‘Militants have crossed the red line by attacking the Amarnath pilgrims’ headlines screamed, and the verbal condemnation of the massacre of Hindu pilgrims by different factions of Kashmir’s separatist outfits was celebrated by politicians as a symbol of that elusive entity, Kashmiriyat.

The sad truth is that the Hindu pilgrims and pilgrim centres have been under constant attack by Islamist terrorists for quite a long time. The terrorists have been carrying out these murderous attacks on Hindu pilgrim centres and pilgrims as part of a larger theo-terror-politics dictum of ‘striking terror into the heart of the infidels’.

From the very beginning of the Kashmir insurgency, sacred places have been targeted by terrorists. The Hindu temples that withstood the attacks and agonies throughout history and remained standing were subjected to systematic attacks by Islamists. A report dated 18 February 1993 in a Times of India Group newspaper cited information from the Home Ministry to reveal that 36 temples were attacked in 1986, eight in 1988, 12 in 1989, eight in 1990, five in 1991.



In 2002, Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya were killed in Godhra.



On 30 March 2002, a Fiyadeen attack was carried out at Jammu’s Raghunath Temple, where 11 Hindus were killed.



In September 2002, two terrorists stormed Gujarat’s Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple complex and killed 30, including children, who were captured and executed.



In 2005, the makeshift Ram temple in Ayodhya was attacked by Islamist terrorists. The terrorists killed one innocent person before being eliminated.



In 2006, bomb blasts ripped apart Varanasi – one of the most sacred of pilgrim centres for the Hindus. It killed 26 people and left 101 injured. A Lashkar clone outfit ‘Lashkar-e Qahab’ claimed responsibility for the heinous crime. In 2010, another bomb blast hit Varanasi, with the Indian Mujahedeen (IM) claiming responsibility this time. Of the two killed in this attack, one was a child.

All these attacks show that targeting sacred sites of the Hindus have always been part of the Jihadist strategy. These attacks have involved elaborate planning, and the killings inside the sacred precincts have always had an element of added cruelty. An India Today report of the 2002 Akshardham attack based on eye-witness accounts has this to say: