Rishank Kaul

Author
A tourist in his own history. Until he wasn’t. 📖
Indian Historical Fiction (Kashmiri Pandits) | Coming Sept 2026

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

📢I've written a book.
Historical fiction about Kashmiri Pandits, coming September 2026.
The story of how it came to be is here--and if it resonates, there's a newsletter to follow the journey to launch:
https://t.co/012lslC9nT

[Halley @halleyji]

"Hang Yasin Malik": Sarla Bhat's Cousin Recalls Horror, Slams Political Outreach

Chargesheet names Yasin Malik mastermind in 1990 Sarla Bhat killing by JKLF terrorists.

"Things did not end with Sarla's killing,” he said, "The horror continued even after her death."

"When her last rites were performed, about 200 young men stormed the cremation ground. They desecrated her ashes - trampled them under their feet - and taunted, 'You're still here?'"

"We had to beg to collect at least a fistful of ashes. Somehow, we gathered a fistful. That same night, they bombed her house too. After that, we had no choice. We fled Kashmir."

https://t.co/Js9QZKPcd5

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

@anujg Kashmiri pandits are stereotyped as weak and cowardly and shamed/pitied for not “fighting back”.

It’s victim blaming and it hurts every time. Thanks for sharing your anecdote. 🙏

[Arshia Malik @arshiaunis]

As an Indian woman from Muslim heritage, I write this rebuttal with the clarity and directness that comes from living the reality @Ilhan only tweets about from afar. Ilhan Omar’s claim that India has reached the “eighth stage of genocide” against Muslims is not analysis. It is reckless, fact-free propaganda that insults every one of us who actually live here, work here, raise families here, and exercise our rights every single day.

If there were even the beginning of genocide, our population would not have exploded. In 1951, Muslims were about 9.8% of India. By 2011, we were 14.2%. Today we are estimated around 14.5–15%, heading toward 18% by 2050 according to Pew projections. From roughly 35 million in 1951 to over 200 million now. Absolute numbers have multiplied nearly six-fold while the country’s overall population grew far slower in percentage terms. Genocide does not produce the world’s largest Muslim-minority population that keeps growing faster than the national average for decades. It produces mass graves and fleeing refugees. We have neither.

We vote in every election in the world’s largest democracy. We contest seats, win them, become MPs, ministers, judges, IAS officers, doctors, engineers, and business leaders. Three Presidents of India have been Muslim. We serve in the armed forces and police. We own businesses, run hospitals, produce films, and dominate segments of entertainment and sports. This is not the signature of a community facing extermination.

We are thriving and prospering — with real data and real lives. Yes, like every large community, we have internal challenges — lower average literacy and educational enrollment in some metrics, pockets of poverty, and the need for better skilling. But the narrative of uniform victimhood is a lie told by people who have never walked through a Muslim-dominated area in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, or Kerala and seen the middle class, the professionals, the entrepreneurs, and the young women studying medicine and engineering.

Prominent Indian Muslims — from business (Wipro’s Azim Premji built one of India’s largest companies), to cinema (generations of stars and directors), to sports, academia, and medicine — show what is possible when talent meets opportunity in a free society. Millions of ordinary Muslim families have moved from villages to cities, from informal work to formal jobs, from one generation of limited schooling to the next pursuing professional degrees. That is prosperity in motion, not persecution.

We enjoy specific rights and accommodations that Hindus as a group do not. This is the part Omar and her echo chamber never mention. Indian Muslims operate under a parallel personal law system for marriage, divorce, inheritance, and maintenance rooted in Sharia. Hindus do not.
After independence, Hindu personal law was comprehensively reformed and codified into a uniform framework (Hindu Marriage Act, Hindu Succession Act, etc.). Muslims retained the right to follow their own religious laws — including provisions for polygamy (up to four wives) and differential inheritance rules that the Hindu majority surrendered decades ago.

We also have constitutional minority protections under Articles 29 and 30 that allow us to establish and administer our own educational institutions with significant autonomy — rights the Hindu majority does not claim as a group because it is not classified as a minority. The Waqf Act gives Muslim institutions unique control over vast religious and charitable properties in a manner unparalleled for any other community.
In short: the Indian state has gone out of its way, through personal laws and minority safeguards, to preserve and accommodate Muslim religious and cultural identity in ways it has not extended equivalently to the Hindu majority. These are not “equal rights” in every narrow sense — they are deliberate accommodations that give us more space to live according to our traditions than the majority community receives under the same Constitution.

As a woman from Muslim heritage in India, I have the full protection of the Indian Constitution plus the framework of personal law. The criminalization of instant triple talaq in 2019 removed a specific vulnerability that existed under uncodified practice. I can study, work, vote, travel, criticize the government, wear what I choose (or not), and practice my faith openly — all while living in a country where my community’s population share has steadily risen for 75 years.

@Ilhan Omar’s “eighth stage of genocide” rhetoric is not solidarity. It is the lazy export of American culture-war talking points onto a country and a people she does not understand. It erases the agency of 200+ million Indian Muslims who are neither cowering nor waiting for rescue from Washington. It cheapens the word “genocide” while real atrocities happen elsewhere.
Stop peddling foreign fantasies about our lives. We are here. We are visible. We are voting. We are building. And we reject your narrative with the facts of our own existence. That is the view from inside — not from a podium in the United States.

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

@UttamYadav_10 अर्जुन का रन के लिए दौड़ना उनका कर्तव्य है और बल्लेबाज़ का आंकलन करके इनकार करना भी स्वाभाविक है क्योंकि अर्जुन आख़िर एक गेंदबाज़ ही है ऑल राउंडर नहीं।
मेरे अनुसार अर्जुन को भी इस बात का कोई खेद नहीं होगा ।

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

Singing the unabridged Vande Mataram every day has been an act of ‘ideological’ defiance by the Sangh. It was their silent way of disagreeing with the Nehruvian view of India. Hence Vijay’s standing by despite his ‘ideological’ opposition to the BJP/Sangh is notable.

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

Why do I call it a ‘war won’?
Just look at the two political leaders on the stage, Vijay and Rahul Gandhi.
Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party decided to continue with the abridged version for an independent India.
Vijay considers BJP an ‘ideological’ foe, and stood by (albeit grimly).

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

To anybody who’s read about the history of Vande Mataram being abridged before India’s independence and remaining so for 78 years post independence: this feels like a war won with no shots fired. 🔥

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

And the fact that the only controversy this has generated in a non-Hindutvavadi Tamil Nadu has nothing to do with the extra 4 stanzas but the order of precedence of the 3 official songs, proving the irrelevance of the historical objections towards stanzas 3-6 in today’s India.

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

To anybody who’s read about the history of Vande Mataram being abridged before India’s independence and remaining so for 78 years post independence: this feels like a war won with no shots fired. 🔥

[NDTV @ndtv]

#WATCH | Tamil Nadu Swearing-In Ceremony | Vande Mataram sung in full, followed by National Anthem and state song at Vijay's oath-taking ceremony

#vijay

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

And the fact that a BJP union govt waited 12 years to get this done reveals much about their deep patience, because at the RSS, they never stopped singing the unabridged version for a single day. You can notice the governor (an RSS man) singing every word along.

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

@drsunita02 The car driver, on account of commanding a more dangerous vehicle, is also partially responsible if a situation like this results in a mishap.
It’s ideal to check and wait if anybody is in the blind spot before taking the turn decisively.

[Geetu Moza @Geetu_Moza]

I am a Kashmiri Pandit migrant who was forced to leave Kashmir in 1990, enduring the same pain and displacement as thousands of others. However, I have been denied a migration certificate due to a technicality……my husband’s family was posted in Jammu at that time and did not register as migrants, believing others were more in need.

Despite my lived reality as a migrant, I am being excluded from rightful recognition. I have made multiple attempts with the concerned authorities, but am informed that such cases are pending.

Today, I seek your intervention not for myself, but for my daughter. A migration certificate would significantly support her educational opportunities.

This is a humble request for justice and consideration.

@manojsinha_
@PMOIndia @OfficeOfLGJandK
@BJP4JnK @kpnewschannel

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

"It is incredible how much mass slaughter one can get away with when you have the protective cover of the intellectual class."

This is the most important line about Bengal from another post by @IndiaSpeaksPR. As @jsaideepak documents below, after the 2021 election, BJP voters and even some CPM voters were murdered or raped, and the "intellectual media" looked the other way because they wanted to "save" Bengal from a party they disliked. That was it.

Bengal was a heroic win for the BJP, paid for with blood. I cannot imagine the sacrifices made.

My salute to the brave warriors who fought hard to get here🙏

[Sai Deepak J @jsaideepak]

1. Just got off a call with @UnSubtleDesi. I couldn't be happier for her and both of us couldn't help but discuss the harrowing days of post poll violence in West Bengal in 2021. So I am going to share what happened five years ago just so ppl know what happened. #WestBengal2026.

[Vijay Raina @vijayraina71]

🌟 Proud Moment for the Community 🌟

Heartiest congratulations to Ridhima Bhat on her outstanding achievement of securing 490/500 marks (98%) in the Class 10th Board Examination. 🎉

Daughter of Sh. Hera Lal Bhat and Smt. Sony Kumari Bhat, Ridhima has brought immense pride to her family and the entire community with her hard work, dedication, and excellence.

Originally hailing from Fatehpora, Anantnag (Kashmir) and presently residing in Jagti, her success stands as an inspiration for all young students.

May she continue to achieve greater heights in life.
Wishing her a bright and successful future ahead. 🌸

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

I think fleeing from your ancestral homeland of centuries, leaving everything behind, driven out by a campaign that has no personal animus with you apart from your religion, and explicitly offers you the option to convert repeatedly, is more than the mere application of prudence. To me, it’s choosing to fight.

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

Samay Raina’s referencing of a serious personal incident (his recent run-in with the law) in a wildly successful comedy show (‘Still alive’) reflects how much his massive audience has grown to care about him as a performer, an entertainer and as a person.

However, while I haven’t watched the show, from the snippets, I feel he drew a weak parallel between his personal incident (the legal case against him) and the collective experience of ethnic cleansing that the community we both belong to went through. This has generated some controversy.

Although, he has more than earned the right to choose his lines in front of an audience that loves him, it wasn’t as simplistic as being ‘wise in withdrawing from an unfair fight’ which he praised as ‘Kashmiri pandit wisdom’. Some unfair fights are worth fighting. To be clear, the fight for survival we were all forced into as KPs wasn’t fair either but we fought it without a doubt in our heads.
Just imagine, we could have all mass converted to Islam in 1990, consecrated the fact by eating beef and not only would we have withdrawn from the fight but we would have retained our lands, our properties and our wealth. Clearly, we didn’t withdraw from that extremely unfair fight because we considered it a fight for something essential.

And the fight we did withdraw from by fleeing the valley wasn’t fightable for obvious reasons beyond being a tiny minority.

This is deeper stuff than a comedy show can accommodate and maybe most of today’s world doesn’t have the time for it. So, at the least, Samay’s impulse to talk about KPs keeps our community in the national discourse, however imperfectly and inappropriately. Samay is a product of the times we live in and a wildly successful product at that. I can’t really grudge him that.

[Rishank Kaul @rishankkaul]

@infinitchy Assuming in my naïveté that this too is a fight worth fighting :)