After spending 20 years in squalid camps in Jammu, the Kashmiri Pandits, who fled their native Kashmir valley to escape ethnic cleansing, will finally move into a new township. But they are not home yet.

Archana Masih reports from Jammu on the torment of the Pandits in exile, which remains one of contemporary India's worst tragedies.

T he tin doors run row by row, with names painted by hand, as if done by one of the family members themselves, a letter too small, another too big, a trickle of paint running down, a smudged fingerprint. Trying perhaps desperately to give the dignity of a home to the tiny, cramped, nine by 14 foot room allotted to each of them in a squalid camp settlement in Jammu.

The residents behind those doors, driven out of their homes 20 years ago, have lived in these slum-like quarters since their escape. They have witnessed marriages, births and deaths here; have seen their children graduate from schools and colleges; have lamented the loss of their motherland and life as they once knew it; and have brought up a new generation with no memory of that place in the Kashmir valley they once called Home.

For many Kashmiri Pandits this room is home now. There is hardly a door without a name.

In the sea of migrant tenements, the tiny doors bear their family names; while inside abound traumatic stories of a people who fled their ancestral homes in the dead of night, some with nothing but the clothes they wore, trying to save their lives and families when Islamic militants unleashed horrific terror on them in the mad months of 1990.

Long before Bosnia, there was Kashmir. The Kashmiri Brahmins, known as Pandits, who had lived in the Kashmir valley for centuries faced ethnic cleansing from Pakistan-supported militants to subvert the Indian State. Almost the entire Pandit population was forcefully expelled. Approximately 700,000 remain in exile since.

In Jammu city, the displaced Pandits live largely spread between four migrant camps, from where, finally, after 20 years, they will move from these unhygienic, pigeonhole rooms to apartments in a Pandit township called Jagti on the outskirts of Jammu that was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month.

Mr and Mrs Ravinder Raina; Mrs Babli Bhatt, a widow; Vinod Dhar, whose entire family was massacred in his village home, the ageing Mr and Mrs Triloknath Below; an ailing Mr Beharilal Kheda are among those who received allotment letters from Dr Singh.

They will move into their new two-room homes by the end of April.

But the hopes of another new beginning remain clouded with apprehension, as the Kashmiri Pandits continue to confront the trauma of a painful collective past.