NEW DELHI – Displacement is painful to anybody. People of India have been a victim of communal riots right from its independence till present and these clashes have led to the displacement of lakh of people in India. According to the survey by Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), India ranks 11th in the displaced people list and about 506,000 people have been displaced due to communal outbreaks. In India, states like Kashmir, Orissa, Gujarat, central India and northeast India have witnessed ethnic and communal violence, which had led to the displacement of many people.
From the 1990s to 2012, over 800,000 people were forced to leave their homes due to ethnic violence in the northeast states like Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura. Some 76,000 of them are still believed to live in displacement in November 2011, according to the survey. The recent northeast exodus had caused more than thousands of people living across India to flee and return to their homes due to clashes between the Bodo tribes people and the Muslims.
The story of Kashmiri Pandits is an extraordinarily difficult one to tell. In 1990, outbreak of violence against them in Kashmir had resulted in the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley. Many had fled to safer places due to fear of harassment. Those who belonged to more affluent societies migrated to other cities in India like Delhi, but the majority had no option but to remain in their own land. About 250,000 Kashmiri Pandits were displaced from the Kashmir Valley since 1990 as reported in IDMC.
Naxalite conflict in Central India had caused the displacement of about 148,000 people. In Central India, especially the state of Chattisgarh have been prone to various naxal attacks. Naxalite conflict in the end of 2009 had caused the displacement of more than 40,000 adivasis. The Nandigram violence in West Bengal where, so called pro farmers of Communist Party of India Marxist had forcefully tried to acquire land for industrialization had caused the displacement of more than 8,000 people.
