Violence Escalates in Kashmir

SRINAGAR, India, August 8, 2008 -- It started as a small demonstration against a plan to build bathrooms and shelters for Hindu pilgrims visiting a shrine in Kashmir.

But 12 deaths and 47 days of rioting have transformed the protests into one of the worst political crises to hit this Himalayan region, threatening to sever the bonds between the predominantly Muslim region of Kashmir and Hindu-majority India.

Even during the last two decades of a brutal separatist rebellion in Kashmir and India's harsh military response, the region remained firmly tethered to the rest of India through its coexistence with the predominantly Hindu region of Jammu -- united in the state of Jammu-Kashmir.

The traditionally good relations between the two regions were a rare bright point in the long-troubled region that has otherwise been a flash point for Hindu-Muslim conflict and the rivalry between India and Pakistan.

Now, surging violence has laid bare long-buried animosities.

Hindus in Jammu say they are tired of the union and blocked the main road linking them to Kashmir to make their point. And most Kashmiris say a divorce would suit them too.

"It used to be Jammu & Kashmir, now it's Jammu vs. Kashmir," said an editorial cartoon in Friday's Times of India newspaper, a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh convened an emergency meeting of the region's leading politicians in a bid to end the crisis.

The riots began on June 23 after the state government announced it was transferring about 100 acres of land to the Amarnath shrine -- a cave to which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims flock every year to see a large phallic-shaped icicle revered by Hindus as an incarnation of Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and regeneration.

The land was to be used to build facilities for the devotees. But Muslims feared it was a ploy to establish a Hindu settlement in the region and change the demographic balance.

After days of intense protests, the state government caved, revoking the land transfer. When that failed to quell the unrest, the Congress party-led state government resigned.