Author: David Rohde
Publication: The New York Times
Date: August 5, 2002
Shouting "Hail Hail Shiva!" thousands
of Hindu pilgrims crowded two narrow dirt tracks high in the Himalayan
mountains of the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Barefoot, world-renouncing Hindu
monks, naked to the waist and wrapped in orange cloth below, came walking,
carrying tridents. Porters with legs like iron carried elderly women and
corpulent businessmen in lawn chairs lashed to tree limbs. Women in pink,
yellow and red saris moved past walls of granite, towering jade pines and
emerald streams. Some carried infants; others held a husband's hand.
Over a month, more than 100,000
Hindu pilgrims will hike at least 19 miles, sleep in freezing temperatures
above 10,000 feet and brave attacks from Muslim militants.
Their trek is all for a hurried
glimpse of an ice stalagmite that forms each year on a wall of a remote
cave here. The nine-foot-tall ice sheet, shaped like a phallus, is considered
to be the symbol of Lord Shiva, one of Hinduism's three most revered gods.
Even though the pilgrimage is purely
religious, it has not escaped the conflict in this battered territory.
The threat of attacks by Muslim separatists who are fighting for an independent
Kashmir has turned this once obscure pilgrimage into one of the most closely
watched rites in ritual-filled India.
In the past two years, Muslim militants
have killed more than 40 Hindu pilgrims in attacks on the procession. This
year, the Indian government has deployed thousands of policemen and soldiers
to protect them.
[On July 30, a pilgrim and taxi
driver were killed when a bomb exploded beneath their car as they drove
through the town of Lazbal, about 40 miles south of the cave, the police
said. Several other people were wounded.]
Of more than 3,000 pilgrims who
set out on the main path to the holy cave one day in late July, K. K. Srivastava
attracted by far the most stares. With jet black shoulder-length hair and
a thick beard, he wore the bright saffron robe and turban of a Hindu monk,
or ascetic. Two of his neighbors from New Delhi, a 12-year-old boy and
a middle- aged man, accompanied him.
Steadying himself with a cane and
a walking stick, he moved up the dirt track on his knees. His legs, severed
at the calves in a 1993 train accident, are two feet long. Although he
is 28, when standing upright, he is as tall as an eight-year-old boy. With
each stride, he advanced six inches.
"This is a religious walk," he said,
as men on ponies passed him. "It should be walked." It was the fourth time
he was climbing the traditional 36-mile route on his knees.
For at least 200 years, the annual
pilgrimage, known as the Amarnath Yatra, was a weeklong pageant that attracted
no more than a few thousand people, many of them "Sadhus," or Hindu ascetics
like Mr. Srivastava. It began when a Muslim shepherd discovered the peculiar
ice formation in the cave in the late 1700's. A Hindu priest visited the
cave and declared it Amarnath, the mythical home of Lord Shiva.
By the late 1980's, pilgrimage season
had grown to a month, and the number of participants had reached about
40,000. Even after Muslim separatists started an armed insurrection in
Kashmir in 1989, the pilgrimage continued to grow.
By 1996, at least 160,000 people
were visiting the cave shrine each pilgrimage season, which runs from mid-July
to mid-August. Two years of Muslim attacks may have dissuaded some pilgrims
this year; 100,000 people are expected to attend.
Braving the Himalayas also poses
dangers. More than 100 pilgrims died in a sudden storm in 1996. Some pilgrims
and porters die each year when they slip off narrow paths and hurtle into
valleys below.
Still, they come. Rajesh Prabhakar,
a 44-year-old real estate broker from New Delhi, represented the fastest-growing
new type of participants. Mr. Prabhakar and a half dozen friends from New
Delhi took a newer, shorter route to the cave.
Approaching the holy site from the
north, the new 19-mile trail allows pilgrims to hike to the cave and back
in a single day. The traditional route is 36 miles and involves spending
two nights camped in the cold.
Middle-class professionals like
those in Mr. Prabhakar's group - three real estate brokers, a deed writer,
an optician and a food merchant - can fly into Kashmir and complete the
pilgrimage in three days. For ascetics and impoverished Indians who take
the train and the traditional path, the journey lasts one to two weeks.
Dressed in khakis, silver running
shoes and a black sports headband, Mr. Prabhakar looked like a power-walker
as he began the hike. Striding purposefully forward, the father of three
spoke earnestly about religion's ability to get humans to do things they
never thought possible.
"Do you see these people walk in
the cities?" he asked, gesturing to the soft- bellied middle-class pilgrims
surrounding him. "They don't even walk one or two kilometers. Look at their
bodies."
But he was convinced that every
last one would complete the arduous climb. "The divine spirit will take
hold," he predicted. "People will feel, Walk! Walk!"
A mile and a half into the climb,
Mr. Prabhakar got onto a pony.
The presence of Mr. Prabhakar and
others like him reflects the growth of the Indian middle class, according
to longtime pilgrims and organizers. The real estate agent, whose brother
is a computer programmer in Sunnyvale, Calif., has disposable income and
a desire to explore his faith. But like the other middle-class Indians
here, he has not turned away from India's long tradition of religious pilgrimages
and spiritual discovery.
For the Indian government, the pilgrimage
represents a political statement. The cave sits in the Indian-controlled
part of Kashmir, the divided territory with a Muslim majority, which brought
India and Pakistan to the brink of war this spring. Indian officials say
militants armed and trained in Pakistan are carrying out the attacks on
the pilgrimage and vow to ensure that it will continue.
At half-mile intervals, heavily
armed troops stood guard along the hundred- mile stretch of road where
buses ferry pilgrims to mountain trails. Banners declaring, "Jammu and
Kashmir Police at your service," hang from trees.
Government officials declined to
give exact figures, but Indian media report that an additional 15,000 police
and soldiers had been deployed to guard the pilgrims. All Kashmiri porters
used by pilgrims are pre-screened and issued identity cards. Roads are
repeatedly swept for land mines. All pilgrims and Kashmiris using the traditional
route pass through a metal detector and are frisked and screened.
The huge security presence has prompted
complaints from Kashmiris, who have accused Indian security forces of repeatedly
carrying out executions, abductions and other human rights abuses in the
state.
Kashmiri hotel owners and porters
said they still supported independence, but had grown weary of bloodshed
after 13 years of conflict and more than 35,000 deaths. The heavy-handed
tactics of both India and Pakistan have soured their views of both countries,
they said.
"With a new country I will be very
happy," said Said Mohammad, a 35- year- old porter.
But the biggest source of visible
tension between Hindu pilgrims and Kashmiri porters, nearly all of whom
were Muslims, was not politics but pay rates. Foreign tourism collapsed
here after 1995, when five Western hikers, including one American, were
kidnapped and killed by militants. Desperate Kashmiris hoping for work
or commerce swarm the pilgrimage, creating pony jams. Porters privately
complained that the pilgrims this year were younger and less generous than
in the past.
The remote valley that holds the
cave has the feel of a state fair, with hundreds of Kashmiri traders selling
postcards, souvenirs, fruit juice and soda to thousands of arriving Hindus.
After crossing a small snowfield, arriving pilgrims took a ritual bath
in a pristine stream and put on fresh clothes. They then waited for two
hours in a long line that snaked up a set of stairs leading to the cave.
Hailing Shiva and ringing ceremonial
bells, they took a final few steps, pressed themselves against an iron
railing and looked at the cave wall. The towering, nine-foot ice form had
apparently melted. It was only one foot tall.
Some pilgrims, it must be said,
were disappointed with the size. Others lamented that they were forced
to leave after only seconds, saying the police had pulled them away before
they could confess sins and make requests of Lord Shiva.
Akansha Shukla, a 12-year-old girl,
made her appeals. "I want to be a pilot," she said. "I won't tell you the
rest."
Mr. Srivastava, the ascetic, said
he would ask Shiva, the Hindu creator and destroyer of life, to limit suffering
in the world.
"I ask Lord Shiva," he said, "that,
if he gives birth to people, he take care of them."
