The turbulent province of Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority state has been witness to an armed insurrection for the past two decades. We have seen scenes of appalling violence and brutality in the Kashmir valley heralded by the ethnic cleansing in 1990 of the regions Hindu minority. Over 400,000 Kashmiri Hindus were forced almost overnight to leave their homes under ... (More)
There has been a universal blackout of one very crucial aspect of the whole Kashmir issue which the media finds very convenient to ignore - the plight facing Kashmir's indigenous Hindu community. Around 400,000 Kashmiri Hindus were forced out of their ancestral homeland at gunpoint in the 1990s, and many have been languishing in refugee camps in Jammu ever since ... (More)
The frequent killing of Hindus in Kashmir generally meets a typical muted response by the world media and human rights organisations. Tragically, the apathy with regards to such incidents extends to the general Indian public and government too. Perhaps the reason is that such indiscriminate killings of Hindus have become so commonplace, that it is just accepted now as part of the way things are.
This is especially true in Kashmir where Hindus (known as 'Kashmiri Pandits') have been targeted in this way over the course of over 17 years during which at least 62,000 people have been killed.
The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is divided into two major regions, Kashmir, which is populated mainly by Muslims, and Jammu, which is mainly Hindu. The overall population of the state is 67% Muslim and 29% Hindu, with small Buddhist, Sikh and Christian populations ... (More)