Source: www.thenational.ae
TULLA MULLA, KASHMIR, June 19, 2010: Two decades after fleeing Kashmir, thousands of brahmin Hindus, known as pandits, returned to their ancestral homeland yesterday to pray at a sacred shrine, the biggest congregation of pandits since their exodus. Amid tight security, around 100,000 Pandits came from across India to gather in Tulla Mulla, 17 miles east of Srinagar, at the historic Khirbhawani temple to seek blessings from the goddess Ragnya Devi.
“I did not want to go back to India. I want to die here,” said Ishri Bhatt, 65, a widow who fled the Muslim-majority valley in 1989 along with an estimated 200,000 Pandits when a insurgency against Indian rule broke out.
An estimated 4,000 families have moved back to the territory, split between India and Pakistan but claimed by both in its entirety, since 2004 when relations between the nuclear-armed rivals began to thaw. The intensity of militant violence in Kashmir has also decreased since then.