Word: amarnath
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...Spreading Rage The formative event for Kashmir's angry youth was the August 2008 protests over Amarnath, a Hindu shrine about 88 miles (141 km) from Srinagar. A massive movement opposed the Kashmir state government's controversial decision to allocate 100 acres (40 hectares) of land to a local Hindu pilgrimage group, and drew as many as 500,000 protesters on one day. The police fired on the crowds (Muddasar, the young stone thrower, was among those injured) and as many as 20 people were killed in the most intense week of protests. For Basharat, just 14, Amarnath...
...Amarnath controversy alone is not behind the resurgence of local protests against New Delhi - although most of the protest leaders are closely linked with separatists. The more lasting effect has been a pervasive sense of cynicism. The Amarnath killings have been added to a long list of grievances against the Indian security forces, who pretty much run Srinagar on their own - they have wide powers to shoot, arrest and search without fear of repercussions - while Indian and Pakistani politicians and bureaucrats ponder their next moves. The recent rape and murder of two young girls in the town of Shopian, allegedly...
...April and May Kashmir was celebrating record numbers of tourists. By August, however, normalcy had been replaced by strife, death, curfews and checkpoints. The immediate cause of the conflict this time was a dispute between Muslims and Hindus over 100 acres (40 hectares) of land near the Amarnath shrine in the Kashmir valley, which Indian authorities had granted to a Hindu pilgrim group. A compromise now gives the group exclusive use, but not permanent title, to the land - which they will use to build temporary shelters during their annual trek - and the protests have subsided. But the prospect of losing...
...fought over Kashmir after partition, and a Kashmiri separatist movement has been fighting to eject Indian troops from the region since 1989. The separatists' trump card has always been the threat to join Pakistan, which supported them with guns and guerrillas. India eventually silenced the separatists with force, but Amarnath has reignited their movement. The cries of "Azadi" (Freedom) and the Pakistani flags waving above the crowd of 500,000 people at one particularly fierce protest on Aug. 18 made the point that Kashmiris were once again ready to leave India...
...Indian government hasn't addressed these tough issues, leaving Kashmir angry and restive. And so all it took to shatter Kashmir's fragile peace was one blunder - the tone-deaf move this summer to transfer those 100 acres of land near Amarnath. It set off not one but two ferocious protest movements - by Hindu nationalists and by Kashmiri separatists - who have fueled each other's frenzy...