The annual Hindu pilgrimage to a Himalayan cave shrine in the India-administered Kashmir began Wednesday amid tight security measures involving the layered deployment of thousands of paramilitary troopers and high-tech surveillance tools.
Rights groups have termed the pilgrimage a “militarised affair” as extraordinary security measures disrupt the daily lives of locals, with school buses, shops and markets being subjected to long halts by Indian forces.
Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, who leads the region and is also the head of the Amarnath shrine board (SASB) that manages the pilgrimage, flagged off the first batch of pilgrims, numbering more than 5,800, from the Jammu region towards Kashmir Valley.
He said the security of the pilgrimage will be monitored around the clock from the Integrated Command and Control Centre in the region, while radio frequency technology is being used for tracking and monitoring.
The 38-day pilgrimage this year to the Himalayan cave named Amarnath, located at an altitude of about 3,880 metres, commenced on Thursday via the twin tracks — the traditional 48-kilometre Nunwan-Pahalgam route in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district and the 14-kilometre shorter but steeper Baltal route in Central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district.
Every year, additional forces are deployed to monitor the pilgrimage.
More so this year, in the aftermath of the April 22 Pahalgam attack, which resulted in four days of India-Pakistan tit-for-tat strikes before a US-mediated truce between the two nuclear-armed states.
Tens of thousands of Hindus trek, horse-ride or take a chopper ride to an ice stalagmite in the cave, believed to be a manifestation of the Hindu deity Shiva.
‘Militarised pilgrimage’
Rights groups say the pilgrimage has become a tool for India to evoke jingoist passion.
No civilian can cross the raised footpath dividing the highway when the pilgrim vehicles pass by.
All major roads leading to villages and towns along the highway are blocked by soldiers or armoured vehicles during this time, and local traffic is barred for hours.
The pilgrimage used to be a low-key affair lasting for 15-30 days, but after 1990, when an insurgency began in the region, the number of pilgrims has been growing steadily, especially after the formation of the shrine board in 2000.
The rush has been aided by the state-sponsored infrastructure build-up, some of it in environmentally fragile areas, which has sparked concern from environmentalists and had triggered an agitation in 2008 after 50 acres of state forest land were transferred to the board.
The land transfer order was then withdrawn, and the agitation led to the fall of the then-local coalition government.
In 2005, the board extended the yatra to two months, but weather sometimes forces the authorities to curtail the duration.
Last year, 512,000 Hindus, which is the highest in 12 years, from various parts of India visited the shrine during a 52-day yatra.
This year’s pilgrimage will end on August 9.
