[Reader-list] Amaranth Yatra

[Kashmir Affairs]

Aarthi,
Kashmiri Muslims offering food and shelter to the yatris is old practice. I will give you one example in recent times. When in 1996 due to unseasonal blizzards and uncontrollable number of yatris [70,000 on one day by some accounts], the yatris were stranded for nearly a week.
People in Islamabad [Anantnag] made free langers at Nai Basti, Sarnal, Kadipora, Khanabal, Anchidora, Mattan and Che and sheltered thousands of yatris in their homes, shops and even mosques. In Che, there was a small incident which i thought was funny, when the yatris thanking god for thier safety started shouting 'bolo amarnath ki jai' while housed in mosque. However, Yatris were not thrown out of the mosque, though some people questioned the practice while others laughed.
As a child we used to stand on the either side of road in Kadipora greeting walking yatris with 'babu ji sitaram'..... Certainly those days yatra was peaceful and a very low key affair. But now as any religion is marketed and branded, Amarnath Yatra has fallen to it as well.

Murtaza Shibli
www.kashmiraffairs.org

--- On Mon, 30/6/08, Aarti Sethi <aarti.sethi at gmail.com> wrote:
From: Aarti Sethi <aarti.sethi at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Amaranth Yatra
To: "Shuddhabrata Sengupta" <shuddha at sarai.net>
Cc: "sarai list" <>
Date: Monday, 30 June, 2008, 6:00 PM

Apropos this, today's express or TOI I forget which has a story on Kashmiri
Muslim's setting up food stalls and rest houses for stranded pilgrims.
Several pilgrims were housed in people's homes when they discovered they
had
nowhere to stay. On being asked they said this was nothing new and that the
local Muslim community had been hosting poilgrims for the lat hundred years
and they saw no reason to change this tradition despite the current fracas
over land allotment. So I would suggest Pavan that you excercise a little
restraint before you make intemperate remarks about intolerance.

best
A

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 9:57 PM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta
<shuddha at sarai.net>
wrote:
s://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>


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