Our Moon has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmi

"This powerful and moving book throws a sharp new light onto one of the most tragic conflicts in the modern world. As a young boy, Rahul Pandita was exiled from his native Kashmir. Now, twenty years later, he returns to the prelude and aftermath of his exile, narrating his family's tortuous journeys with great sensitivity and skill. Every paragraph of this compelling memoir rings deeply true." -- Ramachandra Guha The story of the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandit community from Kashmir in the 1990s, told for the first time. Memoir and history at its best. Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old in 1990 when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family, who were Kashmiri Pandits: the Hindu minority within a Muslim- majority Kashmir that was becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of Azadi from India. The heartbreaking story of Kashmir has so far been told through the prism of the brutality of the Indian state, and the pro-independence demands of separatists. But there is another part of the story that has remained unrecorded and buried. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the unspoken chapter in the story of Kashmir, in which it was purged of the Kashmiri Pandit community in a violent ethnic cleansing backed by Islamist militants. Hundreds of people were tortured and killed, and about 3,50,000 Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes and spend the rest of their lives in exile in their own country. Rahul Pandita has written a deeply personal, powerful and unforgettable story of history, home and loss.