It's Politics Uber Alles In Kashmir ..... And India

Peace seemed to be slowly returning to the Kashmir valley in recent months. The Pakistani army was busy fighting insurgents in its tribal areas along the Afghanistan border; the jihadis fighting the insurgency had lost crucial support and training camps in the Pakistan Administered Kashmir, and the ISI was busy playing internal power games in Islamabad. Meanwhile, tourists were flocking back to Kashmir, shikaras were plying once again in the Dal Lake in Srinagar, hotels were reporting advanced full booking for the whole summer, and the young ones were enjoying music concerts of popular bands from Pakistan.

Then suddenly, all hell seemed to break loose – and all about a controversy surrounding the Amarnath Yatra, which was always touted as a symbol of the communal harmony in Kashmir.


The Amarnath Yatra is an annual Hindu pilgrimage held at a shrine in a cave in Kashmir at an altitude of 13,700 feet. The cave was discovered by a Muslim in the year 1850. According to the legend, a Muslim shepherd, Buta Malik, was given a sack of coal by a sadhu; on reaching home, he discovered that the coal in the sack had turned to gold. He went back to the place to thank the sadhu but the sadhu was no longer there; instead he found a cave with an ice stalagmite This is how the cave, which became the pilgrimage known as Amarnath Yatra, was discovered. The Dogra King, Gulab Singh, gave a substantial reward to the Malik family and granted it a permanent right to a share of the donations. The Yatra has gone on for more than 150 years and, except for one attack by jihadis, was peaceful even during the worst phase of the separatist struggle.

The number of yatris going on the pilgrimage to Amarnath has grown over the years, with better transportation and a renewal of religious fervour among middle class Hindus with money to spend; to some, it also provides an adventurous hike through the Himalayas. There was a need, therefore, to improve facilities for the pilgrims as the infrastructure to handle pilgrims had not kept pace with the demand.

The way in which the state government went about in meeting the demand placed by the ever increasing number of pilgrims, however, seems to be a textbook example of the wrong solution and even worse implementation. If the state government had undertaken to build more facilities by itself, no one would likely have objected. Instead, the government decided to hand over 100 hectares of the state forest lands to the Hindu Committee organizing the Yatra, called the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB). It did not help that most of the governing members of the SASB were from outside the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

The proposal to hand over the land to SASB was made during the Chief Ministerial tenure of Mehbooba Mufti, who headed a coalition government of her PDP and Congress Parties. It was discussed at the Cabinet Meeting and the proposal was presented by the State Forest Minister who belonged to Mehbooba’s Party. However, before the proposal could be sent to the State Governor for his signature, the composition of the government changed: as part of the prior arrangement, the Chief Minister’s job was transferred to the Congress nominee, Ghulam Nabi Azad. The proposal for the land transfer was approved on May 26, 2008 by the new government. The decision came at a time when the State elections were only six months away.

The opposition to the proposal came initially from Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference, which saw it as an opening to get back the popular support in the valley that it had lost in the last State elections. The opposition to the land transfer was made on two counts: one, that the loss of forest land would damage the environment and two, that it went against the spirit of Article 370, which prohibited the sale of Kashmiri land to Non-Kashmiris. Mehbooba Mufti, whose party derived its strength solely from the valley foresaw a potential threat to her hold there. She had, over previous years, developed good relationships with soft separatists in the Valley, and she saw this as an opportunity to consolidate her support among separatists. She withdrew her support from the coalition government in protest against the land transfer, forcing Ghulam Nabi Azad to resign.

The protests against land transfer now came into full swing. Mehbooba led the protests, joined by the All Party Hurriyet Conference. Emotions were raised by suggesting that the land transfer was the thin end of the wedge to erode Article 370, settle Hindus in the Valley and change the demographics in the State against Muslims. The fact that the land transfer was being leased to SASB to build only temporary facilities which would be dismantled each year at the end of the pilgrimage was never properly communicated and was ignored by protesters. As the protests mounted leading to tear gas, firing and some protesters getting killed, the State government panicked and withdrew the order transferring land to the SASB.

Now, the scene of protests shifted from the Valley to Jammu, which has a Hindu majority and where, there is a pent-up anger against the eviction of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley, many of whom are living as refugees in Jammu. Protests in Jammu got stronger, with the police lashing out now at the protesters there, leaving one dead. Jammu is a battleground between the Congress and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). The Congress got almost all its seats in the State legislature in the last State elections from the Jammu district, including that of the Chief Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad. The BJP, on the other hand, saw it as a golden opportunity to revive its fortunes in the Jammu district, which it had lost to the Congress in the previous elections.

The confrontation in the State took a new and ugly turn when protesters in Jammu blocked the only highway connecting the Valley with the rest of the India. This resulted in a tremendous hardship to traders in the Valley, especially fruit growers, whose fruits could not be transported and delivered to the markets in Delhi and rest of India. The confrontation thus took the form of Jammu versus Kashmir as well as a communal confrontation between the Hindus of Jammu and Muslims of Kashmir. Because of the electoral stakes involved, the Police did not move swiftly enough to end the blockade of trucks coming from Kashmir and passing through Jammu. The reaction in the valley was quick and furious. There was a demand to open the border with the Pakistan Administered Kashmir. “Muzaffarnagar Chalo!� (Let’ march to Muzaffarnagar) became the battle cry of the protesters. A procession of protesters, with many prominent leaders, was headed towards the Line of Control when the security forces tried to stop them, resulting in a confrontation and the death of a prominent Hurriyet leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz.

With protests mounting in both the Valley and Jammu, the Central government in Delhi found itself between the proverbial rock and the hard place. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called an All Party Conference to find a solution to the explosive situation. If Manmohan Singh was expecting the BJP to put national interests above its partisan interests, he was sadly disappointed – asking the BJP to not use this opportunity to consolidate and expand its vote bank was like asking a Benarasi Panda to not eat the "kheer" that had been served before him. The BJP, while paying lip service to maintaining peace, did nothing to calm the situation in Jammu; instead, its troops have taken to the streets in other cities in India to leverage the advantage it foresees for itself in making use of this issue in the forthcoming general elections.

The stage is set for this issue to become another ‘Shah Bano’ for the BJP. Indeed, the potential is even greater in this case than it was in the case of Shah Bano; while that case involved the rights of a divorced Indian woman against the rights of the husband provided by the Muslim Personal Law, the Amarnath Yatra directly concerns Hindus, and therefore has a greater emotional appeal.

Here is another proof, if a proof was needed, that the British Parliamentary system, with its electoral politics catering to the basest emotions, is ill suited for the Indian masses. Innocent people – both Muslims and Hindus – will die in Kashmir and Jammu while the politicians will be busy making political hay, feigning anger and shedding crocodile tears. The license quota raj may be over but criminals and thieves continue to get elected and calling the shots, both literally and figuratively.