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| Geelani raises another bogey, this time over SASB | | | early times report
Jammu, Sept 2: Separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has raised another bogey to drive a wedge over the management of the annual Amarnath Yatra by demanding that the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB) should be disbanded.
It has become customary for the hardline separatist leader to raise issues which could disturb peace and tranquility in Jammu and Kashmir. Unrest and tension are the fodder on which the separatist campaign has survived in the State for the last 22 years.
It is one thing to raise issues pertaining to his separatist political agenda, but quite another to talk of a highly sensitive issue like the annual Amarnath Yatra. Millions of devotees hold the Holy Cave Shrine in the highest reverence and anybody trying to raise a controversy over the Yatra is trying to stoke communal passions. Cleverly, Geelani has this time demanded that the management of the annual Yatra be handed over to Kashmiri Pandits. It seems Geelani has now suddenly developed a soft corner for Kashmiri Pandits after leaving no stone unturned in driving them out of their homes in the Valley.
Kashmiri Pandits know more than anyone else how much love and respect Geelani has for them or how much interested he is in their return to the Valley. By demanding that the SASB be disbanded and the management of the Yatra be handed over to Kashmir Pandits, Geelani has tried in his own subversive way to drive another wedge by apparently pleading the cause of Kashmiri Pandits. The Pandit community like every other community of Hindu faith have been attached with the Yatra since centuries. The Yatra belongs to every devotee and no one individually or as a community has a monopoly over it. Kashmiri Muslims have also since centuries been helping the conduct of the Yatra. It was in fact a Muslim shepherd who discovered the Holy Cave. The family belonged to Batkote village near Pahalgam and till some years back they used to receive their share from the offerings at the Holy Cave.
If Geelani had any sense of history he would not have spoken in the manner he did. The affairs of the annual Amarnath Yatra were never managed by Kashmiri Pandits although till two decades back, before Geelani's brigades of gunmen drove them away, local Pandits thronged the Cave Shrine in hundreds each year.
In comparison to the past, more than half a million devotees now visit the Cave Shrine from all over the country during the Yatra period. There are not only religious issues concerned with the conduct of the Yatra. The arrangements to be made each year pertaining to the facilities for the Yatris, their safe journey, healthcare, creation of safe shelters and at the same time protecting the fragile ecology of the forests falling enroute to the Cave Shrine are made by the SASB with assistance from the State Government.
The conduct of the annual Yatra is a highly administrative and scientific exercise and people like Syed Ali Shah Geelani must learn not to meddle in the affairs of the Yatra. If he still fails to understand the sensitivity of the issue then the State Government is duty bound to ensure that people like him are made to leave such sensitive issues alone and not try to create trouble by speaking about religious affairs of other faiths
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