Srinagar: For Mira Ghati, coming to Kashmir — which she ecstatically calls ‘heaven on earth’ — and visiting the Sri Shankaracharya temple, was just a dream till a few years ago. “It feels surreal,” she tells ThePrint, as she stands in the queue a few metres away from the shrine after climbing 243 steps, Friday, the day of Maha Shivratri.
Shankaracharya temple, the oldest temple in Kashmir, dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva and situated on the Shankaracharya Hill, 1,000 feet above the valley, is all decked up.
Its passage is embellished with vibrant yellow flowers and colourful lights.
As thousands of devotees from across the country wait in line to visit the sacred shrine, hymns for Shiva reverberate through the air.
“This is surreal. I can’t explain how I feel. I can’t believe I am here,” says Ghati, who hails from Nagpur, Maharashtra, and is visiting Kashmir with her family of eight.
“We have been planning to come here for so long but could never muster the courage due to the security scenario. I did not think I would be able to visit this heaven on earth in this lifetime, but I feel extremely lucky now,” she adds.
“There is so much security around, so many tourists are here, all this instils confidence. I will tell all my friends to visit now.”
Speaking to ThePrint, one of the security personnel deployed at the temple says the crowd at the temple has been growing each year since the normalcy began to return to the valley following the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019.
“We have not seen such crowds in years. If this is not an indicator of normalcy then what is,” he asks.
He adds that the Sri Shankaracharya temple has always been a popular place of worship, but security personnel hadn’t seen such a mixed crowd comprising Indians from across the country for many years until now.
“It is after a long time that this has revived. And the crowds are swelling each year. Till last year, 10,000 to 15,000 people visited a month, now the numbers are 25,000 to 30,000 visitors a month,” he says.
In his first visit to Kashmir since the abrogation of Article 370, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday inaugurated developmental projects worth Rs 5,000 crore and also attended the ‘Viksit Bharat, Viksit Jammu Kashmir’ programme.
While addressing a public meeting he said that Srinagar is making big strides in tourism and this does not only help Jammu and Kashmir but the entire country.
After landing at a helipad near Shankaracharya Hill, he also posted a few pictures of himself folding his hands and bowing before the hill.
Upon reaching Srinagar a short while ago, had the opportunity to see the majestic Shankaracharya Hill from a distance. pic.twitter.com/9kEdq5OgjX
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 7, 2024
He told his audience that the Union Territory had touched “new heights of development because Jammu and Kashmir is breathing freely today”.
“This freedom from restrictions has come after the abrogation of Article 370,” he added.
J&K Lieutenant-Governor Manoj Sinha, who was present on stage along with Modi at Srinagar’s Bakshi stadium, credited Modi for turning Kashmir into an “abode of peace” where people now “wear smiles on their faces”.
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‘Decline in terror, we feel safe’
Vinod Kumar, a farmer from Haryana who was at the Shankaracharya temple on Maha Shivratri along with his friends, says the perception of Kashmir has “changed” for them.
Earlier they associated Kashmir with “militancy, terror, bullets and bombs” but now they feel it is a “safe place”.
“We used to be scared to plan a trip, but when we saw the news about so many tourists going, we were convinced that times have changed and the valley is now peaceful. After coming here and roaming around for a few days, we are convinced that it is safe. We feel safe,” Kumar tells ThePrint.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who was in Jammu in January to launch an e-bus service, had said that terrorism-related incidents had declined by 70 percent since the abrogation of Article 370. He had also talked of an 81 percent decline in civilian deaths and a 48 percent decrease in the death of security personnel in the valley.
Shah said there were 2,654 incidents of organised stone-pelting in Kashmir in 2010, which were reduced to zero in 2023. He added that there were 132 incidents of organised strikes in Kashmir in 2010, while not a single such event took place in 2023.
He gave a few other statistics as well: 112 civilians had died in stone-pelting in 2010, but that number was zero in 2023; those injured in 2010 were 6,235, while not a single person was hurt last year.
Data available with J&K Police also indicate that incidents of terrorism, stone-hurling and deaths of civilians and security personnel have been on a constant decline since the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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