New Delhi, Jan 18 : Thirty-five years is a long time in the life of a nation. It is long enough for governments to change, for narratives to be rewritten, and for uncomfortable truths to be buried under layers of convenient silence. But for a community driven out of its homeland solely because it was Hindu, time has not softened the pain - it has only deepened the wound.

Three-and-a-half decades after the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits, the questions remain unanswered. Not because the answers are unknown, everyone in Kashmir knows them, but because the hush around them is deliberate and the cover-up systemic.

Nearly seven lakh people were forced out of their native land in a short span, and conditions were created so decisively that their return was rendered impossible. This was not an accident of history; it was the outcome of a slow, calculated process that began soon after Jammu and Kashmirâ??s accession to India in 1947 and gathered brutal momentum in the late 1980s.

At the heart of this design was a simple, sinister objective: to overwhelm Kashmir demographically and ideologically, so that Muhammad Ali Jinnah's two-nation theory would come to fruition without a formal war. Pakistan lost every war it fought against India, but in Kashmir, it succeeded where armies failed. A Muslim-majority valley was achieved not by ballots or persuasion, but by terror -- by emptying the land of its Hindu inhabitants.

The Kashmiri Pandits, who constituted barely two per cent of the valley's population, were uniquely vulnerable. A non-martial community mostly into education, administration, and spiritual traditions, they neither possessed the means to retaliate with violence. Faced with targeted killings, public threats, and systematic intimidation, they chose survival with dignity over futile resistance against a terrible monster. In doing so, they were forced to abandon a civilisation that traced its roots back over 5,000 years.

The exodus did not occur overnight. It unfolded in waves of terror. First came those whose relatives were assassinated. Then those whose homes were marked for elimination. Those whose names were on the hit lists prepared in mosques and circulated openly. Finally, those who fled to protect their daughters and wives from what had become inevitable. This was not chaos -- it was orchestration.

And so, the question must be asked: where was the much-celebrated spirit of 'azadi' in this? If the movement was truly about freedom, why was its rage directed at a defenceless two per cent minority? Why were unarmed men, women, and children hunted down? The answer is stark and inescapable. The terrorism in Kashmir was not a liberation struggle; it was a campaign for religious homogenisation. Its success lay in making the valley nearly free of Hindus.

The reality of that success was visible in the refugee camps of Jammu and Delhi, where families accustomed to large ancestral homes were herded into tattered tents under 45-degree heat. Water, food, and medicine were scarce. Many died not by the gun, but from shock, disease, heatstroke, and snake bites.

Every year, January 19 is observed by the Kashmiri Pandit community as Exodus Day or Holocaust Day -- a day to remember the terror unleashed upon them and to mourn the denial of justice that followed. Hundreds were killed, homes looted and burned, women raped and murdered. Yet accountability remains absent. Barely a hundred cases were ever registered by the Jammu and Kashmir Police, and not a single investigation has reached a meaningful conclusion. No arrests, no convictions, no closure.

In these 35 years, many direct victims and eyewitnesses have passed away, taking crucial evidence with them. Successive governments -- both at the Centre and in the erstwhile state and now union territory -- have failed to institute even a commission of inquiry or a Special Investigation Team. Courts have remained unmoved. Human rights organisations, vocal on conflicts thousands of miles away, have found the suffering of Kashmiri Hindus insufficiently compelling. There has been a Gaza in Indiaâ??s backyard all this time, but it never made the right kind of headline.

Part of the tragedy lies in political expediency. The Kashmiri Pandit community is neither large enough nor influential enough to command electoral attention. Their pain does not translate into street protests or international pressure. And so, their suffering is quietly sidelined.

Adding to the misery of the Kashmiri Hindus is the political rehabilitation of those who were in positions of power when the persecution occurred. Valley-based Muslim leaders are today courted across the political spectrum, yet not one of them has acknowledged, let alone championed, the cause of the Kashmiri Hindus. The silence of the valleyâ??s leadership and intelligentsia -- at best complicit, at worst supportive of the separatist narrative -- has never been examined or questioned.

The bitter truth today is this: the original inhabitants of Kashmir live as refugees in their own country. Their homes have been usurped, their return systematically blocked, and their dignity deferred indefinitely.

January 19 is not merely a day of mourning for the Kashmiri Pandits. It is a day of national introspection. It marks not only the exodus of a people, but the collapse of Indiaâ??s moral courage and the selective application of its secular conscience. Until justice is served and truth acknowledged, the exodus will not remain history; it will continue as an indictment.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

/IANS