Faced with a crisis following the withdrawal of the People's Democratic Party from the Congress-led ruling coalition, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned without going through the vote of confidence he had tabled. The fall of the Congress-PDP coalition, the first of its kind in J&K, is a major setback to the cause of moderation and political reconciliation. This is only one of the casualties extracted by the crisis over the transfer of forest land to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB), and the violent protests over the transfer and its reversal by Governor NN Vohra. The crisis has taken an even greater toll through an eclipse of the political normalisation and internal peace process in Indian Kashmir and a possible revival of militant separatism--and a general shift towards intolerance and assertion of religion-based or communal identities. The gains of the past six years--a substantial decline in violence by jehadi separatists and by the security forces, economic revival amidst a tourism boom, increasing isolation of strident extremism, and a general acceptance of mainstream political activity and electoral politics--are now in jeopardy. In Kashmir, the biggest winners from the crisis are the Hurriyat hardliners led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who recently painted himself into a corner with his extremist positions. No less important gainers are the leaders of the moderate Hurriyat, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who moved from near-isolation and irrelevance to prominence by opposing the land transfer on the ground that it would lead to the Valley's demographic transformation. Nationally, the greatest gainer is the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has cynically exploited the issue to foment violent Hindu-communal protests in different parts of India. The protests' death-toll has crossed the double-digit mark. There are no heroes, only villains, in the land transfer drama. The greatest villain is former governor Lt-General SK Sinha, a BJP appointee, who just before his retirement on June 4 ordered the state to transfer 100 acres of forest land to the board of which is the president. This was to be used to provide temporary accommodation to pilgrims to the Amarnath cave, where an a stalactite of ice forms every year. The transfer was manifestly illegal and violated the Forest Conservation Act. Sinha has encouraged pilgrimage to this ecologically fragile area at an altitude of 10,000 feet, carved out a new route through the mountains, promoted various tourist facilities including a helicopter service, and extended the duration of the yatra from four to eight weeks every year--although the ice lingam lasts for only one month. The result has been a severalfold increase in the number of pilgrims to 400,000, and huge environmental destruction. The state forest minister, who belongs to the PDP, went along with this, including the land transfer. Also complicit was Deputy Chief Minister Muzaffar Baig, also of the PDP. The PDP falsely claimed it was blackmailed into agreeing to the transfer by the Congress which threatened to block the rebuilding of the old Mughal Road, to connect the Valley to Rajori and Poonch. When protests erupted over the transfer, the PDP executed a U-turn and presented itself as a helpless victim. The Congress should have removed Sinha long ago, but didn't. It succumbed to his pressure, and venally manipulated the state machinery. Such venality contributed in the past to the alienation of the Kashmiri people from the Indian state, and created grievances and injustices, which the separatists exploited with help from Pakistan's secret agencies. No less culpable was the National Conference, whose leader, Dr Farooq Abdullah, established the SASB in 2000, thus taking the pilgrimage's charge away from the Muslim family which had discovered the cave in the 1850s and looked after it. This was a case of the government wantonly interfering with what was a worthy instance of spontaneous Hindu-Muslim harmony and cooperation. As soon as protests erupted in the Valley over the land transfer, Hurriyat leaders--who have been marginalised ever since Gen Pervez Musharraf moved away from the azadi agenda and proposed autonomy for the different regions of J&K without redrawing borders--jumped into the fray. In recent weeks, they had even come around to a position of not opposing the coming Assembly elections. Rather than make a gesture of generosity to religious Hindus, in keeping with Kashmir's syncretic culture, Hurriyat leaders and JKLF chief Yasin Malik depicted the land transfer as a means of forcibly settling Hindus in the Valley and an assault on the Kashmiri identity. This was patently absurd given the tiny size of the plot and the makeshift structures being erected on it. They gave a religious-communal colour to the issue by organising processions to and from the Jama Masjid and the Hazratbal shrine. They also tried to present the protests as spontaneous eruptions of popular anger against India's Kashmir policy and the heavy presence of security forces. They wrongly maligned the peace process as a way of perpetuating the status quo. This was the Hurriyat's way of regaining its lost relevance. In reality, the protests were driven by the same narrow-minded and parochial motives as were evident in the earlier mob violence over the "sex scandal", in which vigilante squads rampaged and burnt down the house of a woman suspected to be at its centre. The protests caused great hardship to the public by disrupting the movement of food and fuel. The Valley protests polarised opinion and were replicated like a mirror-image in the Jammu region under the BJP's leadership. The BJP, true to type, has instigated violent protests in other parts of India by drumming up its favourite but utterly fraudulent argument of "Muslim appeasement" and "anti-Hindu prejudice" on the part the United Progressive Alliance. This is infusing sectarian divisiveness and communal poison into religious faith. All this might help hardline separatists in the Valley revive the jehadi militancy which has lost its popular appeal. Separatist militants can no longer recruit cadres. But if the present polarisation continues, this situation might change and Kashmir could soon return to the rule of the gun--with disastrous consequences for all of South Asia. A special responsibility now devolves on Vohra to use all the contacts he cultivated as the Centre's special envoy for the Kashmir dialogue. He must employ his experience as a former Home Secretary and all his skills of persuasion to stabilise the situation by acting in good faith. In particular, he must activate and accelerate the deliberations of the five Working Groups set up at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's initiative in 2006. These Groups are meant to deal with improving the centre's relations with J&K, furthering relations across the Line of Control, boosting J&K's economic development, rehabilitating destitute families and reviewing the cases of detainees, and ensuring good governance. However, it won't be enough to resume the domestic peace process. India must earnestly pursue the new round of dialogue with Pakistan, launched last month with the visit of Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to New Delhi. The two governments must quickly resolve the Siachen and Sir Creek disputes, liberalise visa regimes and expand economic cooperation. That's the best way of neutralising militant separatism in Kashmir.

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Praful Bidwai, a fellow of the Transnational Institute, is a senior Indian journalist, political activist and widely published commentator. He is a co-author (with Achin Vanaik) of New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament.