Hindu Unity March Halted in Spate of India Violence

Police on Saturday halted a motorcade by right-wing Hindus who had sought to carry their anti-terror, anti-separatism protest into the heart of Kashmir, scene of a Muslim insurrection.

Muslim separatists had vowed to kill protest leaders if they tried to carry out their goal of hoisting the Indian flag today--the country’s independence day--in Srinagar, capital of Jammu-Kashmir state.

Hindu nationalist leader Murli Manohar Joshi, who was leading the procession, was flown by military aircraft to Srinagar, members of his Bharatiya Janata Party said.

The six-week, 9,000-mile Unity March was only 18 hours from completing its journey when police stopped it.

On Friday, Muslim guerrillas in Srinagar attacked a meeting of top police and paramilitary officials discussing security plans for the march. A constable was killed and 10 people were wounded.

On Thursday, Sikh militants in neighboring Punjab state opened fire with automatic weapons on buses carrying an advance party of Hindu unity marchers, killing five and injuring at least 16.

Government officials had warned marchers earlier that they were “easy targets” as they pushed northward through rebel-infested areas toward Srinagar.

The motorcade was halted peacefully but noisily Saturday 2 1/2 miles north of Udampur, 150 miles from Srinagar, where the road starts winding up into the mountains separating mostly Hindu Jammu from overwhelmingly Muslim Kashmir.

Joshi left the motorcade and went with security officials to the military airstrip at Udampur for the flight on to Srinagar.

The Jammu region’s senior police official said that heavy rains had triggered landslides, blocking the road.

However, a senior official in Udampur District told an Associated Press reporter: “We cannot allow Mr. Joshi to go ahead due to security reasons.”

The Bharatiya Janata Party is the second-largest in Parliament after Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao’s secular Congress-I Party.