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I was travelling with Sanjay who was shooting a new documen-tary. He shushed me. His father was a retired Indian army ofcer. In Sanjay’s family those words would have been nothing short of blasphemous. They were Kashmiri Pandits (Brahmins) – the tiny, privileged Hindu minority, almost all of whom had fed the valley when the Pakistan- backed, overtly Islamist insurrection began. As
ARUNDHATI ROY
a community, during the uneasy years since Partition in 1947, and the frst public demands by the Muslim majority in the Kashmir Valley for the right to self- determination, most Kashmiri Pandits had aligned themselves with the Indian state. This became more true, steadfastly, bitterly so, after more than two hundred Kashmiri
Pandits were killed by militants in the early years of the insurrection, triggering the exodus of the whole traumatized community from the Kashmir Valley.
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