Illegible Victims: Bureaucratic Blindness and the Marginalization of Non-migrant Kashmiri Pandits in Post-conflict Kashmir

Abstract

The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in the early 1990s has been a dominant theme in both policy and scholarship, often foregrounding the experiences of those who fled the Kashmir Valley. However, a small segment of the community—non-migrant Pandits—chose to remain. This article interrogates how state interventions, shaped around displacement-centric logics, have inadvertently marginalized this group. By drawing on James Scott’s theory of legibility, Robert Putnam’s concept of social capital and Oliver Richmond’s peace formation theory, the study examines how relief policies—such as the Special Package (1996), Prime Minister’s Reconstruction Programme (2004) and Comprehensive Package (2008, 2015)—have excluded non-migrants from both aid and recognition. Using a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative interviews, surveys (n = 120) and policy analysis, the study reveals how bureaucratic frameworks erase complexity, treating ‘non-migrants’ as conceptually invisible. It also highlights secondary marginalization, cultural erosion and legal vulnerability, including for women. The findings call for the policy reform that recognizes the distinct experience of non-migrants, positioning them not as a negation of migration but as resilient citizens whose presence complicates dominant state narratives of victimhood and recovery.