Bafinda

The Bafinda identity was born out of work: families devoted to growing and processing cotton in Kashmir, forming over generations a recognized occupational caste among the region's peoples. In the 1931 census, thousands of Bafinda were registered as village artisans, without land ownership. The arrival of foreign manufactured textiles ended the local cotton cycle and pushed much of the community into carpet weaving.

The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 split the people between two countries: most Muslim Bafinda left the Indian side of Kashmir for Pakistan, while a smaller group remained in Jammu and Kashmir. That border still shapes the experience of two Bafinda communities with shared roots.

Although weaving remains present in the memory and practice of many Bafinda families, today the people are spread across various vocations, from trade to urban jobs, reflecting the economic changes in the Kashmir region. Carpet production, where still practiced, requires patience and manual skill passed down from father to son across generations.

Social life revolves around the extended family and the kinship networks typical of Kashmir’s caste communities, where marriage alliances and trade reputation still weigh on everyday decisions. Hospitality and respect for elders remain central to community life in the villages and neighborhoods where they live.

The Bafinda are Sunni Muslims, and Islam is the axis around which both the faith and collective identity of the people are organized. Prayer, fasting and religious observance are part of daily family life, also shaping social roles within the community and relationships between generations.

As in other Muslim communities of South Asia, Islamic faith is interwoven with caste and clan belonging: being Bafinda and being Muslim go together, and this fusion of religion and ethnic identity makes any change of faith a matter that involves the whole family, not just the individual who decides to follow it.

Portions of Scripture already exist in both languages linked to the Bafinda: Pahari-Potwari, spoken by the majority in Pakistan, and Dogri, spoken by the remaining group in India, both with a New Testament and audio recordings aimed at communities with low literacy rates. Even so, these Scriptures rarely reach Bafinda families, whose religious and social life remains organized around Islam.

For the Bafinda, Islamic faith is inseparable from their identity as a people and as families: abandoning Islam is seen as breaking with the entire community, not just with a personal belief. Add to this the geographic dispersion between Pakistan and India, the lack of contact with Christians in their own language, and the absence of any known Christian community of faith among them, which makes even a first encounter with the gospel rare.

Like many trade communities in the Kashmir region, the Bafinda face economic changes that have made traditional vocations such as weaving increasingly unsustainable, pressing families to seek new means of livelihood amid a constantly shifting social landscape, both in Pakistan and in India. There is also a deep spiritual need: no community of followers of Christ is known among the Bafinda, meaning a total absence of discipleship, pastoral care or Christian witness in the people’s own culture and language.