This event is a two-part presentation by Moynihan gran t awardees.
The Moynihan Institute’s South Asia Center (SAC) is proud to host presentations by two recent recipients of the of SAC Graduate Student Awards about their research. These awards support exceptional graduate st udents working on South Asia.
“Kashmiri Pandit Homes and the Politics of Displacement in Srinagar”
Her research examines Kashm iri Pandits\, a Hindu Brahmin community who remained in Kashmir during and after the 1990s Tehreek (movement for self-determination and freedom from India). While most members of the community migrated to cities across Ind ia\, many who stayed behind left their ancestral village homes\, which had become sites of intense militarized violence. Although members of other c ommunities made similar decisions\, this project centers the Kashmiri Pand it experience to challenge homogenizing—and often religiously coded—unders tandings of displacement in Kashmir\, perspectives that are frequently rei nforced by state-scripted narratives to delegitimize the Kashmiri Musim mo vement for freedom from India. \;
The project explores how Kashmiri Pandits who remained in Kashmir navig ate questions of belonging and return to a homeland they never physically left. It traces how people build and sustain notions of home under conditi ons of displacement\, militarized occupation\, and settler colonialism. By examining everyday negotiations of home and belonging\, the research reve als broader politics of recognition and displacement. This intervention co ntributes to Critical Displacement Studies and Critical Kashmir Studies by challenging victimhood narratives that leverage frameworks of "Pandit suf fering" to reinforce India's authoritarian control. \;
Vatya Raina is a Ph.D
. student in anthropology at Syracuse University\, researching displacemen
t and resettlement. Before coming to Syracuse\, Vatya earned a master's de
gree in women's studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumb
ai\, India. She also earned a B.A. in Spanish from Jawaharlal Nehru Univer
sity in New Delhi\, India. \;