Ancient Hindu (Durga Mata) temple faces destruction in Pakistan

Source Rediff news
Thursday ,March 17, 2011

(Photo : Murti of Durga Mata on top of a hill in Nagarparkar in Tharparkar district of Sindh, Pakistan)

Sindh : A historical temple of Durga Mata in Pakistan's Sindh district may be destroyed within a month, thanks to the apathy of authorities

The demolition of Hindu temples in Pakistan for the construction of parks, schools etc is a common phenomenon in Pakistan.

In the latest such incident, some contractors have started digging granite stones at the base of a hill, on top of which a historical temple of Durga Mata is located, in Sindh district. Despite opposition by local Hindus, the digging work is going ahead and the temple may be completely demolished within a month.

(Photo : Contractors are digging up the area around the temple, Pakistan)

The ancient temple is located on top of a hill in Nagarparkar in Tharparkar district of Sindh. A number of Hindu and Jain temples are located in Nagarparkar and its surrounding areas. Most of them date back to 2,000 to 2,500 years.

Instead of trying to put a stop to the digging activity, the Sindh government has issued a lease to a contractor to carry out the work.

Veerjhi Kohli, caretaker of the temple, told rediff.com, "The way the work of blasting is going on, the temple will be demolished within a month. The hill (on which the temple is located) is going to be dug up from all sides, how will the temple survive? The demolition of the temple shows how helpless Hindus living in Pakistan.

 (Photo : Contractors' machines at the base of the hill, Pakistan)

Veerjhi added, "Some two lakh pilgrims visited the Durga Mata temple during Shivratri. The pilgrims had protested the destruction and urged the government to stop the work, but to no avail. The work was halted during the festival but now it has resumed again."

The Pakistani media also doesn't highlight the destruction of temples, laments Veerjhi, adding that it doesn't focus on the plight of Hindus in the country.

"Neither any TV channel nor any leading newspaper reported our protests. After such incidents, we Hindus feel alienated in Pakistan," he told rediff.com.

Hindu activists have approached local political figures and other concerned authorities but none of them have offered to help. "We were shocked by the district coordination officer's remark, who said the temple was safe and there was no risk to it from the digging," Veerjhi said.

Watch below vedio of Durga Mata Temple Village Choryo taluka Nagarparkar, District Tharparkar, Sindh, Pakistan

NOTE : Hindus are indigious people of Pakistan and Hindu temples and thier culture is part of Pakistan's cultural heritage. Hence all Pakistanis, especially Muslim Pakistanis should help preserve this....Hindu population is small and helpless...it is easy to trample it but doing so is both against humanity and against idea Quaid-e-Azam himself has espoused. 

The Pakistani Hindus forgotten prayers of a people

By Sadef A. Kully
Sunday, January 23, 2011 

(Photo : A Hindu woman arranges earthern lamps near to Hindu Goddesses to celebrate ‘Diwali’ the festival of lights, at her home in Lahore, Pakistan on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009. Hindus living in Pakistan are celebrating Diwali where people decorate their homes with light)

KARACHI :  The legend is almost as old as the Indus River, Lord Shiva and his consort Sati, daughter of King Dakhsha, were vexed by Sati’s father for not inviting them for a ceremony. Sati went to the ceremony uninvited and in return was ignored. She was hurt by the behavior that she sacrificed herself in the fires and was burnt alive. Upon hearing the fate of his love, Lord Shiva went mad and began chaos on earth.

In order to help Lord Shiva deal with his grief, Lord Vishnu cut Sati’s body in 12 pieces and scattered them across the earth where her head fell upon Hingol. Wherever the pieces of Sati’s body fell became Shakti Peethas, holy places of cosmic power, for all gods and worshippers.

Hingol is not a legend – as a matter of fact – today it is known as Hingol National Park and lies almost 170 km outside of Karachi in Balochistan. Sati’s head fell by Hinglaj Matajee Temple located inside a natural cave of a hill which is a holy pilgrimage site for the 2.5 million Hindus in Pakistan, although many feel the numbers have doubled in the last decade, and more than 90 per cent of them live in the Sindh province.

Hindus are the third religious group, after Muslim and Christians, and Hinduism is considered the indigenous religion of the sub-continent by local and international historians, which is not far from the truth.

There are over 40 Hindu temples across Pakistan, and in Sindh alone there are almost 30 temples in Karachi and interior Sindh.

Many Hindu families are indigenous to the land and some claim to have been for centuries. Over the centuries, empire after empire, some families facing persecution converted to Islam but others have remained Hindus.

“The Hindu community is not protected here,” said Dr. Raj Motwani, a general physician who sits as the Vice President for Shree Ratneshwar Mahadev Welfare Shewa Mandly, a committee for the Hindu community in Karachi.  “I remember that Lee Market, Bolton Market, Nagam Colony, and Food Street belonged to Hindu families that lived there for decades before Pakistan’s existence.”

“We never left this land – people migrated here,” he said. “We are still here – fighting for what we deserve as humans.”

During the 1947 partition, almost 15 million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims left Pakistan for India and vice versa but some families stayed behind because they considered the land in Pakistan their home. More than half a million people died during the migration.

“Everyone knows the truth, but we cannot speak it out loud,” he said. “The minute that we speak up – we are automatically accused of being part of an enemy intelligence agency and we can get questioned without any legal support.”

Most Hindus families come from lower class backgrounds and those that live in rural areas like interior Sindh are forced into bonded labour by influential landlords. In the past few years, kidnappings have increased among the Hindus, for ransom and women, who are kidnapped and then convert to Islam, have been reported but with no real legal repercussions from the local government.

“The Hindu community is not protected here,” repeated Dr. Motwani. “The converting is explainable; once a girl is kidnapped the men have their way with her and she knows that she won’t be accepted back into her community so she converts and becomes a servant- girl for the men or the family that kidnapped her – tragic but the culture in interior Sindh is traditional, especially when it comes to women.”

The constitution clearly states that religious minorities have many rights and freedom however in the political system Hindus, Christians and Sikhs are still treated as second-class citizens.

After General Pervez Musharraf took power, he wanted to remove the separate electorate system put in place by the former dictator General Ziaul-Haq.

The separate electorate system limited non-Muslims to only vote for candidates from their own religion – the government had a reserved number of seats for minorities in the provincial and national assemblies.

General Musharraf and many others felt that it limited Muslim candidates from reaching out to minority groups to solve the major problem in their communities. He was thwarted in his efforts and many minorities felt that the removal of the policy would not have made a difference in their communities. 

“I have friends of all faiths in Pakistan – friendships made up of decades,” mentioned Dr. Motwani. “But that is not the problem – the system is the problem; a small example, the Hindu Gymkhana has finally been given back to us after so many years spent in court yet the management is Muslim and we still do not have a safe place to congregate and celebrate our holidays. Who do I go to for help? a MPA or an MNA – not possible.”

Since the recent attack on the Shah Ghazi Shrine, the security at mandirs across Karachi has tightened but it has not stopped Hindu worshippers from making their offerings to their gods and goddesses who wait patiently for their prayers of better days ahead.

Pakistan: 4 more Hindu villages deliberately flooded

By Krishna Jaipal (PHP Lahore)
Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Islamabad – It is something that adds to the tragedy of suffering and frustration of the flooding: the poor villages, many of which are inhabited by Christian and Hindu citizens, are deliberately flooded. The flow of the floods is being diverted by dams and artificial barriers erected to save the lands of large landowners and notables. The occurrence that was denounced by Fides two days ago (see Fides 31/08/2010) is now finding further confirmation in new episodes that NGOs working in the area continue to report to Fides, as well as in the complaints being made by intellectuals and diplomats in Pakistan. Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Pakistan's ambassador to the UN, has confirmed to BBC that there was evidence that landowners had allowed embankments to burst and that the waters were diverted into defenseless villages of poor farmers. The diplomat has called for an official government investigation into the matter.

Fides, after the sad experience of the Christian village of Khokharabad near Multan (leaving 15 dead and 377 homeless), collected the dramatic testimonies of displaced persons from four villages in the province of Sindh: Mirpur Bathoro, Jati, Dharo, and Laiqpur, inhabited by Christian and Hindu minorities. The villages are located near the town of Sajawal, a densely populated area in the district of Thatta, 80 km from Karachi, which has been strongly affected by flooding in recent days. The people of these villages have received notice from the local civilian authorities to move urgently into other surrounding areas given the arrival of the water, which came with force: the houses of neighboring villages and fields were destroyed and over 2,800 families, both Christian and Hindu, are homeless and landless, in misery. The waters came as a result of an artificial diversion, built to save the agricultural estates belonging to powerful landowners who convinced - and some say in a corrupt manner - local officials to divert the course of water and save their land.

The head of the village of Jati said: "Once again the strength of the powerful crushes the poor. We Christians and Hindus in this area of Sindh are treated like animals; we do not receive any recognition from the government." Another villager said: "We are more than 2,800 families with no food, no water, no home. We are desperate."

Another case that has come to the attention of Fides is the area of Jacobabad, also in Sindh: the outskirts of the city were flooded by a system for diverting waters in order to save the city of Shikarpur. Villagers in the area have vigorously protested to the authorities for such operations.