Presentation | South Asia Center Graduate Student Research Grant Awardee

Her research examines Kashmiri 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 India, many who stayed behind left their ancestral village homes, which had become sites of intense militarized violence. Although members of other communities made similar decisions, this project centers the Kashmiri Pandit experience to challenge homogenizing—and often religiously coded—understandings of displacement in Kashmir, perspectives that are frequently reinforced by state-scripted narratives to delegitimize the Kashmiri Musim movement for freedom from India. 

The project explores how Kashmiri Pandits who remained in Kashmir navigate questions of belonging and return to a homeland they never physically left. It traces how people build and sustain notions of home under conditions of displacement, militarized occupation, and settler colonialism. By examining everyday negotiations of home and belonging, the research reveals broader politics of recognition and displacement. This intervention contributes to Critical Displacement Studies and Critical Kashmir Studies by challenging victimhood narratives that leverage frameworks of "Pandit suffering" to reinforce India's authoritarian control. 

Vatya Raina is a Ph.D. student in anthropology at Syracuse University, researching displacement and resettlement. Before coming to Syracuse, Vatya earned a master's degree in women's studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India. She also earned a B.A. in Spanish from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.