Standoff Over Land for Hindu Shrine Continues

August 11, 2008

Author: Coomi Kapoor

Source: The Star

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/8/11/focus/22041040&sec=focus

A place of pilgrimage has become the flashpoint for extreme communal strife, with passions on either side running so high that the government seems unable to impose a solution.

Allotment and cancellation of a plot of land in quick order to the Amarnath shrine in Kashmir, located at a height of over 4,400m, has pitched two religious communities against one another, with neither willing to budge – the minority not wanting the land to be transferred to a Hindu trust shrine and the majority insisting on its restoration.

The upshot of this standoff is an extreme polarisation in the security-sensitive state of Jammu and Kashmir.

For more than a month, the dispute over the allotment of a 40-ha plot of forest land to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board has spilled into the streets with violent crowds disrupting the normal way of life.