Hizbul Mujahideen, a leading militant group, and the JKLF.[18: Prof. Foteh Dhar interview, 16 March 1997] M.K. Teng and C.L. Gadoo publish a translation of an ultimatum from Hizbul Mujahideen published in Alsafa on 14 April 1990 that says 'all Pandits from Jammu & Kashmir should leave from here in two days'.[19: Teng & Gadoo, White Paper on Kashmir, p.116]

Jagmohan banning the newspaper hardly makes any difference. It was Hizbul Mujahideen that issued the threats, and it wasn't under his control. It was under ISI's control, if there was anybody controlling it at all. The constitution of HM was only made in June 1990, by which time the Pandit exodus was a done deal.

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:23, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The "White Paper" also claimed of temples being desecrated left and right in Kashmir, which turned out to be false upon inspection by a human rights retinue. Or that Hindus were living in Kashmir since stone age. Or that the economic condition of an average Pandit was worse than the poorest of Muslims.

I am not sure how the quote from Evans disproves any of my points: it was not my claim that Jagmohan's (justified) ban had any mitigating effect. Just an observation. TrangaBellam (talk) 17:50, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Done

I've finished revising the lead, using the best of the more recent scholarly sources. I think the lead is fairly comprehensive now. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:23, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

We need to have a line on what spurred the chain of events leading to the exodus. '87 rigged elections and associated violence perpetrated by state. Scholars note this unanimously. TrangaBellam (talk) 05:38, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. There was some mention earlier, which might not have been adequate, and was removed. I will add a well-sourced sentence or two setting up the context. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:12, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Criminal gangs and Islamic radicals

I am removing this bit:

infiltration by criminal gangs and Islamic radicals;

References

I don't see a causal connection indicated between the numerous developments of the insurgency over a period of many decades and the exodus that happened within the first year or so. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

That's fine. I added it as a second thought. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:52, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Jihad

Sushant Sareen quotes a Pakistani newspaper called Wifaq (2 April 1990), which says among other things,

Since last year [1989], when the resistance movement was converted into a Jihad some new parties have been formed, prominent among them being: Hizbe Islami, Hizbullah, Hizbul Mujahedin, Ikhwanul Muslimeen, Allah Tigers, Zia Tigers, Operation Balakot and Liberation Front. Most of them are the military wings of some parties and their vanguard consists of students who have completed their studies at the Islamic institutions.

All these organisations hold Islam and liberation of Kashmir as their objective. Only one party, the Liberation Front talks of independent Kashmir but even that holds Islam as its ultimate objective, that is why the Indian and international media describe this liberation movement as a fundamentalist and pro-Pakistan movement....

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 04:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Kautilya3 (talk) 04:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

The reliable third-party scholarly sources (which this source is not), are emphatic that during January to March 1990, JKLF was ascendant, and that it was not a religious organization, only one seeking independence (which predictably neither India nor Pakistan found palatable). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:13, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

The problem generally (and perhaps this is not the place for that discussion) is that India has a legal (or semi-legal) case for Kashmir, but no moral case. Pakistan had the moral case, which they squandered. Indian governments have known that; otherwise, they would have had a plebiscite in their region of administration long ago (as Gandhi, and later Jayprakash Narayan, and no doubt others had suggested, the population of Gilgit being negligible, and its issue a red herring). It is the blind spot in Indian thinking, which has prevailed even in the liberal "intelligentsia." Pakistan squandered its moral ascendance with regards Kashmir ineptly and disastrously from the get-go. That is the nub of it. JKLF was threatening both ideologies. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:30, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand the fascination of IR scholars (is he one?) with using Jihad as some kind of buzzword. It is blindingly obvious that if a state and its blessed lackeys oppress a Muslim-majority state for decades with ingrained Islamophobia, the subjects will borrow from religious grammar to mount resistance. And some of that will indeed be fanatic in nature, as much as it is condemnable.

Sareen is not a RS but how many pages does he spend on Indian Govt's myriad means of disenchanting the Kashmiri population, that allowed Pakistan's "Jihad Factories" to play a role at the first place? He rejects that the '87 elections had any role - "conventional wisdom", ah. Our expert on Jihad knows his Urdu but not the tools of scholarship which includes a critical reading of sources. He cites an interview by Ayub Thakur to bolster his claims about longstanding Jehad in the region; however, he is oblivious of the fact that many of these militant leaders engaged in a competition of rhetoric to make the most of himself in a tense political atmosphere. To reproduce Schofields's quip, if all these people were taken at face-value, the militants would come across as the next Asian superpower in making. TrangaBellam (talk) 15:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

The text above is from a Pakistani newspaper published in April 1990. (Sareen's contribution is the English translation, and the parenthetical date "[1989]"). The term "Jihad" is from the newspaper. The article claims that all these organisations existed in 1989. Maybe not, but certainly by April 1990, they did.

Ayub Thakur didn't claim that there was long-standing jihad. His statement was, "The Jamaat organised a network of schools and libraries in Kashmir whose students never acknowledged Indian suzerainty over Kashmir. It is this generation which provides the cream of leadership to the Kashmir jihad." The Wifaq article also said the same thing: "In particular, Jamaat Islami has been very active in conducting the resistance movement on all those fronts continuously for the past 36 years.".

Jamaat's programme has always been Nizam-e-Mustafa, as is well-known. That combined with armed militancy quickly turns into a Jihad. I don't see what else it would be. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:14, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Sareen claims in p. 112 that the conventional wisdom about '87 elections leading to all the mayhem is wrong and that Pakistan-backed promotion of Jehadi militancy had been going on since long. In the very next paragraph (p. 113), Sareen quotes Thakur's interview where he says that IJT was formed in '77 and that IJT had persuaded Kashmiris to undertake Jihad. Obviously, Sareen is using Thakur's interview to back-up his assertions in a back-handed manner.

Your excuse of Sareen being a translator does not hold: Elliot's translation of certain pre-modern Muslim chronicles while ignoring others was dubious political scholarship, in itself. And neither does that answer my query about Sareen's uncritical reading of sources.

There exists excellent scholarship on Jihad in Kashmir: I can start adding quotes (at some relevant talk-page) but all of them run contra Sareen. Because they do not translate a couple of articles from Urdu newspapers that fits to their bias and go on to write a book. TrangaBellam (talk) 17:05, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Ok, go ahead. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:20, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Will start a subpage in my user-space; Robinson provides for an excellent reading on how deviant (if not oppositional) Kashmiri jihad is from the stereotypical notions of Jihad. (A review by Ather Zia.) And why the "conventional wisdom" is indeed accurate to a large degree. TrangaBellam (talk) 17:44, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

HM [Hizbul Mujahideen] sometimes rejected Pakistani orders to kill Kashmiri Hindus or punish Muslims collaborating with the Indians.

Sometimes. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:46, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Jamaat's programme has always been Nizam-e-Mustafa, as is well-known. - Nah, from where did you get that? Though, it should have got the boots from postcolonial India alongside RSS, saving India from a lot of contemporary headaches. TrangaBellam (talk) 14:26, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Emigration?

• Evans, Alexander (2002-03-01). "A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001". Contemporary South Asia. 11 (1): 19–37. doi:10.1080/0958493022000000341. ISSN 0958-4935.

… the Pandit community was forced to leave the Valley.

• Sandilya, Hrishabh (2009). "Politics of Identity – Kashmiri Pandits in India". ALPPI Annual of Language & Politics and Politics of Identity. III (03): 75–86. doi:10.1080/0958493022000000341. ISSN 1803-1757.

Focusing on their history, and forced migration from their homes in the Kashmir Valley,

• Kaw, M. K. (2001). Kashmiri Pandits: Looking to the Future. APH Publishing. ISBN 978-81-7648-236-3.

Given the condition of the displaced Kashmiri Pandits living in forced exile in various parts of India and also due to lack of attention by previous Kashmiri Pandit emigrees to …

• Rajput, Sudha G. (2019-02-18). "Internal Displacement and Conflict: The Kashmiri Pandits in Comparative Perspective". London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429427657/internal-displacement-conflict-sudha-rajput. ISBN 978-0-429-42765-7. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Focused particularly on the displaced Hindu Pandits (KPs) of Kashmir, forced out by rising anti-Pandit …

• Sau, Ranjit (2003). "Towards Resolution of Kashmir Problem". Economic and Political Weekly. 38 (46). London: Routledge: 4810–4916. doi:10.4324/9780429427657/internal-displacement-conflict-sudha-rajput. ISBN 978-0-429-42765-7. ISSN 0012-9976.

thousands of Kashmiri pandits have been driven out of their homes

• Kaul, Nitasha (2010). "On Loving and Losing Kashmir". India International Centre Quarterly. 37 (3/4). London: Routledge: 42–53. doi:10.4324/9780429427657/internal-displacement-conflict-sudha-rajput. ISBN 978-0-429-42765-7. ISSN 0376-9771.

The events in 1989 and early 1990s did lead to the mass migration of most Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley and communal discourses acquired unprecedented salience.

• "Emerging Voices: Experiences of Underrepresented Asian Americans". Rutgers University Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-8135-4341-3. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Kashmiri Pandits, the non- Kashmiri Hindus, Kashmiri Sikhs and other minorities were thus forcibly displaced from Kashmir.

@Fowler&fowler General consensus among scholars is that it was a forced mass exodus. Apart from that I don't see any scholar using word "Emigration" for this event. Maybe quote some sources if you think it was an "Emigration" and not a "forced mass exodus". LearnIndology (talk) 07:44, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Long time, no see. Have you read the entire lead? TrangaBellam (talk) 12:18, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

• Exhibit 1: In this edit at 15:13, 14 August 2021, the phrase "fled the Valley" sourced to NYT was removed and "left the Valley" was inserted, using Bose 1997, p.71 as one of the sources. Yet Ankur Datta, citing the same source, says:

Approximately 100,000 to 140,000 Kashmiri Pandits had fled the Kashmir Valley by the end of 1990 (Bose 1997: 71).

So, what is in Bose 1997, p.71 that warranted this change? Datta is also clear that this was "by the end of 1990". Yet in our text, it was "during that decade"!

• Exhibit 2: By 17:48 on thte same day, "left the Valley" further changes to "moved away"!
• For Mridu Rai, it was 'voluntarily' undertaken (quote marks in the source). But that goes with an apologetic footnote:

[199] One has to be cautious in assessing the degree of voluntariness in decisions made from a position of insecurity and the threat, even if only potential, of the loss of life and property.

It is entirely unclear where the supposed "voluntariness" is coming from!

I am afraid a skewed narrative has been constructed using wishy-washy sources. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:58, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Citing Nitasha Kaul who speaks of "mass migration" (a Pandit herself, who has consistently rejected RW narratives about the Pandit exodus, if TI had actually bothered to read her interviews/pubs.) to claim that there is a consensus among scholars that it was a "forced mass exodus" is just weird. Or a letter to editor by some Ranjit Sau or some random publication by one M. K. Kaw. Or quoting Evans out of context.

Both of us know that KP exodus remains severely understudied (except for Dutta) and we do not have sources to claim that they were driven out by radical Jehadis or whatever. A cursory reading of Dutta shows how apologetically he traverses these domains, trying hard to not piss off either sides.

[A]s the narrative of the Pandit ‘exodus’ was inextricably folded into the rise of Hindutva politics in the India of the 1990s, every small fact about it became bogged down in a minefield of rhetoric. There is little clarity, therefore, even about the basics: when did the displacement take place, what triggered it, where did the departing migrants go? Even something as apparently straightforward as the numbers involved remains entirely imprecise.
— Kak, Sanjay (2018-06-01). "Book Review: Ankur Datta. 2017. On Uncertain Ground: Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 52 (2): 240–245. doi:10.1177/0069966718754658. ISSN 0069-9667.

TrangaBellam (talk) 14:14, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Which "either side"? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:32, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I assume this to be a rhetorical question, right? Dutt has spoken about this parallel-universe experience encountered in his ethnography: almost all KMs rejected all that were said by KPs (of the camp) while almost all KPs rejected all that were said by KMs. The homogenization so-disliked by all sociologists.

Regrettably, much of the objective evidence (newspaper reports etc.) supported the narrative of KMs and thus, he invokes Gyan Pandey's theory about victims of an event producing a single ritualized account of their experienced lives after being repeatedly asked to share their experience. This is also highlighted in Kak's review; he also highlights a part. line of Datta (that I missed):

In sharp contrast to the way the ‘exodus’ of January 1990 has often been depicted, Datta notes that the ‘actual process of the flight nevertheless remained an individual or familial affair.’

TrangaBellam (talk) 14:46, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

According to the OED, an exodus is "The departure or going out, usually of a body of persons from a country for the purpose of settling elsewhere. Also figurative. Cf. emigration n. 2" And "emigration n.2" is: "The departure of persons from one country, usually their native land, to settle permanently in another." (subscription reqd)

There were two exoduses (i.e. emigration, or migration out) of the Pandits from the Valley. The first took place between 1947 and 1950, and the second in the first three months of 1990. The lead paragraph refers to both. I am happy to change "emigration" to "migration out," or "en masse migration" (a term used by Evans for the second, and implied by Zutshi for the first).

There are two conspiracy theories. One current among Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) speaks to forced migration in a form of ethnic cleansing. It also inflates the numbers of KPs. The second current in the Valley among Muslims speaks to a deliberate and planned attempt by the Indian authorities to remove the Pandits (in effect to use them as a sacrificial pawn) so as to have an unimpeded go at the Muslims (literally or figuratively).

The view of the major scholars (with the Google Scholar citations of their major publication in parentheses) Sumit Ganguly (449), Sumantra Bose (658), Alexander Evans (59, and the more recent work cited is that the truth is somewhere between. Says, Sumantra Bose,

Organized groups representing Pandit migrants have since claimed that they were forced out of the Valley by a systematic terror campaign of “ethnic cleansing and even “genocide.” Pro-azaadi Muslim opinion in the Valley tends to argue that the migration was encouraged and even actively facilitated by Indian officials, particularly Governor Jagmohan, in a deliberate attempt to stigmatize the azaadi movement as sectarian and “fundamentalist.” While it is not possible to resolve such conflicting versions conclusively, the facts of the matter appear to lie somewhere between the two poles.

Says Alexander Evans

My own interviews with a number of KPs in Jammu, many of whom hold Pakistan responsible, suggest suspicions of ethnic cleansing or even genocide are wide of the mark. The two conspiracy theories already described are not evidence based. As Sumantra Bose observes, those Rashtriya Swamy Sevak publications’ claims that large numbers of Hindu shrines were destroyed and Pandits murdered are largely false, to the extent that many of the shrines remain untouched and many of the casualties remain unsubstantiated. Equally, it is important to note that some incidents did take place. Leading KPs were targeted—some attacked, some murdered—but almost always as political targets (e.g., as integrationist politicians, judges and policemen).

and says again in conclusion:

No matter what designs lay behind these attacks, KPs were bound to feel uneasy. Legitimate fear encouraged KPs to leave the Valley they were born in for other parts of India. Once it became clear that the government could not protect senior KP officials—and would pay their salaries in absentia—many other KPs in state employment decided to move. At the outset, few of these migrants expected their exile to last more than a few months.

What is the point @LearnIndology: of countering them with chicken droppings, i.e. sources that are hardly cited (with Google scholar citations in the single digits)? Alexander Evans says nowhere that the KPs were forced out. He says only that KPs assert that they were forced out. It is his first conspiracy theory, referred to above. And et tu @Kautilya3:? What was the point of the POV template? "Fled" (Talbot and Singh, for example) is not the same thing as being forced out. OED Flee: To run away from or as from danger; to take flight; to try to escape or seek safety by flight. ODE (Oxford Dictionary of English) "force out" compel someone to leave (a job or position,) especially by indirect means. Isaac New fled Cambridge during the Plague to his mother's house in Woolsthorpe. But he wasn't forced out by the Plague.

I am an experienced editor. I know how to paraphrase in a manner that does not miss the forest for the trees. What was the point of playing gotcha with a footnote K3, and playing it with an author who is not here to answer you? Do you seriously think I did not read the footnote? The author is reliable; her book is widely cited (353 times in Google Scholar) There is no Wikipedia rule or guidelines that allows you to counter that with your personal quibble with a footnote. Why do you think I added "seemingly?" I have now added the footnote as well. You guys are seriously wasting my time, and to the extent (given my history on Wikipedia) I am attempting to do something constructive, are being disruptive. I am seriously disappointed. Please think about this before you rachet up the disruption. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:05, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

User:Fowler&fowler Chitralekha Zutshi's recent book (Cambridge University Press) introduce the event calling it an involuntery migration- See [10]

Displacement has defined the experience of another group in Jammu and Kashmir, the Kashmiri Pandits, whose responses to their involuntary migration in the wake of the insurgency form the subject of Haley Duschinski’s essay.

Akshaypatill (talk) 18:05, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@Akshaypatill: I had cited that book in another context, but it was removed by a pertinent objection from K3. I bought that book when it was published a year or two ago. It is a highly compressed Oxford India series. I have another in that series by Tirthankar Roy on Natural Calamities. They are really written for the unvarnished layman. I'm aware of her use of involuntary. Please read WP:DUE. The weight of the scholarly opinion does not support Zutshi. I will attempt below to frame the consensus argument. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:15, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

If you guys have questions or objections, please frame them in words, not by attempting data dumps of cherry-picked sources, which provokes me to do the same. We can all do Google searches for strings of words. What is your argument? I'd like to hear it. I will repeat mine: " Meddling in the democratic process in Indian-controlled Kashmir beginning in 1947 but peaking in the late 1980s gave rise to an insurgency against the administration of that state by India. Independence from the Indian administration, one of the stated early goals of the insurgency, was viewed as a threat by the Pandits, who saw their link to India as a lifeline. The insurgents who were Kashmiri Muslims engaged in political violence directed at various figures of authority, among which were some high-profile Kashmiri Pandits; there were the occasional announcements broadcast from mosques asking the non-believers to leave; there were occasional threats against the Pandits delivered by various means, all contributing to an ambiance of violence, which the Pandits being in a minuscule minority found especially threatening. Through it all, there was precious little reassurance (let alone defense) offered by the Indian administration. Realistically or unrealistically, the Pandits assessed the situation to pose a threat to life and property and migrated out en masse, very quickly, over three months, to camps in Jammu whose hygiene was poor but which had been set up by the state's administration." That is what the major sources support. There is no point telling me that academics have not really delved into what really happened. Wikipedia does not allow those sorts of objections. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:18, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

User:Fowler&fowler Involuntary means 'done against someone's will'. I think your own argument reinforce that it was involuntary migration. Going through all these points, I don't think one will lable this as voluntary migration. Political violence directed at various figures of authority, among which were some high-profile Kashmiri Pandits. - I don't find this very convincing. Rekha Chowdhary has called it 'targeted killings of Kashmiri Pandits'. there were the occasional announcements broadcast from mosques asking the non-believers to leave; there were occasional threats against the Pandits delivered by various means, all contributing to an ambiance of violence, which the Pandits being in a minuscule minority found especially threatening. - This is clearly 'forcing them out.' Akshaypatill (talk) 19:08, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

And, "emigration" is contradicted by your sentence a couple of paragraphs down, where you say they did not "[expect] their exile to last beyond a few months", whereas emigration means going somewhere to settle permanently. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:04, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@Kautily3: Yes I did say, "At the time of their exodus, very few Pandits expected their exile to last beyond a few months." I was closely paraphrasing Alexander Evans, "At the outset, few of these migrants expected their exile to last more than a few months." The reason for that particular usage is that Evans considers their out-migration for the most part to be permanent. Going back is not easy. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:38, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Were some KPs "forced out"?

Yes. [Evans, Husain et al.]

Can the entire exodus be termed as forced migration/purge?

No. [Datta, Rai, Husain, Evans et al.]

Does that mean KPs had enough power to voluntarily choose the migration out?

No. [Datta, Husain.]

So, what terminology do we use?

Internal displacement or simply, displaced. [Datta, Husain.] TrangaBellam (talk) 20:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

User:Fowler&fowlerUser:Kautilya3 (Addtion to my earlier comment) To cite Sudha Rajput,

Many were threatened, abducted and killed, and those who were forced to flee, formed the pool of 250,000 displaced persons, officially dubbed as “migrants”.

Akshaypatill (talk) 21:19, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

But there were only 140,000 KPs by K3's own edit. See the citations in the lead. There is a reason that third-party sources (ie. vetted by international academic publishers) are preferred. Even Oxford India has poor standards. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:24, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

If I am accepted at two colleges: Harvard University with its stellar reputation and Podunk College with half the reputation of Harvard. If Podunk gives me a full scholarship and is 100% safe and Harvard gives me 75% scholarship and is 75% safe because of an insurgency, and if together with my parents I choose Podunk, is it a voluntary, reluctant, or involuntary decision? My first choice would have been Harvard at 100% and 100% safety. Still, there will be thousands eager to lap up Harvard under those conditions. The Middle Passage was an involuntary migration. My choice of college is a voluntary move. The Kashmiri Pandits' was a reluctant migration in the view of most sources. Alexander Evans says it very clearly, "My own interviews with a number of KPs in Jammu, many of whom hold Pakistan responsible, suggest suspicions of ethnic cleansing or even genocide are wide of the mark. (p. 23) ... The KP tragedy has not taken place in isolation in Kashmir, nor was it the result of a nefarious Muslim campaign directed against them. Kashmiri Muslim civilians remain by far the largest group among those killed in political violence since 1988 and, even at the height of selective militant killings in 1989–1990, relatively few KPs were killed." In other words, I chose Podunk, but there are likely hundreds of Black kids from the inner city for whom Harvard under the insurgency would be considered a 100% safe place. It is all a matter of perception and opportunities. The Muslim civilians of the Valley had nowhere else to go, even in the face of Death. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:28, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree that 140,000 (round about) is the number of KPs. I think the Sudha Rajput books is not very illuminating. The above statement was quoted verbatim from something called ACCORD, 2010 which, as far as I can tell, is some paper published in a South African journal. Not sure why.

Anyway, we are done contesting numbers. If you anybody wants to reopen that issue, please open a new thread. And read all the present sources first! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:42, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I think there is some vague support for the term "forced migration", but not strong enough. So I am voting for "displacement". I found this interesting passage:

Although identified as 'migrants' by the Government of India, the displaced people feel that the term, as applied to them, has a negative connotation, as they are not mere migrants who voluntarily left Kashmir; they were forcibly displaced because of armed conflict. The displaced Kashmiri people wish to be identified as 'internally displaced persons' (Mishra 2004).

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:53, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

"Forcible displacement" is a well-defined term now. Wikipedia has a page Forced displacement. The Pandits do not occur in it. The UNOHCHR has publications on "forced displacement." The Pandits do not occur in them. Third-party sources do not consider the Pandits to be forcibly displaced, though that might well be the choice of their preference. "Internally displaced person" too is a well-defined term. Wikipedia has a page Internally displaced person as does OHCHR many publications. The Pandits find mention in neither. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:20, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• Wikipedia has a page Forced displacement. The Pandits do not occur in it.

No problem, I'll add it.

• The UNOHCHR has publications on "forced displacement." The Pandits do not occur in them.

Yes they do, see AkshayPatil's comment below.

• Third-party sources do not consider the Pandits to be forcibly displaced.

Yes they do it, I have already cited multiple sources, should I cite more?

• Wikipedia has a page Internally displaced person as does OHCHR many publications.'

No problem, I'll add on Internally displaced person and here is OHCHR report defining Kashmiri Hindus as IDP's[11]

Now, I don't see why shouldn't we use the word "forced mass migration" in lede. LearnIndology (talk) 06:47, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

@LearnIndology: Please don't be facetious. You have already been warned on your user talk page to not engage in India-POV promotion, and I have warned you that you are on the verge of a topic ban broadly construed. You know what Wikipedia says about reliable sources and due weight. Please do not push your luck. Let this be a warning. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:15, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Read WP:FOC and don't derail the discussion in hand. LearnIndology (talk) 12:45, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

References

User:Fowler&fowler Your analogy is missing some important points. It is not just matter of choice. Are you saying that Pandits should have stayed there, waiting for some very adeverse condition to evolve and only then leave the valley, so we can call it involuntery? The fact is the KP's were scared. The killings, millitancy and other things fueled it and government couln't do much. This event is definitely not a mere 'migration'.

Also OHCHR's report has termed the event as forced. See [12] Also There has been no progress in investigations into the attacks and killings of minority Hindu community known as Kashmiri Pandits, thousands of whom were forced to flee the Kashmir Valley in the 1990s due to threats by armed groups.

If the event is to be called as Internal displacement, then there are plenty of sources to back it. Apperently UNHCR considers KPs to be 'Internally Displaced Persons'. See [13] Akshaypatill (talk) 06:02, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

@Akshaypatill: Those are primary sources. They have not been peer-reviewed. I have already discussed the OHCHR reports before somewhere (which I will soon dig up). I was not talking about those two reports, i.e. the OHCHR report 2018 (see 2018 report here) and a follow-up published in the following year (see 2019 report here). In both, there are 145 paragraphs on the Indian human rights violations. The 2018 report, for example, says on page 39, paragraph,

137. A major episode of attacks against civilians by armed groups operating in the Kashmir Valley is that against the minority Hindus, known as Kashmiri Pandits.307 These attacks and threats from armed groups forced hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits to flee Kashmir and seek shelter in Jammu and other parts of India.308

So are we to also believe, "hundreds of thousands," which means at least 200,000 and possibly many more, were driven out of the valley? Please tell me. Obviously, it is not reliably written; it is not written by a scholar of Kashmir. In any case, as I have already stated, those were not the reports I was talking about.

The OHCHR has global reports: "The Global Report presents the work carried out by UNHCR in 2019 to protect and improve the lives of tens of millions of people of concern—refugees, returnees, internally displaced people, stateless persons, and others of concern. See, for example, see here. Neither, Kashmir nor the Pandits are mentioned in these yearly reports, at least no mention that I have been able to discern. Those reports give you proper due weight. Again, the major tertiary sources (see WP:TERTIARY) give no credence to the use of either "internally displaced," or simply "displaced" in the context of the Pandits. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:04, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

To summarize, it seems that both I and Kautilya3 agree that there is no broad support for terms like "forced migration" or "forced exodus" or like. Rather, we support the terminology of "internal displacement" or simply, "displaced." Akshaypatill probably has no objections to our proposal. That leaves us with LearnIndology who prefers "forced mass migration" (I am not seeing the sources in support apart from cherry-pickings) and F&F, whose objections to the particular nomenclature of internal displacement seem to be not well-founded. TrangaBellam (talk) 07:16, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I have, like everyone else, own choice but since we are close to building a consensus for "internal displacement" or "displaced", I am fine with that too. LearnIndology (talk) 07:38, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree. Akshaypatill (talk) 08:59, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy of participating editors; it is a democracy of sources, for which there are only two principles: a) reliable sourcing: WP:SOURCETYPES (which states, "Many Wikipedia articles rely on scholarly material. When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources.") and b) "due weight": WP:TERTIARY (which states: Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks are regarded as tertiary sources because they sum up multiple secondary sources. Policy: Reliable tertiary sources can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other.") I have used two major tertiary sources, both widely used textbooks, both cited hundreds of times on Google Scholar. They are:

• Metcalf & Metcalf 2006, p. 274 Quote: The Hindu Pandits, a small but influential elite community who had secured a favourable position, first under the maharajas, and then under the successive Congress regimes, and proponents of a distinctive Kashmiri culture that linked them to India, felt under siege as the uprising gathered force. Of a population of some 140,000, perhaps 100,000 Pandits fled the state after 1990; their cause was quickly taken up by the Hindu right.
• Talbot, Ian; Singh, Gurharpal (2009), The Partition of India, New Approaches to Asian History, Cambridge University Press, pp. 136–137, ISBN 9780521672566,  Between 1990 and 1995, 25,000 people were killed in Kashmir, almost two-thirds by Indian armed forces. Kashmirs put the figure at 50,000. In addition, 150,000 Kashmiri Hindus fled the valley to settle in the Hindu-majority region of Jammu.

There is no evidence that the tertiary sources, e.g. the two above, are using "displacement." "Flee," however, I have added both to the infobox and to the second paragraph which discussed the second migration. Thus far no one has provided evidence of due weight. Let me be blunt with you guys. I have been on WP a very long time. I've taken part in dozens of discussions on the village pump, on the talk page of the FA India, in RfCs, and dispute resolutions. I have a pretty good sense of what I am talking about. If you really want to go that rout, I am happy toblige, but you will only be wasting time. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:30, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

In that case, do you propose that we write [..] KPs fled the state [...] as the first line? Umm, I do not object :) Datta is the only scholar to have published an academic monograph on the subject (from OUP, to rave reviews) and his reasoned choice to use internal displacement matters more than tertiary sources, which do not support your version either. The terminologies of internal displacement and fleeing introduce an aspect of involuntariness, which was central to the KP experience but is lacking in migration. TrangaBellam (talk) 16:21, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

@TrangaBellam: Both "migration" and "flight" are supported in the best scholarly sources. Please see my edit here. "Displacement," is highly problematic. It means, "The enforced departure of people from their homes, typically because of war, persecution, or natural disaster." (See Oxford Dictionary of British English (subscription required); and some cited examples: "HRW reported that in 1998 Bulgaria supplied both sides in the Ethiopia-Eritrea border conflict, which had led to large displacements of civilians in both countries." "If such a plan were to be implemented, the logic of the 1947 partition of the sub-continent would be replicated with attendant mass displacements and violence.") That the KP migration or flight was an "enforced departure" is not supported in the sources. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:46, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@TrangaBellam: "Internal displacement" is even more problematic, for it begs the question, "Internal to what?" India does not have undisputed sovereignty over Kashmir (any part of it). Why are we wasting time adding "a region administered by India since 1947 and a part of the larger Kashmir region that has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan from approximately the same time." if in the same breath we are saying it is "internal" presumably to India, for half the Pandit migrants have apparently been displaced to the Delhi region. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:11, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler:Internal in the sense that all this happened in area under administration of India. They didn't cross international border. You are just adding more confusion. Apart from this here is analysis of the exodus along with discussion about what constitutses for Internal Displacement and why the exodus can be called Internal displacement [14] -

In Indian context there was conflict-induced displacement in Kashmir. Large-scale internal displacement took place from the valley during 1989-90when the region came under the control of many secessionist groups. Since thebeginning of 1989, the minority communities in Kashmir started receiving notices to to quit Kashmir. Panic gripped the valley. Secessionist organizationscalled for a boycott against those opposing the secessionist movement in thestate. Kashmiri Pandits, the non- Kashmiri Hindus, Kashmiri Sikhs and otherminorities were thus forcibly displaced from Kashmir.

And we a full book that discuss the event in details- Internal Displacement and Conflict The Kashmiri Pandits in Comparative Perspective by Sudha Rajput [15] Akshaypatill (talk) 06:30, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Akshaypatill: You had never edited this page. You suddenly appear here out of the blue. You have been given warnings about WP:HOUNDING and POV-pushing by user:SpacemanSpiff and user:Bishonen. You are blatantly edit-warring. You have made a spectacular revert of some of the best sources on Wikipedia back to a single sentence in Alexander Evans. Kautilya3 has already stated here that Sudha Rajput is not very enlightening. I suggest that you self-revert. Please don't relentlessly go after me. Otherwise, you are looking at penalties. Be warned. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 07:47, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: I am fairely new to editing Wiki, though I signed up a few years ago. So it is obivious that I will be percieved as coming out of the blue. And for the warnings part, whenever someone points towards a mistake, I accept, reflect on it and learn. And for your kind information, I have never been accused of POV pushing, you better check. You have been accused of POV on this very page. My mistakes from past are not relevent here. For the edit warring part, this is my first revert on this page and that's too because you aren't respecting consensus. Please, let's complete the discussion first. This isn't the place to discuss about all this. Instead, lets work towards a resolution. Akshaypatill (talk) 08:35, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I believe Kautilya3's comment was for the KP's population and not on the entire book. Akshaypatill (talk) 08:54, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Akshaypatill: Of course it is. Look at your editing history. You have mainly edited Shivaji. You have followed me on Subas Chandra Bose, Talk:Subhas Chandra Bose, Talk:India, and now this page. You have erroneously interpreted consensus. Please read WP:NOTDEMOCRACY. You have reverted an edit with some of the best sources including Alexander Evans (who uses both "migration," "migrate," and "en masse migration" many more times than he does "displacement.") What is going on? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:41, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Akshaypatill: I have just taken a lot at Sudha Rajput's embarrassingly third-rate book that reads like the common claptrap published in the back alleys of Old Delhi. Why don't you ask Kautilya3 or TrangaBellam for their opinion? I am pretty sure they will not be able to defend the first couple of dozen pages available on Google books. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:50, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler:There was no need to insult the work. You could have just called it unreliable. The author may have put in a lot of effort to create the work. You need to respect that even if you don't agree. One need not eat litter to tell it tastes bad. Akshaypatill (talk) 20:25, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Akshaypatill: Please examine SpacemanSpiff's warning here. Is there anything here you have agreed with me about? Whatever I say, you counter with something unreliable or incorrect. You produce the OHCHR primary sources to counter my point. You are arguing about a statement attributed to Chitralekha Zutshi's prize-winning book (Columbia 2004). You have an argument with her? Well, take it up with her. Her book remains a supremely reliable source. You cite Sudha Rajput, a shabby book, and stop only when K3 agrees. What is going on? And now you are spectacularly edit-warring. Have you read the sources I have added? You are going to counter them with one sentence from Evans? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:58, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: SpacemanSpiff's warning was in a different context. And if you have any concern over my conduct, I invite you to my talk page. Here, lets discuss the issue at hand. For the agreeing part, I agree most of the content you have wrote in the lead. I am acquainted with your contributions on other articles and I find it to be of very high quality and I respect that. Let me say it, you are really good at what you do. But here, it isn't about just me, but several (or all of them) editors arn't in agreement with you and you have to address there concerns before making the final edit. Akshaypatill (talk) 10:20, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: I have self reverted for now. But you are liable to build concensus. Akshaypatill (talk) 10:34, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

User:Fowler&fowler And thanks for mentioning the admins who had warned me. Indeed, a good technique. Respect.Akshaypatill (talk) 11:43, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@TrangaBellam: Ankur Datta's Ph.D. dissertation (LSE 2011) was published by Oxford India in 2017. OUP India is not the same publisher as OUP, Oxford and New York, which is far more rigorous. You may read about the inadequacies of the book in the review in Himalaya, by Kyle J. Gardner, now of George Washington University, whose own Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Chicago (2018), has been published by CUP, Cambridge in 2021: The Frontier Complex: Geopolitics and the Making of the India-China Border 1846–1962. Please examine the beginning of Gardneer's review:

Of the many recent events in Kashmir’s post-1947 history, perhaps none better symbolizes its violent social upheaval than the flight of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir Valley in 1989–90. In the wake of a disputed state election in 1987, Kashmiri separatists built an insurgency that drew on waves of popular protest and rising Islamism. By 1989 these groups’ tactics included assassinations of a number of prominent Kashmiri Pandits, an upper-caste Hindu minority that had long occupied a privileged position in Kashmiri society (the honorific title “Pandit” reflects this). After Indian forces opened fire on protesters in Srinagar on January 21, 1990, the Valley descended into a particularly intense cycle of protest and military retaliation, with the Pandits becoming increasingly associated with the occupying Indian forces. The growing sense of harassment and uncertainty convinced the majority of Pandits to leave. Within a year, perhaps as many as 120,000–140,000 Pandits had left in what became known as the “migration” or “exodus.”

Datta's is not quite in the same class those of Mridu Rai (Princeton, 2004) Chitralekha Zutshi (Columbia, 2004), or Shahla Hussain (CUP, Cambridge, 2021). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:26, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Garnder's review is hardly damning (even Rai had reviewers pick up quibbles) enough to discredit authors. I had objected to K3's usage of this line of reasoning to discard Talbot/Singh and object to you, as well.

That being said, I am reading through all the monographs on Kashmir (published in the last decade) and there appears to be a consensus for flight/migration against displacement to my personal displeasure. I will note my findings soon. Of particular interest is how Rai's longuee-duree history of Kashmir (slated for publication, next year) will cover the issue. TrangaBellam (talk) 09:57, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

She tends to prefer "departure" (noun) and "left" (verb). See my footnote in the infobox. I suppose you could use "precipitous departure" in her style. :) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:17, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@TrangaBellam: I've just read Holly Reed's review of On Uncertain Ground by Ankur Datta in the American Journal of Sociology (see here). Here is an excerpt:

extended content

In On Uncertain Ground: Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir, an ethnographic study of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in India, Ankur Datta breaks new ground in terms of his subject matter and thematic focus. However, some shortcomings, such as an overuse of jargon, the need for copy editing, and insufficient empirical evidence in some places, prevent the book from reaching its full potential. Nevertheless, it is an important addition to the social science literature on displacement and forced migration. This is particularly true since there are relatively few published studies of IDPs, despite the fact that over 40 million persons are displaced from their homes within their own countries. ... Since 1989, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has endured a conflict between the Indian national government and the Kashmiri separatist movement. The elite Hindu Pandit minority was displaced in 1990 due to this conflict. Most Pandits fled Kashmir to the south, where they still live in cities like Jammu and New Delhi. This ethnographic account focuses on these IDPs in their new homes, both “camps” (temporary quarters) and more permanent settings, and their memories of Kashmir and the violence, their interactions with their new neighbors, and their claims on the Indian state. In the book, Datta argues that although the Pandits are but one of many exiled populations in the world who have experienced pain and suffering and loss, they are also unique in terms of their geographical and political location. Although they are vulnerable, they also have rights and status, at least to some extent, because of the Indian government’s support of them. Moreover, they are an example of protracted displacement (which is more and more often the norm), which ultimately affects their own self-perception as victims, sufferers, and agents. ... However, in much of the book there is a tension between Datta’s use of one particular story to illustrate an argument (which gives the book readability) and a shortcoming of evidence to support some of the arguments. Of course, he spoke primarily with Pandits, but he sometimes fails to acknowledge that this privileges their biases in accounts of the past and present. He discusses the loss in status that accompanies flight when Pandits must live in one-room houses within camps, but the reader needs more evidence of how these camps differ from the IDPs’ previous homes or imagined homes and how homes within the camps differ from one another. There are differences in privilege and status within displacement camps as well. He also argues that displacement is gendered, but it is unclear how he, as a South Asian man in a gender-biased society, had access to women’s accounts of their lives. Many accounts in the book seem to be from men, or if women are also interviewed, they are interviewed in the presence of men.

Datta has very likely done good anthropological fieldwork among the Pandit males in the refugee camps in Jammu. But this is a Ph.D. dissertation, we cannot use him for the meta language, i.e. "internally displaced." We need a broadscale source for that, which this obviously is not. Also, I'm generally troubled by "an overuse of jargon, the need for copy editing," a common hallmark of Oxford India. That is why in Kashmir-related matters, my first preference is always, scholarly books published by academic publishers in third-party liberal democracies. By "third-party" I mean outside South Asia and not in a country that takes predictable sides in the Kashmir dispute (China, Russia, Arab countries). That is the policy we have followed in the leads of all recent Kashmir-related pages, e.g. 2019 Balakot airstrike, 2019 India–Pakistan border skirmishes and indeed even Hindu-Muslim issues in India such as 2020 Delhi riots, though in those instances, we have news reports. In a section below I will collect what I consider are third-party scholarly sources, which I still maintain Datta's book is not. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:45, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

If consensus is emerging for "internal displacement" or displacement, I would support that as most KP authors are not okay with the standard term "migration". And this article would be more neutral if it includes all views including KP scholarly sources and secondary sources. "Displacement" is widely used even in the related book titles such as below: Jhy.rjwk (talk) 22:20, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Extended content

Displacement of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley of Kashmir - Riyaz Ahmad Khanday · 2015 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Displacement_of_Kashmiri_Pandits_from_th/uFAaswEACAAJ?hl=en Conflict and Displacement in Jammu and Kashmir: The Gender .. - Seema Shekhawat · 2006 · {{talkquote| Internal Displacement and Conflict: The Kashmiri Pandits - Sudha Rajput · 2019 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Internal_Displacement_and_Conflict/F8yGDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Kashmiri+Pandits+%22displacement%22&printsec=frontcover Fear, Displacement, Departure: The Experience of the Kashmiri Pandits - Love, Loss and Longing in Kashmir. Sahba Husain. 2019

POV template

Fowler&fowler, thank you for summarising your POV (or in your view, the scholars' POV). Unfortunately, I don't have any such linearised narrative to offer. All I see are uncertainties and partial truths.

But the POV template is there because I see the treatment skewed. The improper use of "emigration" is only the tip of the iceberg. The lead is now an mini-article in itself. And it will take time for me and other editors to check all the details and make sure that they are NPOV. I have given other examples of POV, how the phrase "fled the Valley" has been incrementally modified, how "voluntary" has been inserted despite the scholar's misgivings etc. Saying a book has hundreds of citations doesn't mean that a particular view has hundreds of citations. And NPOV means representing all notable views in reliable sources in proporotion to their preponderance. A view that the author herself disowns (see Narratives from Exile) hardly fits the bill. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:03, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

A lead that is a mini article in itself is not POV.

You have not clarified anywhere why the exodus of the Pandits which took place in two decades (the late 1940s and 1990) cannot be described as "emigration." The Cuban exodus page begins with, "The Cuban exodus is the mass emigration of Cubans from the island of Cuba after the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Throughout the exodus millions of Cubans from diverse social positions within Cuban society became disillusioned with life in Cuba and decided to emigrate in various emigration waves." Alexander Evans uses the expression "en masse migration" (to which I have offered to change "emigration"). Websters' Unabridged (subscription reqd) defines "exodus" to be "a mass departure: emigration". The OED (subscription reqd) defines it to be: "The departure or going out, usually of a body of persons from a country for the purpose of settling elsewhere. Also figurative. Cf. emigration n. 2." and it defines "emigration n. 2" to: "The departure of persons from one country, usually their native land, to settle permanently in another." Jammu and Kashmir is not a country, nor does India have undisputed sovereignty over it, so we can't use "internal displacement.". Even Bill Koul, whose sympathies are decidedly Panditian, acknowledges the usage:

"The reason being none of the Indian governments, since 1990, have practically made any visible difference to their status; they continue to suffer indignation and are abhorrently known as Kashmiri Pandit migrants—and not even as an internally displaced community.

The UNOHCHR, as far as I'm aware, does not include the Pandits in the people who have suffered "forced displacement," as the Kurdish or Syrians have. Ultimately, we can only summarize the sources and their major consensus. We can't slap on a POV tag because we suspect POV (especially in a longstanding competent editor) and propose to let it remain as we examine the lead more closely. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:16, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I am sorry, that doesn't wash. You have added the dictionary meaning of "emigration" saying "to settle permanently". You have changed "fled the Valley" to "moved away". You have added the bit about them leaving "voluntarily" despite the scholar's misgivings. I see all of them together as a deliberate effort to misrepresent the facts. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:27, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

The scholar, Mridu Rai, does not have misgivings; otherwise, she would not have used the expression, and put her "misgiving" in a footnote. It is a qualification. She is qualifying the term, that when people are feeling vulnerable it is easy for them to perceive a threat or potential threat and it is difficult to objectively assess their assessment. But she is obviously summarizing some widely held opinion, otherwise, she would not have made such a blanket judgment that 80% were voluntary migrants. I did make an error in "emigration." And that happened long ago, not recently. At the back of my mind, I was likely counterposing "emigration" (migration out) and "immigration" (migration in), a distinction that is not exactly even made much any more, and chose emigration. But I forgot that they both refer to well-defined other countries. I was certainly not trying to imply that the Jammu Division is a well-defined other country, let alone. That is an error. But "migration," "en masse migration" is used by many authors, and its dictionary meaning: "the act, process, or an instance of migrating: such as a(1): the act or an instance of moving from one country, region, or place to settle in another." All you needed to say was an actual objection," applies in this instance. I am happy to change it. It is not a biggie for me in the least. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:03, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't state anything unless there is a source stating the same. Here is Chitralekh Zutshi talking about the first migration: "Since a majority of the landlords were Hindu, the (land) reforms (of 1950) led to a mass exodus of Hindus from the state. ... The unsettled nature of Kashmir's accession to India, coupled with the threat of economic and social decline in the face of the land reforms, led to increasing insecurity among the Hindus in Jammu, and among Kashmiri Pandits, 20 per cent of whom had emigrated from the Valley by 1950." That was the real reason why I had chosen "emigration." It had nothing to do with the POV of your insinuation. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:20, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

The number 20% seems arbitary to me, without any demographics or statistical backing. Because 20% is quite a large porportion of the then total number of Kps, Zutsi should have cited some demographical source rather than citing another book. We need to reassign the weightage assigned to it. 80% too seems pretty arbitory. How did she arrived at the number? Akshaypatill (talk) 06:09, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

• I agree with the removal of POV tag on this version of lead as long as the following conditions are satisfied:

(a) internal displacement (or, simply displacement) is mentioned in the first line and wikilinked,

(b) GOI's machinations in late 80s finds a mention [F&F plans to add it]

(c) A line is added about those who stayed, their almost-unanimous positive notion of KMs, and their fractured relationships with those who were displaced. [Consult Husain (2019)]

All in all, I think F&F has drafted an excellent version of lead to build the article upon. TrangaBellam (talk) 07:47, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your generous compliment, @TrangaBellam:. I agree with almost everything you have said, except "displaced." In my assessment, it remains POV-terminology that is favored by a few Pandits, but unevidenced as yet in the tertiary sources that determine due weight. "migration," "exodus," remain the terminology of due weight. In fact, it seems to be preferred by Kashmiris themselves, Mona Bhan et al write in (Bhan, Mona, Deepti Misri, and Ather Zia. "Relating Otherwise: Forging Critical Solidarities Across the Kashmiri Pandit-Muslim Divide." Biography 43, no. 2 (2020): 285-305. doi:10.1353/bio.2020.0030.)

This story came to us from a close friend, long before the inception of our current project, where we consider the everyday modes of relating that existed between Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims in the period leading up to the "Migration," as the Pandit departures have come to be called among Kashmiris, both Pandit and Muslim. Widely framed in Kashmiri popular history and memory as the moment when communitarian relationships in the Kashmir Valley underwent a radical shift, the year 1989 and after saw the rise of Tehreek (the movement for self-determination), largely supported by the Muslim majority in the Valley, and the departure of most Kashmiri Pandits, the minority Hindu community largely allied with the Indian state.

I'm not too worried about the POV tag, but will keep looking for the best available sources, and of course implementing what you have proposed and I have promised. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:06, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I think something needs to be mentioned about mosques having a target list for KPs - more soon. Btw, Kautilya3: why do you oppose this edit? TrangaBellam (talk) 16:18, 8 January 2022 (UTC)'

User:Fowler&fowler I am trying to find a better source for the 'Migration of 20% KPs between 1947 and 1950' and I couldn't find any. The number '20%' seems arbitrary to me. Zutsi has cited Bajaj for it. Are there any other scholars or demographics that backs this number? Akshaypatill (talk) 17:25, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

See the quote from Bose 2003 in the #KP numbers section. If they were 4% in 1981 but 5% before independence, it follows that 20% had moved out (assuming population growth was uniform across the society). -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:47, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the KP number of 20%, I agree with F&F, that we need better sources Jhy.rjwk and K3's explanation about decline from 5% to 4% is from 1947 to 1981, but the current lead mentions 20% migration around 1950 land reforms.

Regarding the POV template, agree with the points raised by K3 and conditions mentioned by Akshaypatil. Jhy.rjwk

When highlighting the 1950 land-reforms, an important point missed is KP's land was acquired without any compensation, forcing some dispossessed KP landowners to leave Kashmir. Here are some relevant quotes below from multiple scholarly sources:

Extended content

A quote from Chitralekha Zutshi · 2017, Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation - Page 100 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Kashmir/g09bDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Kashmir+land+reforms+1950&pg=PA100&printsec=frontcover In the early 1950s... As these reforms affected landowners, the majority of whom belonged to the Hindu community, they considered the compulsory acquisition of land without compensation a deliberate ploy to alter their socio-economic status and ensure the domination of the Muslim majority. A quote from Pramoda Kumāra Agravāla · 2010, Land Reforms in States and Union Territories in India - Page 182 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Land_Reforms_in_States_and_Union_Territo/eP_rQWpQZuoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Kashmir+land+reforms+1950&pg=PA182&printsec=frontcover Big Landed Estates Abolition Act, 1950… no compensation was paid to the landlords. Under this law, the tiller was made owner of the land. A quote from Christopher Snedden · 2021 Page 127, Independent Kashmir: An incomplete aspiration https://www.google.com/books/edition/Independent_Kashmir/ZfEuEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Kashmir+land+reforms+1950&pg=PT127&printsec=frontcover This lack of compensation seriously disenchanted dispossessed landowners, both Dogras and Pandits.

Jhy.rjwk

That is not correct. We have talked about the land reforms of 1950. The Pandits were allowed some compensation in the form of apple and other orchards. Also, as in other parts of India, many got around the 22 2/3 acre limit by redistributing the land among the male members of the family. The Dogras in Jammu were not so lucky. But the Kashmiri Muslims who had lived in conditions of slavery for 150 years, had nothing. So no one was shedding tears for either the Pandits or the Dogras. The is a reason that Sheikh Abdullah was considered a god by the Muslims of Kashmir. No administrator in 100 years, British or Indian, had been able to push through such radical land reforms anywhere in South Asia. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:54, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Strange, that all these Scholars can be considered incorrect: Zutshi, 2017; Agravāla, 2010; Snedden · 2021 and many more Scholars. (This Article has previosly quoted same authors such as Zutshi many times) Kautilya3 has also noted lack of compensation to KPs. This can be discussed after the emmigration issue.

A quote from Chitralekha Zutshi · 2017, Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation - Page 100

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Kashmir/g09bDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Kashmir+land+reforms+1950&pg=PA100&printsec=frontcover

In the early 1950s... As these reforms affected landowners, the majority of whom belonged to the Hindu community, they considered the compulsory acquisition of land without compensation a deliberate ploy to alter their socio-economic status and ensure the domination of the Muslim majority.

A quote from Pramoda Kumāra Agravāla · 2010, Land Reforms in States and Union Territories in India - Page 182

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Land_Reforms_in_States_and_Union_Territo/eP_rQWpQZuoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Kashmir+land+reforms+1950&pg=PA182&printsec=frontcover

Big Landed Estates Abolition Act, 1950… no compensation was paid to the landlords. Under this law, the tiller was made owner of the land.

A quote from Christopher Snedden · 2021 Page 127, Independent Kashmir: An incomplete aspiration

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Independent_Kashmir/ZfEuEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Kashmir+land+reforms+1950&pg=PT127&printsec=frontcover

This lack of compensation seriously disenchanted dispossessed landowners, both Dogras and Pandits.

Jhy.rjwk

TrangaBellam, We say "alleged" when we don't have any secondary sources that state the information. Here we do. I don't see anything in Ankur Datta that raises any doubts. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:49, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I do not follow your argument at all. Multiple KPs produce a ritualized account of the slogans (to the extent that it seems entire Kashmir Valley was reverberating with those chants at those nights) but there's nil evidence in any police archives, daily newspapers etc. All KMs collectively deny it. That is sufficient in itself to introduce "alleged." TrangaBellam (talk) 18:54, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

See WP:OR. We go by what sources are saying, and not by editors personal opinion. LearnIndology (talk) 19:07, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I am not Datta, quite obviously. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:28, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I have added a quotation to substantiate "alleged". Please check. I have access to only TOI archives among Indian newspapers, which is hopeless. Foreign journalists weren't allowed into Kashmir in 1990. I did find news story in Toronto Star, which went into some depth about the refugee experience. It doesn't quite say what we are looking for, but it is close.

• Hindus flee reign of fear in Kashmir, Toronto Star, 14 May 1990. ProQuest 436199360

-- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:13, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Can you email a pdf? See this report from India Today (31 March 1990) from when it used to be a credible news magazine and the remarkable change in tonality when they reported the same events 26 years hence. TrangaBellam (talk) 05:28, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

• And here is part of Roma Chatterjee's review of Ankur Datta's recent published Ph.D. thesis:

  Presented in the form of a traditional ethnography that describes the life of Kashmiri Pandit migrants in Porkhu Camp in Jammu, this monograph fills a gap in the anthropological literature on migrant communities. Often categorised as an elite group, a form of categorisation that they identify with, Kashmiri Pandits defy easy classification. Unusual in the sense that as Hindus they all belong to a single caste, Brahmin, with radically heterodox customs that may sit uneasily with those of Brahmins elsewhere in India, especially when it comes to diet, that ambivalent status within the Indian mainstream is further exacerbated by the recent controversies around their political status. Labels such as ‘internally displaced persons’ or ‘refugee’ suggest a failure on the part of the state to protect its own citizens apart from the fact that they are generally associated with impoverished and marginalised populations. The designation ‘migrant’, failing as it does to distinguish between those who have voluntarily left their home states in search of a better future and those who have been forced out, also does not adequately describe the compulsions under which people may be forced to relocate. But once adopted, even bureaucratic categories can produce unexpected consequences allowing the Pandits to claim a different kind of voice and position themselves as ‘victims’ and that they are innocent of complicity in the present political turmoil in Kashmir.

  which talks about some of the ambiguities of labels. (See: Society and Culture in South Asia 4(1) 163–178© 2018 South Asian University, New Delhi, DOI: 10.1177/2393861717730622. Review of Ankur Datta, On Uncertain Ground. Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,2017, xvii., 268 pp., ` 895, ISBN: 0-19-946677-7. by Roma Chatterjee, Professor and Head of Department of Sociology, Delhi University.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:33, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
• And Duschinski, Haley (2018), "'Survial Is Now Our Politics': Kashmiri Pandit Community Identiy and the Politics of Homeland", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 172–198, 178–179,  The Kashmiri Pandit migration: (p. 178) The onset of the armed phase of the freedom struggle in 1989 was a chaotic and turbulent time in Kashmir (Bose, 2003). Kashmiri Pandits felt an increasing sense of vulnerability and insecurity in response to what they perceived as a threatening atmosphere in the region (Evans, 2002). These feelings were exacerbated by a series of actions directed against their community, including attacks on prominent Kashmiri Pandit politicians and advocates, displays of hit lists with the names of specific Kashmiri Pandit individuals, and acts of violence in Hindu localities in Srinagar and elsewhere in the region. Community members were particularly affected by the selective killings of prominent community members, such as (p. 179) high profile politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers and judges. Many Kashmiri Pandits, uncertain of their role in relation to the freedom struggle at this stage, decided to leave the Valley. Although various political stakeholders dispute the number of Kashmiri Pandits who left the Valley at that time, Alexander Evans estimates on the basis of census data and demographic figures that over 1,00,000 left in a few months in early 1990, while 1,60,000 in total left the Valley during the 1990s (2002, 23-26); T. N. Madan uses similar figures (1989, xviii-xix). Most Kashmiri Pandits initially settled in temporary arrangements in Jammu, the major city in the predominantly Hindu southern region of the state of Jammu and Kashmir." They arrived in Jammu to find that the state had made no preparations for their accommodation, relief, or rehabilitation and that problems of overcrowding severely limited their options for housing or employment. Many followed family networks or job opportunities to New Delhi, making the capital city the second largest relocation site. There were generational differences in these relocation patterns, as individuals described Delhi to meas 'the city of youths and jobs' and Jammu as 'the city of parents and depression.' Please note that the estimate of migrants, i.e. 100,000 to 150,000, which the Wikipedia Kashmir page has held on to for 15 years, despite much POV-denial, is now de rigueur in academics. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:15, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Jagmohan

Since Jagmohan’s role came up in almost all our conversations with Pandits and Muslims, it would be useful here to consider what he had to say regarding the situation just prior to the migration of Pandits and its implications for the Muslims:

[T]he Kashmiri Pandits are safe targets for militants. There should be strong-arm methods against militants to the extent of frightening the Muslim population through demonstration of the might of the Indian state. Ruthless operations in different localities of Srinagar could be fruitful counter-insurgency operations. But in some areas, there is mixed population and Pandits may become targets of security forces. [Source: Bhasin, Anuradha. 2004. ‘Auditing The Mainstream Media: The Case of Jammu & Kashmir’ in Samir Kumar Das (Ed.) Three Case Studies: Media Coverage on Forced Displacement in Contemporary India. Kolkata: Calcutta Research Group.]

When we interviewed Balraj Puri in Jammu (2006), he told us that Jagmohan had personally told him that the "Kashmiri Pandits had become soft targets of the militants and hence they must leave as this would create a conducive environment to eliminate militancy in Kashmir", adding that "Jagmohan started facilitating Kashmiri Pandits to leave the Valley."
— Fear, Displacement, Departure: The Experience of the Kashmiri Pandits - Love, Loss and Longing in Kashmir. Sahba Husain. 2019. Zubaan Books.

TrangaBellam (talk) 15:21, 7 January 2022 (UTC) added link. Kautilya3 (talk) 00:00, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

A review of literature at the beginning of the study (2005), though not exhaustive, revealed that, barring a few scholarly works, most studies thus far had focused mainly on he communal rather than the political dimensions of the displacement, and on the victimization of the Pandits as a religious minority at the hands of the majority community. Moreover, many of the studies originated and ended at the camps in Jammu, focusing only on the living conditions there, and did not address the rich and complex social relations between Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims, choosing instead to stay within the rhetoric of Islamic fundamentalism, Muslim terrorism, genocide, ethnic cleansing and the exodus. The voices and the subjective experiences of Pandit families who had decided to remain in the Valley were almost totally absent in the literature.

Ahem. TrangaBellam (talk) 15:24, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

All in all, a fascinating (and original) chapter providing layered narratives of the exodus, those who stayed, and their relationship with the Muslim population. Ought be used in this article. TrangaBellam (talk) 15:35, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

The land is important to the Indian state not the people. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:36, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Fowler&fowler's third-party scholarly sources on descriptors commonly used for the "exodus" of Pandits

Please do not add sources to this section. I will add a discussion section below once I have added the sources.

"migration"

"migration

Evans, Alexander (2002), "A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990–2001", Contemporary South Asia, 11 (1): 19–37, doi:10.1080/0958493022000000341, ISSN 0958-4935, S2CID 145573161,  (p. 19) The present article is structured as follows. First, it tries to explain what happened to KPs in 1990 and beyond. (p. 20) Examining the fall-out of the mass migration, it then looks at the extremist politics that followed, before concluding with an assessment of the contemporary situation. (p. 22) There is a third possible explanation for what happened in 1990; one that acknowledges the enormity of what took place, but that examines carefully what triggered KP migration: KPs migrated en masse through legitimate fear. (p. 24) While decennial growth rates rose between 1961 and 2001, the same period saw a degree of migration of KPs from Jammu & Kashmir. Zia, Ather (2020), Resisting Disappearnce: Military Occupation and Women's Activism in Kashmir, University of Washington Press, p. 60,  In the early 1990s the Kashmiri Hindus, known as the Pandits (a 100,000 to 140,000 strong community), migrated en masse from Kashmir to Jammu, Delhi, and other places. Bhatia, Mohita (2020), Rethinking Conflict at the Margins: Dalits and Borderland Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 9,  Despite witnessing a prolonged spell of insurgency including a few incidents of selective killings, Jammu was still considered to be a relatively safe refuge by the Hindu community of Kashmir, the Pandits. As a minuscule Hindu minority community in the Muslim-majority Kashmir (around 3 per cent of Kashmir's population), they felt more vulnerable and noticeable as insurgency peaked in Kashmir. Lawlessness, uncertainty, political turmoil along with a few target killings of Pandits led to the migration of almost the entire community from the Valley to other parts of the country Bhan, Mona; Misri, Deepti; Zia, Ather (2020), "Relating Otherwise: Forging Critical Solidarities Across the Kashmiri Pandit-Muslim Divide.", Biography, 43 (2): 285–305, doi:10.1353/bio.2020.0030,  ...the everyday modes of relating that existed between Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims in the period leading up to the "Migration," as the Pandit departures have come to be called among Kashmiris, both Pandit and Muslim. Duschinski, Haley (2018), "'Survial Is Now Our Politics': Kashmiri Pandit Community Identiy and the Politics of Homeland", Kashmir: History, Politics, Representation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 172–198, 178–179,  The Kashmiri Pandit migration: (p. 178) The onset of the armed phase of the freedom struggle in 1989 was a chaotic and turbulent time in Kashmir (Bose, 2003). Kashmiri Pandits felt an increasing sense of vulnerability Zutshi, Chitralekha (2004), Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, p. 318, ISBN 978-1-85065-700-2,  Since a majority of the landlords were Hindu, the (land) reforms (of 1950) led to a mass exodus of Hindus from the state. ... The unsettled nature of Kashmir's accession to India, coupled with the threat of economic and social decline in the face of the land reforms, led to increasing insecurity among the Hindus in Jammu, and among Kashmiri Pandits, 20 per cent of whom had emigrated from the Valley by 1950. Sarkaria, Mallika Kaur (2009), "Powerful Pawns of the Kashmir Conflict: Kashmiri Pandit Migrants", Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 18 (2): 197–230,   (p. 197) Tens of thousands Kashmiri Pandits (the Hindus of Kashmir) left the Kashmir Valley during the Kashmiri Independence movement of 1989-1990. This migration has been fervently debated by all sides ever since. The voices of Pandit advocacy organizations have gained prominence and often serve to create a narrative that forwards the Indian government's interests: painting the conflict in Kashmir as one of Muslim desire for communal hegemony versus the Indian state's secularism and democracy. This paper focuses specifically on the claims for reparations for Pandit-owned properties that remain in the Valley. (p. 199) It is widely held that the majority of Kashmiri Muslims supported the Kashmiri Independence movement; that the government machinery of Kashmir was initially ineffective in the face of this uprising; and that tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits (the Hindus from Kashmir, who constitute a unique religious and cultural minority) migrated from the Valley. The statements of the facts that surround this Kashmiri Pandit migration do not converge on much else. Since 1990, Pandit migration has been a fervently debated and deeply sensitive issue on all sides. Pandits have been more vocal and organized than other internally displaced populations in India. Yet, as this paper illustrates, the prominent Pandit advocacy organizations and activists might not in fact represent those most affected or those who continue to desire to return to the Kashmir Valley. Note this also has "internally displaced." Duschinski, Haley (2014), "Community Identity of Kashmiri Hindus in the United States", Emerging Voices: Experiences of Underrepresented Asian Americans, Rutgers University Press, The mass migration of Kashmiri Hindus from Kashmir Valley began in November 1989 and accelerated in the following months. Every family has its departure story. Many families simply packed their belongings into thier cars and left under cover of night, without words of farewell to friends and neighbors. In some cases, wives and children left first, while husbands stayed behind to watch for the situation to improve; in other cases, parents sent their teenage sons away after hearing threats against them, and followed them days or weeks later. Many migrants report that they entrusted their house keys and belongings to the Muslim neighbors or servants and expected to return to their homes after a few weeks. Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus left Kashmir Valley in the span of several months. There are also competing perspectives on the factors that led to the mass migration of Kashmiri Hindus during this period. Kashmiri Hindus describe migration as a forced exodus diven by Islamic fundamendalist elements in Pakistan that spilled across the Line of Control into the Kashmir Valley. They think that Kashmiri Muslims had acted as bystanders to violence by not protecting lives and properties fo the vulnerable Hindu community from the militant ... The mass migration, however, was understood differently by the Muslim religious majority in Kashmir. These Kashmiri Muslims, many of whom were committed to the cause of regional independence, believed that Kashmiri Hindus betrayed them by withdrawning their support from the Kashmiri nationalist movement and turning to the government of India for protection at the moment of ... This perspective is supported by claims, articulated by some prominent separatist political leaders, that the Indian government orchestrated the mass migration of the Kashmiri Hindu community in order to have a free hand to crack down on the popular uprising. These competing perspectives gave rise to mutual feelings of suspicion and betrayal—feelings that lingered between Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Hindus and became more entrenched as time continued.

"flight"

"flight"

Bose, Sumantra (2021), Kashmir at the Crossroads, Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, Yale University Press, pp. 119–120,  As insurrection gripped the Kashmir Valley in early 1990, the bulk – about 100,000 people – of the Pandit population fled the Valley over a few weeks in February–March 1990 to the southern Indian J&K city of Jammu and further afield to cities such as Delhi. ... The large-scale flight of Kashmiri Pandits during the first months of the insurrection is a controversial episode of the post-1989 Kashmir conflict. Talbot, Ian; Singh, Gurharpal (2009), The Partition of India, New Approaches to Asian History, Cambridge University Press, pp. 136–137, ISBN 9780521672566,  Between 1990 and 1995, 25,000 people were killed in Kashmir, almost two-thirds by Indian armed forces. Kashmiris put the figure at 50,000. In addition, 150,000 Kashmiri Hindus fled the valley to settle in the Hindu-majority region of Jammu. Metcalf & Metcalf 2006, p. 274The Hindu Pandits, a small but influential elite community who had secured a favourable position, first under the maharajas, and then under the successive Congress regimes, and proponents of a distinctive Kashmiri culture that linked them to India, felt under siege as the uprising gathered force. Of a population of some 140,000, perhaps 100,000 Pandits fled the state after 1990

"departure," "leaving"

"departure"

Rai, Mridu (2021), "Narratives from exile: Kashmiri Pandits and their construction of the past", in Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (eds.), Kashmir and the Future of South Asia, Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, Routledge, pp. 91–115, 106, Beginning in January 1990, such large numbers of Kashmiri Pandits – the com munity of Hindus native to the valley of Kashmir – left their homeland and so precipitously that some have termed their departure an exodus. Indeed, within a few months, nearly 100,000 of the 140,000- strong community had left for neighbouring Jammu, Delhi, and other parts of India and the world. One immediate impetus for this departure in such dramatically large numbers was the inauguration in 1989 of a popularly backed armed Kashmiri insurgency against Indian rule. This insurrection drew support mostly from the Valley's Muslim population. By 2011, the numbers of Pandits remaining in the Valley had dwindled to between 2,700 and 3,400, according to different estimates. An insignificant number have returned.

Displacement

I will add sources here later, but to my ear for the English language, "displacement" is more the fact of being displaced or the state of being displaced than the act of being displaced (though that meaning is not non-existent; actually it is quite common in the physical sciences and engineering, but I doubt we can say, "The Vietnamese in Wisconsin are a displaced people whose displacement lasted five years."). In other words, displacement is the state at the end of the migration, it is not commonly the act of migrating. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:56, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

PS Thus @Kautilya3: and @TrangaBellam: when Holly Reed uses "protracted displacement" in her review above of Ankur Datta (see here), she does not mean that the act of being displaced out of Kashmir was protracted, but that their state (or fact) of being displaced after having migrated out has been protracted. They have not gone back. This means that we can't really say, "The exodus of Kashmiri Hindus" is the internal displacement of ... The exodus is a departure. Internal displacement is the state of having arrived somewhere else. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:56, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I suppose they have arrived somewhere without ever departing. All this hair-splitting is just crazy!

Mridu Rai’s “Narratives from Exile: Kashmiri Pandits and Their Construction of the Past” unravels the predicament of Hindus from the Valley who were forced to leave in 1990. She shows how a collective memory was constructed following the displacement.

As simple as that. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:08, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

User:Kautilya3 Fowler's 'Author of an Award winning book' Chitralekha Zutshi may agree [16]

Displacement has defined the experience of another group in Jammu and Kashmir, the Kashmiri Pandits, whose responses to their involuntary migration in the wake of the insurgency form the subject of Haley Duschinski’s essay.

Akshaypatill (talk) 09:01, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

It is a question of English usage. You cannot define "exodus of" to be "internal displacement of," which you have attempted to do. Bose and Jalal say in their introduction:

Mridu Rai’s “Narratives from Exile: Kashmiri Pandits and Their Construction of the Past” unravels the predicament of Hindus from the Valley who were forced to leave in 1990. She shows how a collective memory was constructed following the displacement. Certain members of the Kashmiri Pandit community were more successful than others in retelling their pasts. Rai skillfully brings out the internal contestations within the Pandit community and the ways in which today’s dominant narrative is closely intertwined with state power. Implicating the entire community of Kashmiri Muslims in the violent activities of a handful of militants is reminiscent of the British colonial project of handing down collective punishment. While the sufferings of Kashmiri Pandits are real, they have enabled the Indian state and the mainstream media to deflect attention from the pain inflicted on Kashmiri Muslims and to justify the state’s punitive measures against them.

which means following having completed the migration. You cannot say the collective memory was constructed following departure. "Displacement" in Bose and Jalal is written from the perspective of years later. For it takes time, sometimes, even decades, for that to happen. And in any case, "internal displacement," or even "displacement," does not apply to the late 1940s migration. And by the way, they don't imply either that the term "forced displacement" can be applied to the Pandits in the 1990s. The term is specific. I note that the

• Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena; Loescher, Gill; Long, Katy; Sigona, Nando (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press all 800 pages of it, makes no mention of the Pandits, as far as I can tell. It does mention displacement in the context of India, but of tribal Indians by various development projects including the infamous dam in Gujarat. You would have thought they'd have a footnote. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:32, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: @TrangaBellam: OK I think I have now accommodated all the points of view. I don't think that the consensus of the sources support either "forced" or "internal." Otherwise, though, I think the current version of the text is fairly NPOV. Please take a look. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:41, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Can we remove the 'especially' and make it more readable like '...is the en-mass migration or the large scale flight that....'? It is hammering the readability of already monstrous sentence. Akshaypatill (talk) 06:09, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with User:Fowler&fowler that it may not be termed as forced, but he has failed to produce any source to back why it cannot be termed as 'internal', apart from his own theory, while multiple sources have been cited that assert that it can be called 'internal'. The area being subject to dispute isn't a valid reason, apart from being a WP:SYNTH. Fowler has to back it with a valid source. My argument is that KPs didn't cross any international borders and the whole incidence happened under the area administered by India, which makes it a perfectly valid candidate to be termed as internal. I will be happy to resign from my stance if Fowler produces any source that shows that it cannot be termed as 'internal' without any WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. Multiple sources have been produced by User:LearnIndology that asserts that it is indeed internal. Akshaypatill (talk) 07:20, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

User:Yuyutsu Ho too has provided some excellent sources in another discussion above that calls it internal displacement. Akshaypatill (talk) 07:32, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Those are garbage sources. Are there any monographs published by internationally known university presses there? No there are not. Hold on. I will produce some reliable scholarly sources. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:28, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

There is a reason for "especially." Most sources say only "migration," but some very high-quality ones say "mass,"or ën masse." We are not putting the finishing touches on an FA. We are trying to include the major scholarship so we can expand the article. I've written the history, geography, and many other sections of the FA India. You don't think I know how to craft a sentence? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:49, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with your experience. I have been in UX writing for a few years. I know how to assess the readability of content. Akshaypatill (talk) 12:01, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't know what UX is, but do you also know that the Government of India does not consider them "internally displaced?" Rather, it considers them "migrants," mainly because it does not want the international agencies breathing down its neck for the bigger brutalization, i.e. of Kashmiri Muslims. Do you also know that by an India-Pakistan consensus on WP, we are required to qualify the disputed nature of the Kashmir Valley in the very first sentence? Why do you think the sentence is slightly convoluted. See also Kashmir Valley, Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Ladakh, Gilgit Baltistan, Azad Kashmir. They all have the same format, the same map, the same language, and the same sources. In you come riding like the lone ranger and change it to a sentence of your liking cited to abysmally third-rate sources. This is my last warning. Please self-revert. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:22, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I've fixed it now. So don't bother. I have also added a source that states that they are not considered IDPs and why. You are going on and on and on, wasting time. Thus far you have added nothing to this discussion. I am now requesting that @Kautilya3: and @TrangaBellam: remove the POV tag. I don't see any reason for it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:39, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

A sentence with 60+ words, enough to kill someone with ADHD. I beg you to split it. WP:Lead fixation Akshaypatill (talk) 12:50, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I've accommodated your objection. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:12, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

That looks good. Thank you Akshaypatill (talk) 13:34, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler Which source of yours supports the claim

Kashmiri Hindus, had stably constituted between 4% and 5% of the population of the Kashmir valley in all censuses from 1871 to 1941

And what is the reason for reverting me here with this vague edit summary? LearnIndology (talk) 13:04, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@LearnIndology: Sorry I did not see this. My response is in the section below. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:45, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

The Pandit population

@LearnIndology: Please note that the Pandits having stably constituted 4 to 5% of the population of the Valley in every census of the British Indian Empire from 1871 to 1941 is one of the dogmas of Indian demography. No one took a census in 1947. The next census was the Indian census in 1951. The Pandits' share of the population could not have jumped from under 5% to 15% in six years (1941 to 1947). That it is still the dogma can be seen in Shahla Hussain's and Sumantra Bose's 2021 books:

• Hussain, Shahla (2021), Kashmir in the Aftermath of the Partition, Cambridge University Press, p. 43,  Waging a united struggle for civil rights and bringing majority and minority communities onto a common platform posed new challenges. The minority Hindu community, comprising approximately 5 percent of the Valley's population, dominated the state services and viewed the political mobilization of the Muslim community with apprehension. They had expressed unhappiness with the 1931 Glancy Commission recommendation to increase the number of Muslims in government employment.
• Bose, Sumantra (2021), Kashmir at the Crossroads, Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, Yale University Press, pp. 48–49,  Between 1950 and 1952 about 700,000 serfs became peasants working their own land .... In the Valley the Pandit community, less than 5 per cent of the population, owned one-third of the arable land, and Abdullah softened the blow for them. They were allowed to retain their fruit orchards and 10 per cent of jobs in the J&K State government.

Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:41, 11 January 2022 (UTC) Actually, I don't even remember reading about a Kashmir census of 1951, although there was certainly one in India. I think the next one may have been in 1961. Even so, a population increasing 300% from 5 to 15% in 20 years (1941 to 1961) is unrealistic, especially for a highly educated community which typically had low birth-rates. Will check later. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:46, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

It was also the dogma in 2004 in Mridu Rai's book's discussion based on the 1921 census figures:

• Rai, Mridu (2004), Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir, Princeton University Press, p. 253,  In 1927, these various moves having failed to satisfy either an increasingly vocal Kashmiri Pandit community or the Dogra Sabha, Hari Singh instituted yet another definition. According to it 'all persons born and residing in the state before the commencement of the reign of Maharaja Gulab Singh and also all persons who settled therein before the commencement of 1885 and have since been permanently residing in the country' were now considered state subjects. Simultaneously, Hari Singh decreed that no person who did not fit the bill would be permitted either employment in state services or the right to purchase agricultural land in the state. ... For the Kashmiri Pandits, however, while the threat of the Punjabi official had been mitigated considerably, they were now forced to turn their attention to a new and even more potent rival, the Kashmiri Muslims, vastly outnumbering both the Punjabi Hindus and the Pandits, had begun to mobilize for their own rights and from a standpoint as legitimate as that of the Kashmiri Pandits in their being equally 'sons of the soil'. While the Pandits had tactically included, at least implicitly, the interests of Kashmiri Muslims when making regionally based demands for a proper definition of the term 'state subject', they were eventually confronted with the logical extension of their strategy. As state subjects the Kashmiri Muslims were as entitled to consideration from the Kashmir durbar as were the Pandits. But Pandit privileges were decidedly shakier when faced with Muslim demands for special concessions to overcome their educational 'backwardness' and for representation in the state services in proportion to their numbers. Forming only 5 per cent of the population of the valley against the 95 per cent of Muslims, the regional solidarity they had waxed so eloquently on only recently began to sour a little. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:32, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

In other words, the three high-quality sources above, published by the world's most renowned university publishers, state that in the 1920s, the 1930s, and the early 1950s, the Pandits constituted 5 percent of the Valley's population. There is little chance they could have been 15 percent in 1947. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:47, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

It is pretty clear now that the claim of pandits constituting 5% even in 1871 is nothing but your personal opinion which you presented as a fact in lead, and Alas!, no on even noticed. Even the source you yourself quoted above doesn't directly speak of that. Hussain's statement is not clear whether she's talking about pandit population of 1931 or post 50's.

The minority Hindu community, comprising approximately 5 percent of the Valley’s population, dominated the state services and viewed the political mobilization of the Muslim community with apprehension

Pandit's dominated the state services both during 47 as well as post 50's. Which era is she talking about?

They had expressed unhappiness with the 1931 Glancy Commission recommendation to increase the number of Muslims in government employment.

Here she immediately shifts to past tense and uses "had", so should we assume that she's was talking about pandit population post 50's, while giving example from 30's?

Same case with Mridu Rai. She doesn't directly talk about pandit population, rather uses 5% as sideline with no in depth analysis of their population as Evans did.

It is best to avoid sideline statements and use sources that directly talks about 1947 population. See sources below:

• JAHANGIR, SHAFI, MOHMAD SALEEM, ANEESA. "MIGRATION AND CHANGING DISCOURSE IN SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIZING: STUDYING NONMIGRANT PANDIT COMMUNITY OF KASHMIR". 6 (1) of 2016: 64. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

It is a fact of history that Kashmir is a Muslim-majority state but it is equally a fact of history that it has a rich Hindu past featured by the population of Pandit Community. They had stably constituted approximately 14 to 15 per cent of the population of the valley during Dogra rule (1846–1947). However, around 20 per cent of them left the Kashmir valley in 1948-1950 and most of them migrated in the 1990s leaving behind a handful of them who willingly preferred to stay back in Kashmir only.

• Behera, Navnita Chadha. Demystifying Kashmir. p. 125.

Census figures are quoted to indicate that the community is facing virtual extinction: In 1947 the Pandits constituted 15 percent of the Valley's population, which fell to 5 percent by 1981, and after the exodus to 0.1 percent.

LearnIndology (talk) 15:12, 11 January 2022 (UTC)