Commercialising a sacred yatra

Srinagar: The annual Amarnath Yatra starts on Sunday but like in the past, this year too a controversy is already threatening to spill over and ruin the sanctity of this religious journey.

Thousands of pilgrims queue-up every year braving a perilious journey to reach the Amarnath caves in Jammu and Kashmir.

Landslide stalls yatra

Pilgrims headed for the Amarnath cave shrine in south Kashmir will have to wait for some more time at the Pahalgam base camp. Landslides in the upper reaches of Pahalgam have blocked the route to the shrine, forcing over a thousand pilgrims to delay their journey.

Officials say the snow will be cleared by Sunday afternoon, but the pilgrims will have to wait until Monday morning to resume their trip. Deputy Commissioner of Anantnag confirmed the fact that there has been landslide in Pahalgam to CNN-IBN.

Last year, more than 40,000 pilgrims made it to the centuries-old caves.

However, this year a rift between the local caretakers and the Amarnath Shrine Board is threatening to spoil things.

Shaivism Historian, T N Ganjoo says, "The problem is that the caretakers do not get a share of the yatra revenues. This has created a conflict."

The ruling coalition's People's Democratic Party (PDP) supports this claim.

Says PDP president Mehbooba Mufti, "The locals don't have a role to play in the yatra. The locals now have to pay to the shrine board and get a receipt from them to visit the shrine."

But the state governor, who heads the board, has dismissed these allegations. He says the Amarnath Shrine Board has never forced anyone to pay for the yatra.

"I have seen a press report saying that the board is charging money from the poor. This is totally false," says Jammu and Kashmir Governor, S K Sinha.

However, many, like Professor Ganjoo feel the Amarnath yatra has been polarised by politics, turning the sacred annual journey into a commercial operation.

"Politicians have complicated the journey. This three- month yatra should be in the correct form and should be left to the sadhus to organise," says Professor Ganjoo.

Before the yatra had become a way of earning money, sadhus would ask all pilgrims to collect at the Akhada building and from there the sacred journey would begin.

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