January 1990. Midnight.
Loudspeakers tore through the silence of Kashmir.
Convert. Leave. Or die.
By sunrise, fear ruled the Valley. By winter’s end, over 350,000 Kashmiri Pandits had fled the land that shaped their identity for centuries. To many, it felt sudden. Chaotic. Inevitable.
Shadows Over the Valley reveals the truth it was none of these.
The exodus did not begin in 1990. It began a decade earlier, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As global powers waged the Cold War, militant networks were built, trained, and armed. When the Afghan war ended, the fighters and infrastructure did not disappear. They were redirected toward Kashmir under Operation Tupac.
Tracing the movement of men, money, and ideology, this book exposes how a global strategy quietly entered a peaceful valley. Warnings were ignored. Patterns were dismissed. An ancient community was left defenceless.
This is not just the story of one night of terror.
It is the story of how calculated geopolitics dismantled Kashmir’s oldest community and reshaped South Asia forever.
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Rohit Tikoo
Rohit Tikoo was born in Srinagar and lived in Kashmir until the violence of the late twentieth century forced his displacement. His work is shaped by lived experience and by a long engagement with the history that altered the Valley and uprooted its indigenous minority.
A Kashmiri Pandit, Rohit writes to document what is often ignored or simplified. His research focuses on the political, strategic, and institutional decisions that led to the 1990 exodus. He draws on historical records, documented events, and community memory to present a clear account of how and why displacement occurred.
Shadows Over The Valley examines the years before 1990, tracing the preparation that made the exodus possible and the consequences that followed. The book avoids slogans and emotion-driven narratives. It focuses on sequence, responsibility, and evidence.
Rohit lives in Delhi and continues to write on history, displacement, and identity.
