The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Srinagar

The crowd's hostility was unmistakable. Each time they passed Indian soldiers, thousands chanted the name of one of South Asia's most violent Islamic groups.

"India, your death will come. Lashkar will come," they chanted, harking back to the early 1990s when militants from groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba roamed this predominantly Muslim region's towns and villages and even Kashmir's peaceful separatists openly defied New Delhi.

Those days seem more like the present than the past in Kashmir, where a dispute over 99 acres of land for a Hindu shrine has prompted protests by hundreds of thousands, reviving the separatist movement and threatening to further undermine the India-Pakistan peace process.

While the militants may still be underground, a new generation of Muslim Kashmiris has loudly taken up the separatists' old slogan of "azadi" - freedom - from Hindu-majority India, long viewed by many here as an occupying power.

The latest and largest protest came Friday as an estimated 200,000 people streamed into central Srinagar, shutting down this city once famed for its cool summer weather and sweeping Himalayan panoramas.

They chanted "Death to India!" and "We want freedom!" while soldiers and police kept their distance, hoping to avoid a repeat of clashes that have killed at least 34 people in recent weeks.

Such scenes have pierced the notion, widely held throughout India just months ago, that a semblance of normal life was returning to Kashmir after 19 years of rebellion. Militant attacks were down, separatist politicians appeared sidelined and tourists were back lounging on houseboats on Srinagar's Dal Lake.

That is all gone now, pushed aside by the anger at Indian rule that many here say was subsumed but never extinguished.

"This is a freedom movement, a people's movement," said Salman Ahmed, a 27-year-old protester. "We are united to fight India until we get freedom."

The timing could not be worse. Divided between India and Muslim Pakistan, Kashmir lies at the heart of their rivalry. The unrest is straining already tense relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who have fought two wars over Kashmir.