There is perhaps no political party in India that has spoken about the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits as consistently, emotionally and emphatically as the Bharatiya Janata Party. For decades, the community’s displacement has occupied an important place in the BJP’s political vocabulary. Its leaders have spoken about our exodus, our abandoned homes, our temples, our killings and our right to return.
The BJP has not merely acknowledged the Kashmiri Pandit tragedy. It has also carried that tragedy to the rest of India – overtly through election speeches, parliamentary interventions, rallies, documentaries, commemorative events and repeated references to the exodus; and covertly by allowing the community’s suffering to function as a symbol of the failures of secular politics, the dangers of appeasement and the need for a stronger nationalist state.
The plight of Kashmiri Pandits became one of the most powerful moral and political arguments in the BJP’s national narrative.
That helped ensure that India did not forget the exodus. It gave visibility to a community that had often been ignored. It forced the country to confront the killings, threats, displacement and destruction of a civilisation rooted in the Valley.
For that, the community can be grateful.
But there is another side to this political bargain.
The suffering of Kashmiri Pandits was repeatedly presented to the rest of India as proof of what had gone wrong. It was invoked to mobilise outrage, consolidate political support and justify a promise of correction. The community’s pain became not only a humanitarian cause but also a political instrument.
That distinction matters.
Because when a party repeatedly asks the nation to remember a community’s suffering, it also assumes responsibility for explaining what it has done to end that suffering.
Fair enough.
But the BJP has now governed India for more than twelve years. Jammu and Kashmir has remained a Union Territory since 2019, with enormously important powers resting with an administration ultimately answerable to New Delhi. Therefore, sympathy can no longer be the yardstick.
IT IS TIME FOR A BALANCE SHEET
The timing could hardly be more appropriate. In August, Kashmiri Pandit employees working in the Valley under the Prime Minister’s Package approached the Chief Secretary seeking enhanced security after a purported terror threat circulated online. What made the episode particularly disturbing was that the poster reportedly contained personal details – including residential addresses and vehicle information – of some employees.
Thirty-six years after the exodus, should a Kashmiri Pandit still have to wonder whether somebody somewhere has prepared a list carrying his name and address?
That is the first entry in BJP’s balance sheet: security.
Nobody can reasonably claim that nothing has changed in Kashmir. Terrorist violence has declined substantially from its worst years and the security apparatus is vastly stronger. The Union government itself has detailed measures including static guards, area domination, nakas, patrols and a strengthened intelligence grid.
But security cannot merely mean preventing a massacre. For a displaced community, security must mean the confidence to go home without becoming an identifiable security category.
Then comes return.
This is where political rhetoric collides most sharply with reality.
Government data presented in 2021 recorded 39,782 registered Hindu migrant families who had been displaced from the Valley. The same government described the movement of several thousand migrant youth back to Kashmir to take up PM Package employment as evidence of return.
But an employee reporting for government duty in Kashmir and a displaced family rebuilding its life in its ancestral village are not the same thing.
Where is the number that really matters?
How many Kashmiri Pandit families, independent of employment compulsions, have permanently returned to their ancestral places and re-established homes there?
That figure – not speeches, packages or inauguration photographs – is the true measure of rehabilitation.
Then there are jobs. Here, BJP and the administration deserve acknowledgement. By March 2025, 5,868 appointment orders had reportedly been issued against 6,000 posts under the Prime Minister’s packages. That is substantial progress.
But employment was supposed to become the bridge to rehabilitation. A bridge has value only if it actually reaches the other side.
Look at housing. Six thousand transit accommodations were sanctioned in 2015. According to J&K’s Economic Survey 2025-26, 3,736 had been completed by November 2025 and 3,250 allotted by December. Another 2,264 remained under construction.
Ten years after sanction, thousands of units were still unfinished.
If rehabilitation is an emergency of history, why has its infrastructure moved at the speed of an ordinary government housing scheme?
3,408 KANALS, 16 MARLAS MIGRANT LAND RECOVERED IS PEANUTS
Now consider property – perhaps the most painful issue after life itself.
A displaced person cannot meaningfully return if his house is occupied, his land encroached upon, his revenue records altered or his inheritance trapped in litigation.
There has been movement. The government created an online grievance portal, and the latest Economic Survey says 3,408 kanals and 16 marlas of migrant land had been retrieved from encroachments and illegal occupation. The 1997 Migrant Immovable Property Law already places responsibility for protecting migrant property upon the state machinery.
Good.
But now publish the entire ledger.
How many complaints were received? How many were decided? How many resulted in physical restoration of possession? How many remain pending with Deputy Commissioners? How many cases involve disputed mutations? What is the average disposal time?
Put a district-wise dashboard online.
A government confident of its performance should not fear numbers.
Then comes political representation. Parliament amended the law in 2023 to permit the Lieutenant Governor to nominate up to two members of the Kashmiri migrant community to the J&K Legislative Assembly, with one needed to be a woman.
Again, welcome.
But after a community was removed almost entirely from its homeland, are two nominated voices the final political imagination India can produce for it?
And finally comes the most uncomfortable word of all:
Justice.
There has lately been movement here too, and it must be recognised. The State Investigation Agency has reopened several decades-old cases involving killings of Kashmiri Pandits. In June this year, it filed a chargesheet in the 1990 killing of nurse Sarla Bhat. In August, the investigation into the Wandhama massacre – in which 23 Kashmiri Pandits were killed – was reopened, alongside other old cases.
These are important steps.
But they also raise an agonising question: why did justice require three and a half decades to rediscover the files?
The BJP cannot be blamed for crimes committed before it came to power, nor for every failure of every government since 1990. That would be dishonest.
But after twelve years in power at the Centre, it can certainly be asked what it has done with the political trust it inherited from a community that expected more from it than from almost anyone else.
Kashmiri Pandits do not need another leader to tell them that their exodus was tragic.
They know.
They lived it.
They do not need another January 19 tweet. They do not need another seminar on their suffering. They do not need another politician discovering their pain when elections approach.
They need numbers.
Families returned.
Homes restored.
Total land under occupation.
Land recovered.
Land still under occupation.
Revenue officials convicted for fraud.
Cases prosecuted.
Killers convicted.
Temples protected.
Jobs delivered.
Security guaranteed.
Political voice restored.
Put these figures on one sheet.
That sheet should become BJP’s Kashmiri Pandit report card.
Because after thirty-six years of displacement and more than twelve years of BJP rule at the Centre, asking Kashmiri Pandits to remain satisfied with sympathy would itself be an injustice.
Dear BJP, we have heard what you feel for Kashmiri Pandits. Thank you. But now show us what you have delivered.
KASHMIRI PANDITS & BJP, 2014–2026: SOLD AND USED!
| Period | What BJP put before the country | What happened on the ground | Bitter Truth verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | BJP’s Lok Sabha manifesto promised the return of Kashmiri Pandits to their ancestral land with “full dignity, security and assured livelihood.” Its J&K vision document also promised an honourable resettlement and three Assembly seats for displaced Pandits. | The KP tragedy became one of the sharpest moral contrasts BJP drew with previous governments. | SOLD: Your pain became our promise. |
| 2015 onward | Modi government announced 3,000 additional jobs and 6,000 transit accommodations, adding to the earlier 3,000-job package. | There has been real delivery: by March 2026, appointment orders had been issued to 5,896 of the 6,000 earmarked posts. But only 4,112 of 6,000 transit units had been constructed, more than a decade after the 2015 announcement. | PARTLY DELIVERED: Jobs became the substitute for a comprehensive return policy. |
| 2019 | BJP again promised the safe return of Kashmiri Pandits, alongside abrogating Articles 370 and 35A. | Article 370 was removed. But when the Centre later described “return”, it cited migrant candidates going back to Kashmir to take government jobs – including 520 after the abrogation. | USED: An employee reporting for duty began to look statistically like a refugee returning home. |
| 2019–21 | Post-370 politics repeatedly suggested that a historic obstacle to Pandit return had been removed. | Yet the core question remained unanswered: how many displaced families independently returned to ancestral neighbourhoods, rebuilt homes and resumed permanent civilian life? Government rehabilitation statistics have often centred on employment and accommodation. | REFRAMED: Return increasingly meant employment-led relocation, not restoration of a dispersed civilisation. |
| 2021–26 | Government created mechanisms to address illegally occupied migrant property. | This deserves credit: J&K’s 2025–26 Economic Survey says 3,408 kanals and 16 marlas of migrant land had been retrieved. | DELIVERED – BUT ASK FOR THE DENOMINATOR: How much remains occupied, disputed or trapped in revenue litigation? |
| March 2022 | BJP threw enormous political weight behind The Kashmir Files. Modi defended the film’s telling of the suppressed history; at least six BJP-ruled states made it tax-free. | The suffering of Kashmiri Pandits suddenly became a mass national conversation – in cinemas, political meetings and television studios. | SOLD NATIONALLY: For a few weeks, India was asked to watch the Kashmiri Pandit’s pain. |
| May–Dec 2022 | After targeted killings, Pandit employees said they feared for their lives and demanded temporary relocation outside the Valley. | The administration refused the wider relocation demand. Salaries of some protesting employees were stopped, and LG Manoj Sinha publicly said employees continuing to “sit at home” would not receive salaries. BJP leaders themselves opposed transferring the employees to Jammu, advocating safer postings within Kashmir instead. | THE CRUEL CONTRADICTION: Their suffering was powerful enough for the cinema screen, but their fear was not enough to let them leave their posting. |
| 2014 → 2023 | BJP’s 2014 J&K document promised three reserved Assembly seats for displaced Kashmiris. | Parliament eventually provided for the LG to nominate up to two Kashmiri migrant members, one of whom must be a woman. They are nominated, not three reserved elected seats. | DILUTED: Three promised reserved seats became up to two nominated voices. |
| 2024 election | BJP again promised “safe ghar wapsi”, a new Tika Lal Taploo Visthapit Samaj Punarvas Yojana, an inquiry commission and action on transfer/promotion grievances of PM Package employees. | Ten years after the original 2014 promise of return with dignity and security, ghar wapsi was again an election promise. | REPACKAGED: 2014: return. 2019: safe return. 2024: ghar wapsi. How many elections does a homecoming require? |
| 2026 | BJP and the government can legitimately point to jobs, housing, recovered property and renewed investigation of old killings. SIA has recently reopened several KP killing cases, including Wandhama; the Sarla Bhat case produced a chargesheet in June 2026. | At virtually the same moment, PM Package employees were again asking the government for protection after purported threat letters circulated containing names, home addresses and vehicle details. |
BJP did not ignore the Kashmiri Pandit. It did something politically far more useful – it made him nationally visible. It made his exodus an argument, his suffering a symbol, his return a manifesto promise and his trauma a political indictment of its opponents. And when BJP needed to explain what was wrong with Kashmir, it showed India the Kashmiri Pandit. When it needed to justify Article 370’s removal, it remembered the Kashmiri Pandit. When The Kashmir Files arrived, it asked the whole country to watch the Kashmiri Pandit. But when the Kashmiri Pandit asked, “When do I actually go home?” – the answer returned to packages, transit flats, committees and another manifesto.
