Namaskar,
On this final day of the year 2025, I consciously refrain from offering my beloved Kashmiri Pandit community a routine greeting or a ceremonial message wrapped in pleasant words. Today, I choose truth over comfort. Today, I place a mirror before ourselvesa mirror that reflects who we are, where we stand, where we faltered, and what we must decisively become in 2026.
This message is not written to please emotions.
It is written to awaken consciences, heal weaknesses, and rebuild unity.
For over three and a half decades, our community has endured displacement, pain, insecurity, humiliation, and a long chain of broken promises. While external injustice against us is undeniable, honesty demands that we accept a hard truth: external oppression alone does not explain our present stagnation. A significant part of our suffering today stems from our internal failures, failures born of disunity, complacency, ego conflicts, cosmetic activism, and misplaced priorities.
We speak passionately about our rights, yet we rarely sit together with sincerity and discipline. We organize meetings, conventions, seminars, anniversaries, and commemorations, often without continuity, follow-up, or tangible outcomes. Precious community resources time, energy, and money,have too often been spent on showy events and symbolic gestures, while long-term institutions, education funds, elder care, legal preparedness, and strategic planning remain neglected.
This culture of cosmetic activism has weakened us more deeply than any external adversary ever could.
The greatest failure of our time is the collapse of unity.
We have fragmented ourselves into groups, camps, labels, and personal loyalties. Tragically, we attack one another with greater intensity than we challenge injustice. Let us be clear: without unity, no struggle survives; without unity, no future is secured. Unity is not a slogan for banners,it is a discipline, a sacrifice, and a daily commitment.
Equally painful are the social realities emerging within our own homes:
The erosion of family values
The growing loneliness of our elderly parents
Rising divorces and broken households
The alarming acceptance of the one-child norm, threatening our demographic survival
Weakening bonds of relationships, care, and collective responsibility
A community does not survive on speeches alone.
It survives on strong families, moral responsibility, and intergenerational care.
Another silent but dangerous decline confronts us, the gradual abandonment of our mother language, cultural practices, and festivals. When a community forgets its language, it begins to lose its soul. When festivals become empty rituals, identity turns hollow. Cultural amnesia is nothing short of slow self-erasure.
We must also confront an uncomfortable contradiction within ourselves:
We demand leadership, yet resist discipline.
We demand rights, yet evade responsibility.
We desire miracles, yet avoid sustained hard work.
This contradiction must end in 2026.
Our Resolve for 2026
Let 2026 mark a decisive shift:
Unity must become our only mantra,beyond individuals, egos, and organisations.
We must move from event-based activism to institution-based nation-building.
Community resources must be redirected from wasteful ceremonies to education, youth grooming, legal strength, elder welfare, and cultural preservation.
Our mother language, traditions, and festivals must be revived with meaning and continuity not symbolism.
Family values must be strengthened: respect parents, heal broken relationships, and encourage demographic continuity.
Practice introspection before criticism, responsibility before demands, and action before announcements.
Groom our youth with identity, discipline, confidence, and clarity,not confusion and fragmentation.
Replace noise with strategy, emotion with planning, and symbolism with substance.
This is not a message of despair.
It is a message of course correction.
A community that can look honestly into the mirror can never be defeated. Our strength lies not merely in numbers, but in clarity of purpose, unity of intent, discipline of action, and moral courage.
Let us therefore leave behind grievances, groupism, and organisational silos.
Let us become one,united as a single, conscious community.
Let 2026 be the year when we:
Stop pretending and start building
Stop dividing and start uniting
Stop wasting and start investing
Stop reacting and start planning
I offer this message as a gift of truth to our elders, youth, mothers, sisters, and every member of our community. Let us accept this mirror not with anger or denial,but with resolve and courage.
If we stand united, disciplined, and honest with ourselves, no force on earth can deny us our rightful place.
With faith, concern, and unwavering commitment to collective welfare,
Warm regards,

[Kundan Kashmiri]
Sevak of the Community
Mobile: 8802267955
Email: kundankashmiri@gmail.com