By M. Burhanuddin Qasmi,
The Amarnath shrine is claimed to be some thousand years old and forms an important part of Hindu pilgrimages. The Hindu legend has it that Shiva recounted to Parvati the secret of creation in a cave in Amarnath, situated at an altitude of 12,760 ft, about 141 km from Srinagar and 44 km from the town of Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir.
According to Hindu belief the Amarnath cave was first discovered by a Muslim shepherd, Buta Malik, and to date, a percentage of the income through donations made by pilgrims to the shrine is given to the descendants of Malik. It demonstrates that the Amarnath pilgrimage has established a solid bond between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir valley since its early days. Hindus travel from far places to unknown hilly tracks of the Himalayas with great religious passion and local Muslims provide them with logistics support either to meet their commercial ends or to credit to Kashmiri hospitality.
The reasons for Muslim support apart, the organized Amarnath yatra has been peacefully trekked since 1858 with mutual cooperation from both Hindu yatris and local Muslims. Baring a few incidences beginning from year 2000 in which at least 30 and in the succeeding years 2001 and 2002, 13 and 2 innocent pilgrims were killed by separatists Kashmiri militants, as a showcase for their presence in the valley, nobody ever used the Amarnath for political mileage in the past.
For that matter, extremists anywhere in the world and more so in Kashmir never distinguish among religious places as Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or any other when they find a target suits their aim. One may reflect on the incident in 1995 when 150 militants took over the 15th-century mausoleum of Shaikh Nooruddin Wali, considered Kashmir’s patron saint, and an adjoining masjid at Charar-e Sharief. Our army laid siege to the shrine for two months but the shrine and most of the surrounding towns including the masjid was razed down with each side blaming the other for the damage. The Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar has been unsuccessfully used many a time by the separatists ever since the beginning of militancy in Kashmir in 1989.
In fact the common Kashmiris are making it clear that they have never been against the Amarnath yatra and they would continue to support it. One newspaper column from Kashmir reads, “We are not against the yatra and have not harmed or harassed any pilgrim undertaking the journey. We arrange langars and free accommodation for the stranded yatris each year and will continue to blow the harmonious religious breeze that aromatizes our paradise– Kashmir”.
Their protest against land allotment to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) was completely against the local government, which has according to the protestors ‘illegally’ and unnecessarily transferred 40 hectares of forest land to SASB causing ecological imbalance in the region. The deal was done for the Hindu vote bank appeasement in Jammu and elsewhere in India with an eye on the general election due within next few months by the Congress led government.
Actually the protestors claim has a ring of truth because even before July 1, 2008 when Gulam Nabi Azad government revoked its earlier decision to allot the land after facing a huge outcry of protest from common Kashmiris. Amarnath yatris got free passage from the protestors to continue their journey to the cave. They displayed remarkable tolerance and communal harmony when stranded yatris were served food and drink and looked after during the agitation.
This is also proved by the record turnout for Amarnath yatra despite violence, “compared with last year’s 2.5 lakh pilgrims who went to the cave in a period of two months, this year, more than four lakh devotees have turned up in the first two weeks alone”, reports Mufti Islah for CNN-IBN.
Considering the umpteen instances in the past, one comes to an obvious conclusion that Congress leaders and workers are past masters in stirring the communal cauldron in India. In the past their ‘creativism’ has mostly proven to be suicidal for them as a political party looking to deepen its public support, and the whole nation has heavily paid for their nonsensical activities in an attempt to appropriate the soft Hindutva image to appease the Hindu vote bank, aping the BJP.
In the first instance it was Indian National Congress (INC) which opened a Pandora’s Box and the door to hell in India which was followed by the Babri masjid demolition in 1992, entra-religious rioting on a massive scale culminating in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts. Before 1993 India was never struck by a communal bomb of this scale engineered by realpolitik and thus part of the credit must go to the Congress for lighting the fuse for all bombs till date exploding across Indian cities, mandirs and masjids.
It was the Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who gave in to Hindu pressure and ordered the locks on the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya removed in 1986. Until then, a priest had been permitted to perform puja once a year for the idols installed there in 1949. The decision to fuel Babri Masjid Ram Janambhomi temple issue was taken by the Congress just one month after overruling the court’s decision in the infamous Shah Bano case in 1985 which was opposed tooth and nail by the then opposition right wing Hindus and the Left parties as Muslim appeasement by the Congress for vote bank consolidation. This shows that the party has swung from one ideological extreme to the other just to garner votes. This was running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.
The ‘Babri show’ was a soft Hindutva creation but to their dismay the political fruits were reaped by the saffron brigade because they converted an opportunity into a political faith accompli with the erection of a temple at the place where the reviled masjid stood. Or say the Congress has written the script for the ‘Babri drama’ and the BJP along with Sang Parivar have acted on the stage and the viewers rightly give the credit to the actors where it is due. Similarly I am, at least, sure that the Congress has offered one more attractive script in the shape of land allotment dispute to SASB in Kashmir to the Hindutva opposition in India and they will devote themselves to the new ‘play’ which will reach its political denouement in the next elections.
The call for a Bharat Band by BJP and VHP on July 3, 2008 over the Amarnath land dispute and the unfolding of the drama in the next few days in Indore, Jammu and other cities were just a beginning, wait and see, how many more lives and public properties will have to be destroyed in the years to come, thanks to India’s vote bank politics.
BJP has always been successfully manipulating majority sentiments over religious issues and yatras. Not to forget present BJP’s prime minister-in-waiting, Lal Krishna Advani’s ‘rath yatra’ in 1992 that ultimately took them to Delhi’s throne for the first time in 1996. The divisive propaganda is on to communalize the atmosphere over the land dispute so that J & K in particular, and India, in general, should remain simmering at least till the next general elections. The Amarnath land issue will reach the top position in BJP’s electoral agenda and the Congress will be a big loser once more. Once again the Congress will be hoist by its own petard.
See what an ugly face of Indian political opportunism in action. Mufti Mohammad Saeed- led People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that was part of the cabinet decision that allowed the transfer of land to the SASB, decided to withdraw the support and blame its coalition partner Congress for the whole mess. Murtaza Shibli, a Kashmiri, writes from London, “Only days ago, Kashmir’s Forest Minister, Qazi Mohammad Afzal, who belongs to the PDP openly boasted about his role in effecting the land transfer. But when the public reaction grew, the PDP not only withdrew support, but also issued public statements that sounded like racial epithets designed to inflame the public opinion and hence provoke and enlarge the constituency of protests and violence.”
When the applicant Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) itself has withdrawn the application for the land and the state government has taken responsibility for the yatra, the controversy understandably ends here. But this is Indian politics after all. Emotive and religious issues are like the proverbial red flag for a bull and the public‘s religious sentiments are being blatantly exploited for political benefit. Where PDP and Hurriyat (separatists) political gimmick ends there grows another divisive opportunism for the Sangh Parivar ‘class’ of politics. BJP will try to squeeze the issue to the last drop to fill its ballot boxes for a long time.
The author is editor of Eastern Crescent and director of Mumbai based Markazul Ma’arif Education and Research Centre. He can be contacted at [email protected]