Conflicts always have a grave impact on the people who suffer them. When we study the history of India, we see the impact that partition of India and Pakistan had had on the common people. There is a deep need of telling the tale of the sufferings, an intense urge to open the windows of memory and express all that have been suppressed for political reasons.
Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict mainly between India and Pakistan which started just after the Partition of India in 1947. In 1987, a disputed state election became a catalyst for insurgency when it resulted in some of state's legislative assembly members forming armed insurgent groups. In July 1988 a series of demonstrations, and strikes began against the Indian Government signalling the initiation of the Kashmir insurgency. January 1990 saw the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits (a minority Hindu community living in the majority Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir) from the valley symbolising the intensity of fissures in the conflict-ridden state.
The year 2020 marks 30 years of the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits but their atrocities have not found much voice or representation in the country. The 'not yet remembered' history of Kashmiri pandits found some consolation when In April 2015 the then home minister of ruling party unveiled a plan to settle millions of exiled Kashmiri pandits in their homeland but the plan seems to be a mere political agenda as even after five years the resettlement plan has not been executed.
As Halbwachs argues that individuals do not remember in a vacuum. They rely on other human agencies within the specific group in which they are situated, and they draw on that context to remember or recreate the past, therefore there is an organised character to collective memory in the sense that it is defined by social interaction. Halbwachs has termed this socially organized construction of collective memory as the 'frameworks of collective memory'. On the other hand, Jan Assman distinguished collective memory into a communitive memory which is a memory that is transmitted by individuals in a social role, and cultural memory which is memory that a group constructs for them through a set of external reminders.
In case of Kashmiri pandits both 'framework of collective memory' and 'communitive memory' seems to fade away due to the uprooting of a community which was peacefully living in their homes. Their younger generations who have never seen the homeland, do not know much about the Kashmiri identity (Kashmiriyat) which used to be an essence of the land called Kashmir.
This paper attempts to proceed inductively how memory is shaping the identities of people who have suffered some kind of conflicted situation or terrorism in their lives. It will try to negotiate the ways in which 'collective memories' are formed and subsequently build up the 'collective identity'.
