Author.
Researcher.
Keeper of a History
That Must Not Be Lost.
An independent chronicler of the Kashmiri Pandit exodus, committed to building a record that is accurate, contextualised, and durable enough to outlast the politics that have long obscured it.
The first time I sat with a Kashmiri Pandit who had left the valley in the winter of 1990, she did not begin with the date or the violence. She began with the smell of the kitchen in her mother's house in Srinagar, and how she has never been able to recreate it. That one detail, so small and so total, is where this work began.
I am Rohit Tikoo, an author and independent researcher. My work is focused on documenting the history, displacement, and lived experiences of the Kashmiri Pandit community. What started as a personal attempt to understand a defining chapter of my heritage has become a sustained effort to build a historical record that is accurate, contextualised, and made to last.
The 1990 exodus is not ancient history. Its consequences are present, its survivors are living, and its record is still being contested. That is precisely why this work cannot wait. Every year that passes without careful documentation is a year in which memory fades and contested narratives fill the space that facts should occupy.
History that is not documented with care risks distortion or erasure. The aim here is not advocacy, not provocation. It is preservation.On the purpose of this project
Why This Work Exists
The displacement of nearly four lakh Kashmiri Pandits in the winter of 1990 remains one of the most contested and least understood episodes in modern Indian history. In the decades since, public discussion has been fragmented, politically framed, and often reduced to slogans. What is missing, consistently, is a record built on chronology, evidence, and sustained attention.
This project exists to supply that record. Not to win an argument, not to assign blame in the currency of political convenience, but to document events as they unfolded, with the rigour that any significant historical episode deserves. A community's history, its grief, and its memory deserve more than the half-life of a news cycle. They deserve a record built to last.
There are silences in the public record that are not accidental. Filling them, carefully and responsibly, is the work this platform is devoted to.
Approach and Method
The writing here is guided by a research-first approach. Events are presented in chronological order and placed within their broader political and social context. Personal narratives are treated as primary historical testimony, not as rhetorical ornaments. Sources are distinguished from interpretations, and opinion is clearly labelled as such.
This site maintains a clear separation between three kinds of material, each serving a distinct purpose:
Chronological accounts drawn from verified sources, placed within their full political and social context. The factual foundation on which everything else rests.
Essays examining causes, consequences, and longer patterns. Opinion is marked as such and never blended quietly into the factual record.
Spaces dedicated to individual lives, testimonies, and the human texture of displacement. Facts and memory coexist here without being conflated.
This separation is not a formality. It is what allows a reader to trust the factual record and engage honestly with the interpretive writing, knowing the two are not being quietly merged. Rigour and memory are not in competition. Here, they are held together.
Background and Writing
Rohit Tikoo's work spans long-form essays, historical overviews, and book-length documentation. The focus throughout is on narrative preservation, displacement studies, and cultural memory, with particular attention to the events surrounding the Kashmiri Pandit exodus of 1990.
Rather than responding to every contemporary debate, this platform prioritises the durability of the record. The objective is to create material that remains relevant beyond the news cycle and the political shifts of any given season. History is not a current affairs column. It requires the patience to build a document that will still matter in twenty years.
What distinguishes this work is the combination of personal proximity and scholarly discipline. The subject is not abstract. But the method demands that proximity be held in check by evidence and care.
Shadows Over The Valley
The first book-length documentation of the Kashmir exodus of 1990, developed from years of sustained research, survivor testimony, and archival work. It is an account of displacement told through chronology and human detail, built to outlast the debates that have long surrounded the subject. A record, not a polemic.
Read More About the BookWhat This Website Offers
A structured chronological overview of the Kashmiri Pandit community, from their deep roots in the valley to the events surrounding the 1990 displacement.
Explore history →Interpretive writing grounded in evidence and chronology, examining the causes, consequences, and the longer arc of displacement and cultural memory.
Read essays →A dedicated space for individual lives, survivor testimonies, and the human texture of a community uprooted from the place it had called home for millennia.
Visit memorial →Book-length documentation of the 1990 exodus, built from years of sustained research and testimony. A record designed to outlast the debates surrounding it.
About the book →