Never Forget, Never Forgive, Never Again
14/10/2026
By Kuldeep Raina
A Note on the Global Jihad, the Genocide of Kashmiri Pandits, and the Lessons for Our Future :
I. The Genocide of 1990
The Kashmiri Pandits , the original inhabitants of the Kashmir Valley, with a civilizational presence stretching back thousands of years, were driven out of their homeland in 1990. It began with the targeted killings of prominent community members, hit lists pasted on doors, and threatening slogans blared from mosques. Within months, nearly the entire community. Lakhs of people fled the Valley, abandoning homes, temples, orchards, land, and the Shumshan Ghat ( Cremation grounds ) of their ancestors. This was not a "migration." It was an exodus forced at gunpoint by Pakistan-backed terrorist
outfits , overtly and covertly supported by the local populace. A genocide in intent and effect: the destruction of a community's existence in its own homeland.
II. The Anatomy of Complicity
The militants pulled the trigger, but terror requires an ecosystem and that ecosystem existed. Our lived experience records it plainly: neighbours who turned overnight; those who watched the threats unfold and remained silent; those who harboured the gunmen; and those who recast killers as "freedom fighters," then wept over them as martyrs and thronged their funerals. A minority cannot be cleansed from a land without the active participation of some and the silent acquiescence of many. The crimes were heinous; the silence was deafening. Neither can be forgotten, and neither can be forgiven. For forgiveness without truth and justice is only amnesia by another name.
III. The Global Face of the Same Jihad
What befell us was not an isolated local tragedy. It was one chapter of a global campaign of religious supremacism. The Wahhabi-inspired doctrine that rejects coexistence, brands non-believers as kafirs, and wages jihad across the globe. We saw its face in the Valley in 1990; the world saw it again when ISIS butchered and enslaved the Yazidis of Iraq. Their women were taken as slaves, tortured, persecuted, and killed. Exactly as our women were threatened and our families tormented. Sustained by a hostile neighbourhood and its proxies, this ideology has a single goal: the erasure of pluralism.
IV. The Betrayal of Hollow Secularism
We were betrayed a second time by the empty slogans of "Nehruvian secularism" and the myth of Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, preached by self-styled leaders with ulterior motives. How can a micro-minority survive in a hostile environment on the strength of slogans alone? Those who ask us to forget, to reconcile without justice, to return without guarantees, ask us to dig our own graves a second time. Memory is not hatred; it is self-preservation.
V. The Danger Is Not Past
The threat did not end in the 1990s. Even today, our properties face encroachment and distress sales; genuine owners find their claims obstructed, their land deliberately undervalued, their return quietly resisted. Political formations that once sheltered and mainstreamed separatism are regrouping under new banners. The lesson of 1990 is that vigilance can never end.
VI. Lessons for Future Generations
1. Preserve the memory as sacred inheritance. Document every name, date, and testimony. Teach our children what was done to us and why until it becomes an indelible, archaic fact of our painful history.
2. Never permit distortion. Call the exodus what it was. A genocide, an ethnic cleansing not a migration, not a law-and-order problem.
3. Unity is survival. A scattered community must speak with one voice. Division is the first step toward a second exodus.
4. Justice before reconciliation. Return must mean return with dignity, security, political empowerment, constitutional guarantees and Homeland with union territory status not the dispersal into vulnerability.
5. Keep the Panun Kashmir movement of Homeland struggle alive. The demand for a homeland where we can live with honour and safety must be carried forward.
VII. Measures
Let us build a dedicated, documented archive of the genocide of every killing, every desecrated temple, every grabbed property. Keep them preserved for courts, classrooms, and history.
Pursue legal restoration of Pandit properties and prosecution of encroachers.
Demand political representation that cannot be ignored or reduced to tokenism.
Carry the Kashmiri Pandit genocide into global consciousness, alongside the world's recognized genocides.
Educate our youth in our history, culture, and rights so that "Never Again" is a preparedness, not merely a slogan.
Never Forget. Never Forgive. Never Again.
Note : Till we achieve the above-mentioned tasks the following measures for survival are of urgent requirement. These are the survival demands submitted by PANUN KASHMIR to the Hon'ble Prime Minister of India.
Panun Kashmir's memorandum to Hon'ble Prime Minister
Key Demands
Formal recognition of the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits.
Enactment of Panun Kashmir Genocide & Atrocities Bill 2020.
Enhancement of monthly relief to ₹25,000 per registered relief-holder family, with retrospective effect.
Creation of 15,000 Central Government jobs for unemployed Kashmiri Pandit youths.
Payment of all pending ex-gratia for houses and properties destroyed/burnt.
Comprehensive protection and restoration of Kashmiri Pandit properties.
Immediate relocation of all PM Package employees.
Creation of an authoritative, continuously updated Kashmiri Pandit database, with distinct enumeration.
Replacement of the Relief Commissioner’s Office with an autonomous Kashmiri Pandit Welfare Board.*
Jai Bharat Jai Panun Kashmir
(The writer is General Secretary of Panun Kashmir)
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