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On July 8, tragedy struck the Amarnath yatra (pilgrimage). Not less than 35 Hindu pilgrims on their strategy to the Amarnath shrine have been killed and dozens of others went lacking after flash floods prompted landslides close to the Baltal base camp in Ganderbal district in Jammu and Kashmir.
Survivors of the floods instructed The Diplomat that they have been going about their every day routine and resting within the night after they heard the sound of water gushing towards them; the sound of water was rising louder by the second, they recalled. Many ran out of their tents and managed to flee. Nonetheless, those that couldn’t have been swallowed by the icy waters.
The flash floods have been reportedly brought on by a “extremely localized rain occasion,” in line with the Indian Meteorological Division. Nonetheless, the position of unsustainable human presence within the space on account of the annual pilgrimage can’t be ignored. Rising foot visitors on account of government-promoted spiritual tourism has left the hillsides susceptible to landslides throughout downpours.
The annual 43-day Amarnath yatra commenced this yr on June 30. Since then tens of hundreds of pilgrims have been trekking to the Amarnath cave.
This yr’s pilgrimage was the primary in three years. In 2019, the yatra was lower brief forward of the Narendra Modi authorities’s controversial choice on August 5 revoking Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy, in anticipation of public unrest. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted within the cancellation of yatras in 2020 and 2021.
Positioned at an altitude of three,657 meters, the Amarnath shrine is a collapse Batakote in Pahalgam, nestled amid snow-clad peaks and glaciers. The cave is residence to a stalagmite that Hindus worship as a lingam, symbolic of the Hindu deity Shiva.
The cave was found in 1850 by a Muslim shepherd and since then, Hindu pilgrims have made their strategy to the Amarnath shrine yearly throughout summer season.
Following the tragedy, the federal government suspended the pilgrimage. Two days later, nevertheless, the yatra was resumed and hundreds of pilgrims have been trekking once more to the high-altitude shrine.
At a minimal, the J&Ok administration ought to have restricted the variety of folks heading out on the rain-washed routes within the mountains. As an alternative, J&Ok’s Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha introduced that the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB), which he heads, had determined to extend the variety of folks embarking on the pilgrimage from 15,000 to twenty,000 per day.
In so doing, the SASB and the J&Ok administration have violated a 2012 ruling by India’s Supreme Court docket below which the variety of pilgrims heading to the Amarnath cave was capped at 15,000 (7,500 by way of every of the 2 routes).
Whereas religion motivates a lot of those that undertake the arduous journey to the Amarnath shrine, the federal government has been selling the yatra as spiritual tourism.
This has are available in for criticism from some spiritual leaders. Throughout his latest go to to J&Ok, the Shankaracharya, a revered Hindu seer, condemned the J&Ok administration’s advertising of the Amarnath yatra as “spiritual tourism.” “The journey to Shri Amarnath is a journey of faith and religion. It’s useful to stroll it with religion,” he mentioned.
Reacting to the July 8 landslide tragedy, the Shankaracharya drew consideration to pressures on the surroundings that even a short lived enhance in inhabitants has. “If nature is exploited, then it’s pure to have an opposed impact,” the seer noticed, condemning the “industrialization” of the area the place the Amarnath shrine is positioned.
Research level to a number of pressures on the surroundings alongside the Amarnath yatra route. Citing a examine on municipal stable waste era in the course of the yatra season, an article in The Wire Science says that an estimated 1,000 tonnes of rubbish might be generated in the course of the yatra this yr. The article additionally attracts consideration to an environmental impression evaluation of the Lidder Valley carried out by Kashmir College specialists a couple of years in the past, which discovered that the carrying capability within the space is barely 4,300 folks per day. Nonetheless, a mean of 12,353 pilgrims are reported to have visited the cave every day in the course of the first 25 days of the pilgrimage within the pattern yr of 2019.
The Amarnath yatra has an extended historical past of tragedies, each pure and man-made. Militants have focused the pilgrims a number of occasions in latest many years. In August 2000, for example, the Hizbul Mujahideen killed over 20 Amarnath pilgrims on the Nunwan base camp in Pahalgam. Inclement climate circumstances resulted within the dying of 250 pilgrims in 1996.
The latest flash flood, the third since 2015, is clearly the end result of unsustainable human presence in a particularly fragile terrain. Viewing the dying toll, on July 23, officers suspended the pilgrimage from Jammu on account of due excessive climate and circumstances on Jammu-Srinagar nationwide freeway. No contemporary batch was allowed to proceed from right here to the bottom camps of the shrine.
The Amarnath yatra symbolizes Hindu-Muslim unity. Whereas that is primarily a pilgrimage for Hindus, Muslims allow it by offering logistical help to the pilgrims. They supply ponies and palanquins for many who can not stroll to the shrine, present tenting lodging, and run meals stalls alongside the route.
Nonetheless, the federal government’s transfer to push up the numbers trekking as much as the cave and urgent forward with the yatra regardless of the specter of environmental disasters reveals that this isn’t a pilgrimage motivated by religion and spirituality anymore. Analysts say that the federal government’s aggressive advertising of the Amarnath yatra after a three-year ban on the pilgrimage alerts the BJP’s desperation to consolidate help amongst Hindus.
The Amarnath yatra is being deployed by the Modi authorities as a instrument to advertise Hindu nationalism. By repackaging the yatra as an occasion that’s occurring on an enormous scale after three years, the BJP is presenting itself because the custodian of the pursuits of not simply Hindus however of all Kashmiris.
As people proceed to exhaust nature and its assets, nature has its personal means of deciding the course of occasions.
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