Kashmiri Pandits
Original Kashmiri Pandit refers to a person who belongs to a sect of Hindu Pandits who originate from the Kashmir region. We have a recorded history in Kashmir for thousands of years and have also been mentioned in the Mahabharata. Kashmiri Pandits have features like most high caste Indians. Many experts speculate that the Aryans originated in Kashmir.
During the Islamic period of the Kashmir valley, hundreds of temples in Kashmir were destroyed. As a result, Kashmiri Pandits gradually migrated to other parts of India to escape persecution, which resulted in Kashmir becoming predominantly Muslim. The devastation wrought by the Turkish general from Turkmenistan Zulju in 1320, during his conquest of many regions of Kashmir Valley was especially unfortunate. This could have a been a reaction to Lalitaditya's earlier conquest of Turkmenistan. Sultan Sikander (1389-1413), the seventh Muslim ruler in Kashmir, is known for his oppression of non-Muslim populations in his drive to establish Shariah-based rule, which caused many Kashmiri Pandits to leave the Kashmir valley. Historians call him an idol-breaker (or iconoclast) and he is said to have killed several thousand Kashmiri Pandits and forced them to convert to Islam or flee. Sultan Ali Shah and others followed suit. There have been few Muslim rulers who were tolerant towards the Pandits; however they were not able to ultimately alleviate the plight of the Pandits. This can be ascertained from the fact that the Pandits never rose to their pre-Islamic glory and that their population in the valley continued to decrease over time. It must be pointed out that no where in the history of Kashmir is there any mention of link to the caucasions.
British historians, such as Walter Lawrence, note that persecution of Kashmiri Hindus by zealous Muslim rulers resulted in as little as eleven original Kashmiri Hindu families remaining in Kashmir at one point. Walter Lawrence mentions that: More recently (1990), hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits had to flee the Kashmir valley because of being targeted by Kashmiri and foreign militants. As per the statement of US Congressman Joe Wilson, beginning in 1989, mosques in Kashmir declared jihad and blared warnings from loudspeakers to the Hindus that they were infidels and had to leave Kashmir. He further says that "From 1989-1990, Islamists began a terror campaign to drive Hindus from Kashmir. Some people have noted that some Kashmiri Muslims were tolerant of minorities, but since partition, most Kashmiri Muslims have adopted a more conservative approach to Islam, and since 1989, a more militant and fundamentalist approach. By the turn of the last century, only 6.4% of Kashmiris were Hindus. According to the Indian National Human Rights Commission, the Kashmiri Pandit population in Jammu and Kashmir dropped from 15 percent in 1941 to 0.1 percent as of 2006. This claim is however contradicted by official census reports. According to the 1901 census, "In the Kashmir province they [Hindus] represent only 524 in every 10,000 of population [or 5.24%]..." while the 1941 census estimated the Hindu population of the Kashmir valley to be 4%.
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