Amarnath Cave Dispute Raises Specter of Extremism in Kashmir

^{Hindu Pilgrims Climb 12,000 feet to Worship at
the Amarnath Cave Shrine (Ami Vitale/ Getty Images)}

The Amarnath cave, located in the Himalayan mountains over Kashmir, has been a pilgrimage destination for hundreds of years. Hindus worship at the shrine dedicated to the god Shiva, and see his image in the cave's stalactites. More recently, it has been the subject of a violent dispute that has collapsed the Kashmiri government and raised the specter of renewed extremism by Hindus and Muslims in the region.

In mid-June, the government of Jammu Kashmir authorized a plan to lease forest land to a religious organization that would use the land to house pilgrims en route. The decision was reported as having outraged some Muslim separatist leaders, who charged that the transfer suggested the intention to increase Hindu settlements in the Muslim majority state. Commentator Praful Bidwal has also explained that the outrage was a political strategy designed to raise the profile of the moderate Muslim party, Hurriyet. Nevertheless, over a week of violent protest, at which tens of thousands of demonstrators amassed, followed. Hundreds were left injured and several dead, before the government rescinded the order to lease the land on July 1.

The violent protests sparked the fall of the provincial government, a coalition of the national Congress Party [Hindu led] and a Kashmir based party, the people's Democratic Party led by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed [Muslim led]. When the PDP withdrew its support for the government in protest on July 7, the Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned. According to researcher and activist, Praful Bidwal, the series of events that led to the collapse of the coalition have done serious damage to the delicate normalization process in Kashmir, and fueled religious excesses by both Muslim and Hindu politicians:

The gains of the past six years--a substantial decline in violence by jehadi separatists and by the security forces, economic revival amidst a tourism boom, increasing isolation of strident extremism, and a general acceptance of mainstream political activity and electoral politics--are now in jeopardy.

In Kashmir, the biggest winners from the crisis are the Hurriyat hardliners led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who recently painted himself into a corner with his extremist positions. No less important gainers are the leaders of the moderate Hurriyat, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who moved from near-isolation and irrelevance to prominence by opposing the land transfer on the ground that it would lead to the Valley's demographic transformation.

Nationally, the greatest gainer is the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has cynically exploited the issue to foment violent Hindu-communal protests in different parts of India. The protests' death-toll has crossed the double-digit mark.

As of mid-July, the issue is still simmering. Former chief minister Azad has charged that the protests did not represent the general will of Kashmir's Muslims, but instead were fomented by separatists provoked by sentiments—and funding—from elsewhere: "Less than one percent of the population of the state was involved in these agitations, which were being carried out with money provided by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan," Azad said on July 14.