On Uncertain Ground

A Study of Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir

Ankur Datta

There has been little ethnography published on Internally Displaced Persons. This text is a contribution to the field of forced migration and internal displacement studies.
The Kashmiri Pandit certainly occupies a difficult political location today; this work explores the social position of the displaced Pandits from camps to the larger city of Jammu and their relationship to nationalisms both Indian and Kashmiri, and the state.
This book looks at dispossession of those who do not come across as stereotypical victims. This book is a contribution to Kashmiri studies

On Uncertain Ground

A Study of Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir

Ankur Datta

Description

This book seeks to engage the reader in questioning how societies come to terms with dispossession, loss, and protracted displacement; in other words, what does it mean to be a refugee in one's own state? Since 1989, Jammu and Kashmir has been affected by conflict between the Indian state and an Independence movement. Among the many casualties of this conflict is the historically prominent Hindu Pandit minority of Kashmir who became displaced. Most of them fled Kashmir within the first year of the conflict, relocating to cities like Jammu and New Delhi. They are among the most prominent Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the region. This book moves across different sites, from camps to the larger city of Jammu, exploring how Pandits have remade lives since their displacement and their relationship to nationalisms-Indian and Kashmiri-and the state. Questions of nostalgia, status ,and victimhood shape these processes, which disables the displaced person to feel at home and recover their ordinary life. A perpetual tension lies between claims of victimhood that are both unique to and yet contend and compete with the universal narrative of violence faced by other societies.

On Uncertain Ground

A Study of Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir

Ankur Datta

List of Maps
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
1. In Place, Out of Place: An Introduction to the Kashmiri Pandits
2. Accounting for Displacement: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits
3. Living in a Place of Exception: The Politics of Place and Everyday Life in a Displaced Persons Camp in Jammu and Kashmir
4. Dealing with Dislocation: Making Home and Place in Jammu
5. Being a Kashmiri Pandit Migrant: Class and Religious Identity
6. Making a Claim on the Nation: The Politics of Victimhood and Marginality among Kashmiri Pandits
7. Rights, Claims and Community: The Kashmiri Pandits and the Relief and Rehabilitation Programme
8. Conclusion: Reflections
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

On Uncertain Ground

A Study of Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir

Ankur Datta

Author Information

Ankur Datta, Assistant Professor, South Asian University, New Delhi

Ankur Datta is Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University, New Delhi.

On Uncertain Ground

A Study of Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir

Ankur Datta

From Our Blog

To be a refugee in one's own country

If there is a figure that has truly come to define the Human condition over the last few years, it is the refugee. From the battlefields of Syria, to the water crossings from North Africa to Europe and the boats of Rohingyas escaping the Myanmarese state, to camps in Calais or Nauru, the refugee is not far from our sight. In popular and legal imaginations, the refugee is someone who has crossed an international border.

Posted on December 2, 2016

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