“I think the return of Kashmiri Pandits is being instrumentalized to justify a settler-colonial project in Kashmir,” Mona Bhan, an associate professor of South Asian Studies at Syracuse University in New York, said.

Bhan told Middle East Eye that there remains a deep anxiety among Kashmiri Pandits that their pain is being weaponised to further the goals of the BJP-led government. She says the event on Saturday seemed to be an attempt to allay those fears.