Amarnath trek an example of communal harmony: official

India is hailing a Hindu pilgrimage to a cave high in the snow-capped mountains of Jammu and Kashmir as an example of communal harmony.
India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, and came close to a third in February after a suicide-bomb attack by Pakistan-based militants on Indian paramilitary police near the pilgrimage route.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has made “pilgrimage tourism” a focus, spending huge sums on January’s Kumbh Mela festival, where more than a 100mn Indians came to bathe in the Ganges river.
For the Amarnath Yatra in the Pahalgam area, the Kashmir state government has spent a record $72mn on preparations for the six-week event that began on July 1.
“It is a perfect example of religious harmony,” said Anup Kumar Soni, additional chief executive of the Amarnath Ji Shrine Board, which organises the pilgrimage.
Amarnath Cave is covered by snow almost all year round.
Saffron-clad Hindus, some barefoot and with photos of the cave around their necks, trudge the 46km route to the cave across glaciers and waterlogged trails.
Muslim villagers in long woollen coats clear the way of snow and ice, and thousands of troops are deployed to guard against attacks by militant groups.
The route is arduous.
One in four of the 300,000 pilgrims who have visited this year have required medical treatment, and 24 have died, mainly from heart attacks and hypertension, according to government statistics.
While thousands of Kashmiris work to clear the path, thousands more rent ponies and palanquins to the pilgrims, and tents for them to sleep in.
“Everyone is always friendly, there is no hostility here,” said a pilgrim who give his name as Abhhinav, hiking up a steep track in driving rain to one of the passes on the route that reaches nearly 4,500m in places.
The pilgrimage has been attacked repeatedly by militant groups – the last time in 2017 when eight pilgrims were killed in an ambush.
This year, the government has set up a bar-coding system, allowing only registered people onto the trail.
Separatists in in the state have been campaigning against the government for years, including a campaign of violence by militants, and an Indian security force response that Kashmiris often condemn as heavy handed.
The trouble has badly affected the region’s farming and tourism industries.
In Pahalgam, the pilgrimage offers a lifeline for many families.
“There is no private sector here, and so educated youth and many other Kashmiris are depending on the Yatra,” said Firoz Ahmed Wani, a history graduate and part-time tutor renting out two tents to pilgrims paying Rs200 a night, at a camp along the route.
“We’re ordinary people. The conflict is something for the politicians to decide.”