r/KashmiriHindus

Listen.

I need you to understand something. What I'm telling you now isn't textbook history. I did not read this somewhere. This happened to me. To my family. To my people.

Tomorrow marks 36 years. 19th January, 1990.

Today, on 18th January 1990, Farooq Abdullah resigned as Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. He stepped aside. He gave room. Room for what was about to unfold. Room for what they were about to do to us.

But let me take you back a bit further. Because you need to understand how we got here.

13th December, 1989. Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the Union Home Minister, got kidnapped by militants. The same Mufti Sayeed who was supposed to protect this nation's internal security. His daughter was taken.

The government released five dreaded terrorists in exchange for her. Five. Just like that. Handed them over. Set them free.

You know what that did? It told every radical element in the valley that the Indian state could be bent. Could be broken. Could be made to kneel.

The militants got emboldened. Overnight. They realised they had won before the fight even began.

And the Home Minister? The man responsible for our security? He got his daughter back. We got 19th January.

Tomorrow. 19th January, 1990.

You remember where you were that night? I do. Every single second burns in my memory like a scar that never fades.

Nine o'clock in the evening. Winter in Kashmir. The kind of cold that enters your bones. Everything stood still. Too still. The valley itself held its breath, waiting for something terrible.

Then it came.

The loudspeakers. You know the ones on the mosques? The ones that call people to prayer five times a day? Those same loudspeakers became weapons that night.

One mosque started. Then another. Then another. The entire valley drowned in noise. But these were not prayers. These were threats. Pure, calculated terror wrapped in distorted religious rhetoric.

Militants had taken over. They had turned our sacred spaces into instruments of fear.

There I sat with my Bua and my uncle in our house. The dim light barely held back the darkness. We did not move. We barely breathed. Every word coming through those speakers felt aimed directly at us. The shadows on the walls seemed to come alive. We just sat there, frozen, hoping they would not notice us.

Then came the final command. The one that changed everything.

"Raliv, Galiv ya Tchaliv."

You know what that means? Convert. Leave. Or die.

Three options. That is what they gave us. An entire community. Centuries of our ancestors are buried in that soil, and we have three options.

I was there for my winter break, you understand? I had come to study for my BSc examinations. First year. Two papers were already postponed because things were getting tense. We had seen the signs. Taploo ji was murdered. Justice Ganjoo was shot in broad daylight. But we kept telling ourselves it would be all right. It cannot get that bad.

We were wrong.

That night, fear was not just an emotion. It became physical. It crept under the door like smoke. My Bua's hands shook so badly that she could not turn the radio dial. The lamp kept flickering. Outside, the mob's voices rose and fell like waves of hatred crashing against our walls.

Something broke inside us that night. Our home stopped feeling like home. Our land rejected us. The valley that raised us became our enemy.

The morning after felt like waking up in a different world. Same sun. Same streets. But everything had changed.

I went to Qazigund, my ancestral village, thinking perhaps there I would feel safe. But fear does not respect geography. It followed me.

The walls screamed at us. "Indian dogs go back." Painted fresh. Still dripping. You could not walk anywhere without seeing those words mocking you, telling you that you did not belong.

The mosques, our mosques, became stages for radical propaganda every evening. Speeches designed to inflame. To divide. To erase us.

The mobs grew. Day by day. Their confidence swelled. Their slogans got louder. "Yahan kya chalega? Nizam-e-Mustafa." What will rule here? The Prophet's order.

People started setting their watches to Pakistan Standard Time. Not accidentally. Deliberately. It was a statement. A warning.

Families began vanishing in the night. One house went dark. Then another. Then another. No announcements. No goodbyes. Just empty homes where lives used to be.

We became ghosts in our own land.

Then came the evening my father called me into the room.

He did not shout. Did not cry. He just looked at me. In that look, I saw everything. Exhaustion, grief, helplessness. My father, who had always been strong, stood broken before me.

"You cannot stay here any longer," he said. His voice cracked. "Tomorrow, you leave for Jammu."

My mother stood by the window, gripping her pheran so tight her knuckles turned white. She stared at the fields our family had worked for generations. Silent. What words exist for this kind of loss?

My little sister held my hand. Her fingers trembled. She tried to memorise my face.

My father explained why. Young Pandit men were being used as human shields by militants. They dragged them to the front of mobs during confrontations with security forces. When bullets flew, we died first. Our deaths became their propaganda.

The next morning, I packed one small bag. Some clothes. Photographs. The examination books that I would never open again.

My mother touched every doorframe. Every wall. She said goodbye to the house. She could not look at me. If she did, she would collapse.

My sister hugged me. "Bhaiya, promise you will come back."

I could not promise. The words died in my throat.

That night, we left. The truck carried us and other hollow-eyed refugees. The cold cut through us. No one spoke. No one cried. We had been robbed of even that.

The valley disappeared behind us in the darkness.

By dawn, we crossed Banihal Pass.

By morning, we were refugees.

So when you hear about Kashmir, when someone talks about 1990, when the conversation turns to "the situation", remember this. Remember that these are not just statistics. These are lives. Families. Homes. Histories.

This happened. To us. To me.

Tomorrow marks 35 years since that night.

If you are a Kashmiri Pandit reading this, I want to hear from you. What do you remember? What did your family go through? Do not let them forget. Do not let this become just another footnote in history.

If you are not a Kashmiri Pandit, I have one question for you. Did you know this happened? Did anyone teach you about this in school? Did this ever make it to your news feed before today?

Share your thoughts. Share your family's stories if you have them. Let us make sure that 35 years from now, someone still remembers.

Because I am still here to tell you about it.

And that is all I have to say.

ive556 om 32k rank

Hi everyone,

I recently came to know that Kashmiri Pandits traditionally prepare and eat non-vegetarian food after certain pujas or religious ceremonies, and I honestly found it to be a really unique and fascinating custom. As someone who loves non-vegetarian food, I thought it was such an interesting blend of culture and cuisine.

I am assuming this is a widely followed tradition in the Kashmiri Pandit community.

Would love to know more about it: when is it usually followed, what dishes are typically prepared, and what is the significance behind it?

If I have misunderstood any part of this tradition, please do correct me. I would much rather learn from people who actually know the culture than rely on what I have heard.

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping to hear from Kashmiri Pandits or people who have married into Kashmiri Pandit families.

I’m in a serious relationship with a Kashmiri Pandit, and recently someone told my mother something that has made her quite anxious. They claimed that in many Kashmiri Pandit families, a son and daughter-in-law don’t attend functions together or go out together while the parents (especially the in-laws) are alive. They also said that daughters-in-law are often not taken along to family functions.

This sounded very unusual to me, and I haven’t personally seen anything like this with my boyfriend or his family. However, since it came from someone who said they had observed it in their residential society, my parents are worried that it might be a common community practice.

So I wanted to ask:

1. Have you ever heard of such a tradition?
2. Is this a community-wide custom, or is it limited to a few conservative families?
3. If you’re a Kashmiri Pandit or married into a Kashmiri Pandit family, what has your experience been?

I’m not looking to judge anyone’s customs—I’m just trying to understand whether this is actually a common practice or whether it’s being generalized from a few families.

I’d really appreciate honest experiences rather than assumptions. Thank you!