Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part N (2025)

The exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley in 1990 is considered as one of the most painful and least explored episodes of internal displacement in modern India. Forced to leave their homes by violence and intimidation, thousands of families became refugees within the borders of their own nation. Their displacement raises a haunting question: how do citizens become homeless in a democratic state that constitutionally promises to protect them? This paper examines this paradox through the narratives of Kashmiri Pandits that transform displacement into testimony and resistance. The forced displacement created a condition of internal exile marked by loss of home, identity, and culture. For the Kashmiri Pandits, home is simultaneously near yet unreachable. Their citizenship offers legal recognition to them, but it fails to ensure emotional or territorial belonging. Memoirs and novels by authors such as Rahul Pandita, Siddhartha Gigoo, T. N. Dhar, and Rohit Tikoo bear testimony to the ways in which memory becomes the only homeland left to inhabit. Using insights from postcolonial and trauma theory, the paper argues that the Kashmiri Pandit narratives reveal the contradictions of Indian democracy, where inclusion and exclusion operate simultaneously. The unhomely nation is not just a metaphor for exile; it is a lived experience that poses fundamental questions about national belonging and unsettles dominant ideas of secularism.