The BJP has said it would not rake up the matter of the Amarnath shrine and the Ram Setu as issues in the coming Assembly elections in three states.

"Amarnath land dispute and Ram Setu are not political matters and BJP will not make them political issues in the coming elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan," BJP National Spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

"Both the issues are the matter of faith of the crores of people in the country and as such BJP respects the places of faith of all religions," he said.

"The Congress-led UPA is involved in talking lightly of Hindu religion, whether it is Lord Rama or Ram Setu. But we are asking those people, do they have guts to talk in the same fashion against other religion or their Gods," Prasad said.

Terming the agitation on Amarnath shrine land dispute as a fight between nationalist versus separatists, he said ISI was spreading misinformation that only Hindus are opposing the land cancellation issue.

Yesterday, 15 lakh people from various religions were arrested from all over the country demanding giving land to the shrine board, Prasad said.

The JKLF leader, who had been on a hunger strike for five days from Aug 5 onwards to protest the "economic blockade" by Jammu, said that the entire valley "was being used to enable Hindu pilgrims camp and Muslims would dutifully offer their services for the peaceful conclusion of the pilgrimage".

"Even during the current crisis the pilgrimage concluded peacefully," he said from his home in Maisuma near the city centre Lal Chowk.

Describing the Amarnath row as a "tip of iceberg", he said: "New Delhi is adamant to overlook the writing on the wall. Kashmiris are fighting for their rights and their identity."

Regretting the violence over the issue, he added that the issue needed to be looked at "from a conflict paradigm not just through the prism of statecraft".

"I had warned India and Pakistan that the anger in Kashmiris has not died. It was hidden there and now it has erupted like a volcano."

"The Indian government," he said, "mistook the silence in Kashmir as a return of peace."

Stressing that dialogue was the only way out, he asserted that the authorities avoided serious talks with the Kashmiris and now the result was before them.

"India and Pakistan sooner or later will have to talk to the Kashmiris and solve the dispute. Our aspirations have to be taken into consideration."

Malik had a round of talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 during which he advocated inclusion of Kashmiris in the India-Pakistan dialogue over the state, which is ruled in parts but claimed in full by the two South Asian nuclear-armed neighbours.