Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Kashmir’s Hindus/Muslims Dispute Shrine


Hindu pilgrims traveled by pony last month to the remote Amarnath shrine, a site linked to the god Shiva, in a Himalayan cave in Kashmir (Jaipal Singh/European Pressphoto Agency)
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By Somini Sengupta (New York Times, 8/8/08)
NEW DELHI — A dispute over 98 acres of land high in the Himalayas has ignited violent protests in Indian-controlled Kashmir for more than a month and pitted the Hindu and Muslim halves of the province against each other. A police officer fired tear gas in Jammu on July 25 to quell a violent protest of a government reversal on a land transfer. The Indian Army has sent thousands of soldiers to quell the disturbances, and the government is scrambling to ensure that it does not aggravate Hindu-Muslim tensions throughout India.

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