There is no doubt that the ongoing agitation in J&K region over the Amarnath land allotment issue is gaining popularity lately despite of the fact that it has been prevailing for more than a month now. This reality is once again brought home with the Congress changing its tune of late. Having sat on the fence all along, quite a few party leaders have now come out openly in support of the stir. They have actually demanded that sentiments of the local inhabitants be honored. Congress is to express solidarity with leaders of the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti (SASS). Their party colleagues have issued unambiguous statements clarifying their position. All of them are unanimous in their demand that the land be allotted to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) at Baltal. In other words it implies that they have disapproved of their own party government’s decision to cancel the land allotment order. They include at least one former minister who has been a party to this decision. Why have the Congress leaders taken so long to react to the month-long turmoil?

A plausible explanation is that they have realized the intensity of feelings of the ordinary masses. They have understood that they can ignore them only at their own peril with the Assembly elections close at hand. On the other hand, there are observers who don’t rule out the possibility of the Congress having initiated a carefully planned three-pronged strategy. At the highest level Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Ms Sonia Gandhi have got in touch with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership seeking its cooperation to diffuse the tension. At the State level it has assailed the Kashmir-based leaders for making provocative statements asking them to see the issue in correct perspective without prejudices whether regional or communal. At the ground level it is seeking identification with the people at large.

There are meetings all the times to discuss the political situation but no outcome has come. What does this double-edged approach indicate? Do the State Congress leaders have a whiff of any proposed Central action to partly mollify the SASS? We should know it shortly. Any Congress hope to do well in the coming polls rests on the backing it is able to muster in this region. The party is lost in a maze which is entirely of its own making. Never before has Jammu reacted as angrily as it is doing at this juncture on the land allotment controversy. It has shown remarkable restraint in the face of militant violence after 1988 justifiably drawing wide praise for its exemplary conduct which is marked by harmonious human ties.

The ongoing stir too is not motivated by communal overtones. Those who are accusing it of being communal are the people who themselves are exposed to the charge of hobnobbing with fundamentalists on more than one occasion. How can one explain their role in triggering the current storm and their silence along with the complicity of some of them during the exodus of a minority community from the Kashmir region?