Devotees perform rituals at the Kheer Bhawani temple during the annual Hindu festival in Ganderbal district, about 30kms northeast of Srinagar, Kashmir. Thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, many of whom were displaced 20 years ago, attended the festival in order to worship the Hindu goddess Mata Kheer Bhawani on the day of her birth. Some 200,000 Kashmiri Pandits fled the region in the early nineties at the start of an insurgency against Indian rule mainly to the Hindu-dominated southern city of Jammu and they return yearly for the festival.

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Keywords: bawani, belief, devotee, devotees, festival, hindu, kheer, perform, religion, rituals, temple