BAISAKHI, April 13, is the day the Mughal Gardens are thrown open to public gaze. It’s also the day the government decides to try and hook the increasingly elusive tourist to Kashmir. The call is the same as it was last year and every year since 1989: Kashmir does not equal militancy. Preparations for the two-day Kashmir festival — the first in 10 years — are already underway and led by the very enthusiastic Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir, Parvez Dewan.But a bomb blast or two can easily blow holes in the effort, as happened in 1999. Then, those in the tourist trade had been upbeat for the first time in years. Hotels and guesthouses were humming with tourists from all over and houseboats had replaced the ‘To Let’ boards with ‘Houseful’ signs. But a series of grenade explosions on Srinagar’s Boulevard Road and an IED blast near Hotel Welcome sent the tourists packing. A few days later, the Kargil war broke out. If it was Chittisinghpora and the Amarnath massacres in 2000, in 2001, the Gujarat earthquake tremors were felt all the way in Kashmir, since 40 per cent of domestic tourists are from Gujarat and Maharashtra.Back in BlackONLY tailors and cloth merchants appear to have benefited from the still mysterious Lashkar-e-Jabbar’s call to Kashmiri women to wear the burqa from April 1 or else. This is the second call given by the organisation, which remains as shadowy as ever. Many were scared into the veil after women were attacked and had acid thrown on their faces. But in yet another spin-off of 9/11, the burqa campaign receded after the terrorist attacks on the United States. The LEJ is trying its luck again, but few women seem to be reaching for their burqas.
