For 150 years now, the Shri Ratneshwar Mahadev Temple has been the center of spirituality and festivity for the Hindu worshipers living in this southern Pakistani city. More than 25,000 pilgrims, coming from all parts of the country, gather here every year for a grand, spiritual festival. Yet this Hindu temple is now under threat. Just a stone’s throw away, property tycoon Malik Riaz is constructing the country’s future tallest building — a large commercial plaza. To ease the flow of traffic near the project, a flyover and an underpass are also being built.
While Riaz and builders say this project will be beneficial to all Karachi citizens, Hindus depict it as yet another assault on their faith — a minority religion, in a Muslim-majority country. The community fears their sacred underground temple is too fragile to survive the surrounding heavy drilling.
“Our places of worship have regularly been targeted,” said Hemat Kumar, a Hindu. “But we have remained peaceful so far, hoping that some sense would prevail.’’ According to him, this project is clearly an attack on their faith.
The Hindu Council, along with human rights activists, have organized several protests to denounce the building of the skyscraper in Karachi. “You don’t see new temples and churches coming up in this country, only mosques,” said Zohra Yusuf, the chairperson of the non-governmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
“There is a greater responsibility for the majority, Muslims, to protect such places of worship.” Hindus make up less than 3% of Pakistan’s nearly 180 million population.
Tensions between Muslims and Hindus
The community took the matter to the court, which had already ordered builders to halt the construction, at least temporarily. Yet after an appeal, the court allowed the project to resume.
The building developer, Bahria Foundation, is convinced that the construction of this commercial plaza is crucial to Karachi’s “prosperity”. It promises the temple won’t be harmed. “We are trying to change the construction design so that the temple won’t be damaged,” said Muhammad Irshad, one of the engineers working on the project.
Devotees worshipping at Shri Ratneshwar Mahadev Temple
Yet besides construction matters, several Hindu temples have been under attack in recent months in Pakistan. The community’s places of worship in the cities of Larkana, Hyderabad and Mithi were recently attacked by Muslim groups. They were “taking revenge” for the alleged insult to Islam during the Hindu Holi festival.
Worshipers at the Shri Ratneshwar Mahadev Temple have no confidence whatsoever in the state. One of them, Shakeel, says all they can do is pray for God’s help.
Hemat Kumar is also convinced that, even if the temple survives all the drilling and digging, the opening of a huge commercial complex will make it difficult for people to access the temple. “It’s happened before with another temple,” Kumar said. “We kept shouting but nothing happened, and now one can easily access that temple anymore. The same thing is going to happen here.”
Outside the temple, construction work is now in full swing. The developer wants to build Pakistan’s next tallest building within a few months.
This is fr sure, the Temple will be demolished by hook or crook. This has hapenned umpteen no. of times there. Hihdus are not a vote bank, nobody cares. Pity!!!!
Simple.. just shift the temple, with proper rituals. GOD is everywhere.
This will prevent lot of tensions and maybe lot of probable violence in future.
In India many times old temples are shifted for various reaosns, environmental, political, religious.
This, of course has to be done, with proper approval & blessings of the deity / GOD who communicates thru’ learned pandits and other means.
Whole Planet is Bharata varsha, land of Bharata king who was Vishnu’s bhakta and the same time he was great sovereign ruler, rajarisi.
Giresh, how come you are suggesting that the hindu temple can be shifted easily, whilst the mosque next to next to Krishna Janam Bhumi or any other mosques can’t be moved! This is the kind of thinking by Indian Hindus that had India under foreign rule for hundreds of years. God has put his hand and now for the first time an Indian,(Modi) is ruling India since Prithivi Raj Chauhan.The other P.M’s were either heavily influenced by non Indians or ruled by an Italian!
Jai Hind.
Who cares about minority in Islamic world…sooner or later it will be demolished, know for sure.
Unless there are more public discussions on the importance of temple worshipping and idol worshipping, so that the muslim community may understand the significance and also importance of several kinds of vedic sacrifices, for all material prosperity and peace in the world, situation may not change. It requires only knowing without themselves involving in it. Because, according to ‘Agamas’, ( of ‘Shaiva’, ‘Vaishnava’, ‘Shaakta’, ‘Gaanapatya’ and ‘Soura’) Temple worshipping, and vedic sacrifices are to be performed by Brahmins only, as the Vedic rituals, have no territorial restrictions and they are meant for welfare of world community. If they destroy it is ultimately for their disadvantage only. If I quote scriptural quotations, the comments will be too long. Hence muslim community must realize their folly, in destroying Hindu temples. It is all only matter of ignorance.
No human rights in Pakistan?
Why are Hindus so complaisant about Hindu Temples being destroyed. Whereas, whole hell breaks loose when Hindus try to reclaim their most holiest shrine in Ayodhya where there was a unused broken down Mosque. It was world news and nobody cared about the fact that the most sacred original Temple there was destroyed by the muslims to begin with. Most mosques worldwide were built on the sacred land where there existed a church or temple.
The shopping complex can be moved to another place. This is easy because it is the new thing being constructed. It is the most logical thing. If necessary, it can be connected to downtown by high speed rail or subway!
See what has been done to the ruins of Sharada Mutt close to the LOC. It is close to Srinagar and housed a lot of Hindus. This is where Adishankara and Sri Ramanuja went to get the Brahma Sutras. They could write bhashyas (commentaries) on these Sutras only after discussions with the scholars who resided in these areas. See what happened to the Nalanda University. If there has to be a revival of thought, we need an international undertaking and acute awareness.
Hindu Temples being destroyed in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan is no news, Hindus trying to reclaim their most holiest shrine in Ayodhya was a world news. Wow!