Slipping on ice

THE DISCOVERY

The cave shot into fame when a Gujjar, Buta Malik, stumbled upon it and the lingam sometime in 1850. It is said that a saint gave Malik a bag full of coal. When he reached home, Malik opened the bag only to find it full of gold coins. The joyous Malik ran to thank the saint but couldn’t find him. Instead he found the cave and the lingam. He told the villagers about his discovery and that was the beginning of the pilgrimage.

Every year, lakhs of Hindu pilgrims walk up the mountain to reach the shrine. In the past, the pilgrimage would last about 15 to 30 days.

‘‘Originally the yatra used to be for 15 days or a month,’’ says president, Purohit Sabha, Mattan. The sabha organised the yatra before the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board took over in 2000. However, in 2005, the Shrine Board decided to extend the pilgrimage to over two months.

There is no official record though of when the yatra first began. ‘‘Nobody knows,’’ says Sidha. ‘‘It has been there from hundreds of years’’.

The annual yatra ends when Mahant Deependira Giri, the custodian of the Holy Mace, carries it to the cave.

THE ORGANISERS

The annual Amarnath pilgrimage was earlier organised by the Purohit Sabha, Mattan and Dashnami Akhara, Srinagar. However, six years ago in 2000, the Jammu and Kashmir State Legislature, by an act, constituted the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB). The Governor of the state is the ex-officio chairman of the board, assisted by a chief executive officer and an additional chief executive officer.

THE LINGAM

The lingam is formed with an underground trickle of water from a small cleft in the cave’s roof. The water freezes as it drips slowly to form a tall, smooth cone of ice—the Shivlingam. It gets its full shape in May. Then it begins melting slowly and in August it is reduced to just a few feet. On the left side of the Shivlingam are two more ice stalagmites of Lord Ganesh and Parvati.

THE CONTROVERSY

The Indian Express team trekked an entire day, taking the arduous Baltal route, to reach the cave. Once there, it’s not too difficult to conclude that the Shivlingam is not the real thing.

The lingams of Lord Ganesh and Parvati are natural stalagmites— made of ice but the Shivlingam is clearly made of snow. Neither does it have the shape of the original lingam.

Religious leaders claim it’s been mounted artificially here. ‘‘This is not the original lingam,’’ says a Kashmiri pujari at the cave. The priests accuse the Shrine Board of mounting it to earn revenue. ‘‘They (shrine board) are playing with the religious sentiments of the people. The governor wants to make it a business point. They want to turn a religious yatra into pilgrimage tourism,’’ they say. The custodian of the Holy Mace, Mahant Deependira Giri too has demanded an inquiry.

In the past, there have been many instances when the lingam didn’t form or was smaller. ‘‘This is not for the first time,’’ says Prof M N Kaul, an expert in glaciology in the University of Jammu. ‘‘I remember one instance during the Eighties, when the Shivling was not formed. It is a natural process’’.

Sidha agrees but says, ‘‘there were few instances but we didn’t put up an artificial lingam.’’