For 11 years, about 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits have suffered in sub-human conditions in "migrant camps" after being driven out by Islamic terrorists. Despite their protests at every level during these eleven years, the Indian government has no place for them at negotiations for the future of Jammu and Kashmir. There is a real danger that the exile of Pandits may become permanent, especially if "plans" being offered by Islamic organizations are accepted. Everyone in the Kashmir valley knows that no Pandit will be safe if the region is handed over to Pakistan. A handful of Pandits continue to live in the valley, mainly under the protection of Indian security forces. Pandits have been targeted wherever they were not under protection, so it is simple to conclude that they would have be under clear and imminent danger under any scenario where part of Kashmir becomes "independent" or is absorbed by Pakistan.

Thus it is imperative and urgent that any negotiations for the future of a peaceful Jammu and Kashmir, Kashmiri Pandits have their rightful place at the table. Any decision on the future of the region needs to take into account the Pandit perspective, which has no use for Islamic fundamentalism and intolerance that has been regularly exported from Pakistan and has now become part and parcel of the fabric of the state. A recent example was the revelations of the harassment and repression against non-Muslim students in Srinagar Regional Engineering College. These students have been regularly intimidated, oppressed, and held back from completing their courses by the Muslim students in the college. Almost the entire non-Muslim student population, about 200, fled to New Delhi to report the dangerous and stifling environment.

Keeping in mind a 50 year-long history of oppression and a decade-long history of massacres of minorities in the state, Kashmiri Pandits have no reason to believe that anything will change for them to be able to return to their ancestral homeland, unless they are included as an integral part of negotiations for a peaceful end to the separatist violence in the state. Negotiations that involve murderous terrorists and their supporters, while excluding the peaceful original community, will result in the further strengthening of the Islamic fundamentalist card in the state. Furthermore, it gives the wrong message to anyone with a grievance: to make yourself heard pick up the AK-47 and the grenade and don't bother with peaceful, democratic means.