While din was on, local Muslims sheltered and fed stranded Yatris

The smell of tear gas on the streets of Srinagar, littered with glass shards, stones and smouldering tyres, are testimony to the pitched battles over the controversial transfer of forest land to the Amarnath shrine board. But as passions ran high, stoked mostly by politicians, the local Muslim population worked quietly, organising free langars for the hundreds of pilgrims stranded because of the shutdown — a gesture which only reinforces the Hindu-Muslim bonhomie that has symbolised the Amarnath Yatra ever since the cave shrine was discovered in 1860 by a Muslim shepherd.

“How could our children eat and sleep at home while children of these stranded Yatris would stay hungry and spend the night under the open sky?” asked Mohammad Abdullah of Tangbagh. He said the neighbourhood committee of Tangbagh, Dalgate set up a community kitchen to feed more than 3,000 stranded Yatris. “After the dinner, we found there were many who had no place to stay during the night. We then requested each household to accommodate three to four Yatris,” Abdullah said.

Noor Mohammad, another member of the neighbourhood committee, delinked the Yatra from the controversial land transfer. “We too are protesting against this illegal land transfer to the shrine board. But the anger and protests have nothing to do with the Amarnath Yatra or the pilgrims,” he said. “At the end of the day, we are all human beings. Why do you forget that Kashmiri Muslims have been hosting the Yatris for more than a hundred years now?”

Yatri Dharam Pal from Delhi said: “The amity here amazes us. This mess was created by those who rule and not the people.”