Recently Vishva Hindu Parishad‘s international General Secretory Ahmedabad’ Dr. Pravin Togadia addressed a press conference in Ahmedabad. One of the main issues he highlighted in this press conference was Amarnath yatra land issue. Audio of his Amarnath yatra land issue statement is given above via player. Following is rough text of his statement on Anarnath yatra land issue converted in English:

“Issue is not just limited to a pilgrimage, issue is not just limited to 200 acres of land. Muslims’ movement that not even a single Hindu can step in Kashmir valley is the issue. If Kashmir valley is part of India, then why India’s Hindus can not go to baba Amarnath for darshan? In 90s they kicked out all Hindus from Kashmir valley. beside Army and police, no Hindus were left in a valley. But because of baba Amarnath yatra Hindus continued to be connected with Kashmir valley. However even in that Amarnath Yatra only 5-10,000 people used to go from some limited northern parts of India including Jammu Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. In year 1995, terrorists organizations announced a threat call to call off the Amarnath yatra or be ready to face bullets. We accepted this challenge and said to the people across India to join Amarnath yatra for darshan of Baba Amarnath. 1 lakh Bajarangdal activists followed this and accepted the challenge. They rushed from all over India including small villages to join Amarnath yatra. From next year onwards lakhs of people started to join Amarnath pilgrimage. Earlier there were just 10,000 pilgrims for yatra, now there were over 1 lakh pilgrims every year. Yatra became All India since then. Till now 8 lakh people have completed Amarnath yatra.

Muslims of Kashmir and their government were not ready to organize the arrangements for yatra. In 2002 there was a snow storm and 159 pilgrims died. Even yesterday there was a cloud burst at 11 in night and 50 tents were drowned. People thought that there should be some proper arrangement for yatra. In 2002 government of Jammu and Kashmir came up with a law to form Amarnath Shrine Board which was an autonomous body with all Hindu members and governor as a president. Hindus’ crores of Rs. were available for the betterment of yatra but for proper arrangements there should be a land. However land was in possession of J&K forest department. J&K Government was not ready to hand over the land. In 2002, on the bases of suo-moto case, Jammu & Kashmir high court ordered to give permission to the shrine board for usage of the land for 2 months with condition to follow all environment laws properly. Implementation of this decision happened only in year 2008 lately, before 6 months from now. And this land was not given for free of coast to Hindus. I am a tax payer. Each Muslim is given 22500 Rs. for Hajj by the government. These Rs. goes from our tax payers pockets. On the contrary,we Hindus go to Amarnath yatra bearing all expenses from our pocket not from Muslims pocket. Jammu & Kashmir government which is controlled by Muslims charged 2 crore 31 lakh Rs. from Amarnath board for usage of the 200 acres of land for just two months. Nations doesn’t know this. Hindus were kind enough and even willing to give this sum for the sack of proper arrangements of pilgrimage. But Muslims said they would not give even an inch of the land. Before 5,000 years Kauravs had said the same……..we will not tolerate any nonsense of Muslims. We would not let Muslims mulla maulvis decide whether we should go on Amarnath pilgrimage or not, we would decide fate of our pilgrimages. We would decide where we would go and where not, where we would stay and where not and we would not let Omar Abdulla, Mehbooba Mufti or Pakistan’s agents to decide this. And if Muslims start to decide fate of our pilgrimage then we would decide fate of Hajj pilgrimage, whether we should allow muslims to step in Ajmer, etc. things. Jammu is fighting, Jammu is burning….They are obstructing us to join Amarnath pilgrimage, they are disturbing Vaishnavdevi pilgrimage….”