Hindu temple, Muslim priests

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Glad to see the secular fabric of Kashmir still alive :k:

The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Main News

(Mamal) Pahalgam, May 4
This is a place where politicians need to come and take a few lessons in secularism. After militancy forced Hindus to migrate from the Kashmir valley in the 1990s, Muslims have been acting as “priests” and “caretakers” of the ancient Mamalaka Temple on the outskirts of Pahalgam.

Not only has this 900-year-old Shiva temple with a two-foot “shivaling” been preserved in its original form, Mohammad Abdullah and Ghulam Hassan have ensured that all these years the temple did not go without “parshad” or “aarti” even for a single day. Besides the regular rituals, a daily prayer is held here in which the Muslim priests pray for the return of the Hindus, who had migrated.

Built on the right bank of the Lidder river by Raja Jai Suria (1128-1155 AD), the 8 sq ft temple was a popular destination for everyone on a pilgrimage to the Amarnath cave shrine. Till 1990, the temple, a property of the Jammu and Kashmir State Archaeology, Archives and Museum Department and a protected monument, had Pandit Radha Krishan, who hailed from Ganeshpora, responsible for its maintenance.

But with militancy rising in the 1990s, Pandit Radha Krishan was made to leave along with other Hindus of the area, abandoning the temple. Initially, Abdul Bhatt, who was close to Pandit Radha Krishan, looked after the temple for many years. Bhatt was transferred from the area about five years ago and ever since Mohammad Abdullah and Ghulam Hassan, both employees of the government, were entrusted the task of maintaining the building and its surrounding. However, not satisfied by merely keeping the temple clean, the two have ensured that the temple remains fully functional despite threats from the militants. The temple continues to be preserved in its original form in its eight-by-eight premises. It houses the entire family of Lord Shiva comprising Ganesha, Mata Parvati and Hanuman carved in stone. Besides, the temple has a natural spring that fills the holy pond.

According to Abdullah, during the last two-three years, the number of Hindu devotees to the temple has increased slightly. These include some visiting Hindu families that left the area as well as tourists, who know about the place.

Talking to The Tribune, he said, “We have guarded this place for the Hindus. It is their “amanat”. But now the situation has improved. We want that a Hindu priest should take over this holy place. Being Muslims, we tried to do whatever best we could to keep the temple functional, but it should ideally be run by a Hindu priest”. Further Abdullah and Hassan say their daily prayer includes a special mention to the Hindus when they say, “Lord, the heaven on earth is here in the valley. Please facilitate the return of our Hindu brothers from the hell outside”.

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Re: Hindu temple, Muslim priests

At the same time over night in 1989-90 more than 600 small and big temples that dotted the valley disappeared..
It would take a lot to cleanse that kind of communallism than this gesture.

Incidentally noone in media talks about it and one ram temple in ayodhya ( thanks to babur's shenangians of past) they just go on and on and on about it

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Re: Hindu temple, Muslim priests

^ Thats true. However, there are good & bad apples in every society. I would not use a few bad examples to paint an entire community with :) Its a fact that a majority of Kashmiris are secular like most other Indians, and its good to see that terrorists have not dented that secular spirit.

As for your second point, Hindu bashing is a favorite past time for our media :p We need to learn to live with it.

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Re: Hindu temple, Muslim priests

^Indian army with its latest rape in shopian shows that no one but Indian brutality is the reason why Kashmiris do not want Indian rule. No wonder why India does not want plebescite.

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Re: Hindu temple, Muslim priests

^ Pls stay on topic. There are many other threads discussing "Indian brutality" in Kashmir where you can post your rants.

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It's next to impossible for a few bad apples to drive away whole community.> let us not lie there was collective participation on parts of valley muslim.> They either actively participated in it or looked elsewhere or gave their silent nod..
Omar Abdullah rightly acknowledged recently that when pandits were being driven out of valley when from mosque minarets call for leacing the valley a but leaving behind their women came no ssocalled silent good guys even mildly protested..

Trust me it's impossible for a few bad apples to achieve what was achieved which is coomplete ethnic cleansing..

There are few bad apples in Gujrat too still there is no ethnic cleansing reaspon it;s impossible for few bad apples to do ethnic cleansing..

There are few bad apples everywhere I would say yet there never happened any ethnic cleansing of any minority population anywhere else in India

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Don;t rush to judgement this army bashing has become nice excuse.. fact is if that turns out to be true culrpit will be punsihed and no our presidnet is npot going to go to USA and claim so and so calimed to be raped for VISA.. or I know who is the perpetrator and there is danger to the victim;s family and they must leave pakistan.. Rang a bell certain musharraf came up with these pearls..

Rape happens it happened recently in New Delhi.. noone is denying it but there is proper court to address these issues ..

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Re: Hindu temple, Muslim priests

^THis is not the first time women have been raped in Kashmir and culprits have seldom been punished. Same will go on this time.

And FACT is that you Indians were asked to give Kashmiris right of self determination, that you have been denying all along.

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Omar Abdullah is a worthless Indian puppet, and an apologist for Indian terrorism in Kashmir, but even he knows what really happened:

His father, an equally worthless Indian puppet, also agrees:

Regarding the original post: unlike our Indian neighbors to the South, Kashmiris actually know what secularism is.

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Re: Hindu temple, Muslim priests

i am in the identity game janab

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Nonsense I have seen culprits getting punsihed India judiciary has huge backlog and eventual verdict may take time but justice gets delivered eventually

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lame excuse there has been communal riots in other parts of India nowhere else govt felt the need to move people or nowhere else sustained ethnic cleansing slogan were given from temple/mosque minarets..

Jagmohan did what he had to do to save lives of people otherise many more pandits wud have bene butchered many more raped..

If ti was not their muslims neighbours then rpay tell me what stops these muslims neighbours of kashmirir pandits from handing over the illegally occupied property to the rightful owners and welcoming them..

Even today the moment someone talks about return they get hounded..

Face the fact: No where in India despite presence of some problmeatic elements complete ethnic cleansing have been achieved..... It only happend in kashmir so I am inclined to believe what omar Abdullah says..
Of course now he is Cm he will do some tight rope walking and spin doctoring of hsi words but in one moment of conscience he spilled the beans..

Kashmirir muslims are were and will remain solely reposnsivle for the ethnic cleansing of pandits..

Another no matter what the cost they can keep dreaming ,if at all they do dream about separate kadhmir (given separtists leader lost his deposits I have my doubts) it's never going to happen..
Kashmir belongs to kashmirri pandits even before advent of islam they have been livign there since thousands of years .. You can't expect sympathy after ethnic purging ..

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Firstly, where is your proof of this so called ethnic cleansing?
And second, hadnt we already established the fact that the so called ethnic cleansing was over exagerated by the Indian govt and the Pundis themselves?? Why do you keep trotting out the same lame duc arguments over and over?
Im starting to think that without this pundit ethnic cleansing in the valley card, you Indians would be left without a single card to play...

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Thank you for further demonstrating my point.

There have indeed been other communal riots. In Gujarat, Hindu mobs butchered between 1,000-2,000 Muslims in a matter of weeks, with government and police cooperation…still the overwhelming majority of Muslims did not flee the state. In New Delhi during the Partition riots, some 20,000 Muslims were killed off in a matter of 2-3 months. Still, the city wasn’t “ethnically cleansed” of Muslims. In fact, roughly 20% of the city’s Muslim population stayed behind after Partition.

Your own government estimates that a grand total of 209 Pandits have been killed in Kashmir from 1989-2008, and of them 109 in 1990 (when the bulk of the migration occured).

Tell me, how is it that massacres that were hundreds of times worse in terms of magnitude didn’t manage to prompt the kind of near universal exodus that we see among the Pandits. It simply reeks of government involvement. In fact, the only other place in the Subcontinent where we see such an overwhelming population transfer is in Punjab during Partition, where again there was clear government involvement as India forcibly expelled Muslims from East Punjab and Pakistan forcibly expelled Hindus and Sikhs from West Punjab in an effort to make room for incoming refugees.

And yet, every time their Muslim neighbors have been polled, they have overwhelmingly been in favor of the return of the Pandits.

Around 84 percent of people in Srinagar want to see the return of Kashmiri Pandits.

If anything, its your government that wants to keep the Pandits living like dogs…it helps rile up the masses (like yourself) and maintain support for ongoing suppression of the Kashmiri Muslim majority.

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You very conveniently quote “official” figures to undermine the number of Kashmir Pandits killed and displaced. However, you use “independent” estimates for the number of Muslims killed in Gujarat. Your hypocrisy & bigotry is amazing :hoonh:

According to official figures tabled in the parliament, slightly more than a thousand people were killed (790 Muslims and 254 Hindus) in the Gujarat violence after the train incident. Add to that the 59 Hindu pilgrims burnt alive by Muslim mobs.

Again, the difference between Gujarat & Kashmir is that Gujarat was a spontaneous reaction to the Godhra train carnage whereas in Kashmir there was a sustained effort by Pakistani terrorists and their local sympathizers to cleanse the valley of Kashmir Pandits.

Aaj Kiss Baat Par Gussa Aaya ??????
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LOL. How pathetic.

Have it your way…lets stick to official figures only. I’m sure you know that the government has officially declared the 230 or so missing persons dead…and while I haven’t seen a breakdown of missing people by religion, I think its safe to assume that roughly 75% of them were Muslim (as with the confirmed dead)…bringing the total Muslim death toll to 963, which I rounded up to about 1,000 in the original post.

In any case, despite your whining, by all accounts (even the official statistics) the massacres in Gujarat took place on a far greater magnitude than anything the Pandits suffered in Kashmir.

  1. The Gujarat violence was pre-planned and organized, and took place with governmental cooperation. At this point, it well established fact that the rioting mobs had been provided with voter registration and ration card records so they were better able to target Muslim homes and businesses. And the state police forces at best told terrified Muslims fleeing the carnage that they “had no orders to save you,” and at worst, openly participated in the massacres.

  2. As for Kashmir, its amazing how this “sustained effort” at ethnic cleansing was so successful despite the comparatively low casualties. 109 deaths over a year (back in 1990) accomplished what 20,000 killings over 2-3 months failed to do in New Delhi during Partition. And for all this talk of newspaper ads and fliers threatening Hindus and whatnot, no one thought to save a single sample to show the world…to this day, no one has been able to show me an original local newspaper clipping with one of those infamous, threatening ads.

In any case, going back to official Indian statistics, militants allegedly killed nearly three times as many Kashmiri Muslims as Pandits back in 1990. They certainly were targeting a specific group…that group being highly ranked officials in the occupation administration and other prominent supporters of the Indian occupation, regardless of religion.

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Subterfuge again :hoonh: As per official government figures, 790 Muslims were killed in Gujarat compared to 300 + Hindus. I am not sure how you get the 1000 - 2000 number.

It probably didnt sink in the first time, so let me repeat. Gujarat riots were a spontaneous reaction to Godhra train carnage. They might have been politically motivated, but they were at the spur of the moment and once that moment passed, normalcy returned to Gujarat.

On the contrary, in Kashmir local Muslims teamed up with terrorists across the border to systematically drive out the Kashmiri pandits from their home over a period of months/years. After the Pandits left, they took over their land/homes/offices/shops.

Had the Gujarat violence been carried out in as sustained a manner as the Kashmir ethnic cleansing you would not have see too many Muslims in Gujarat. The facts that Muslims are still living in a safe environment in Gujarat proves the difference between the two cases.

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lol… I guess 759is a number you can live with:hehe:

Regardless, I guess you finaly agre with your own govt figures that indicate that the so called plight of your wretched pandits is exagerated.

Hopefully in the future you wont mention the Pandit lie to cover up your otherwise pointless argument.

And again. I can only laugh at you. You are so depravd, that you actaly think the mass murder of Muslims is the “natural” reaction to somethng like Godhara…

You are genuinly sick person.

Lafz ba Lafz- Poetry game
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If that is the spntaneous reaction to attacks like gdhara, then why did we not see a similar atack on Muslims after 9/11 or after the London bombings?
Seems your spontaneous reaction is somthing unique to the barbaric nature of depraved Indians, much like yourself..

And again, your making up fiction… The freedom fighters didnt exist before the Kashmmiri struggle began. Kashmiris were fed up with your country and wanted independance, they began fighting the Indian occupation forces and were then joined by sympathizers from Azad Kashmir.

And you yourself just admited that the govt figures on the Pandits killed is accurate, but now you suddenly claim there was a sustained campaign!
You certainly know how to slither your way out of any corner you find your self in.

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Once again:

The Hindu : Front Page : Gujarat riots: missing persons to be declared dead

Now go reread the response I already posted. I don’t have the patience to explain how/why the death toll had to be changed…especially given the fact that even 790 killed over a few weeks is still a far greater magnitude of massacre than 109 over a year.

The Pandit migration was not, for the most part, a gradual migration over the course of “years.” It was an organized, rapid exodus that occurred in February-March 1990. Jagmohan arranged for buses for the masses, and plane tickets for the more important…Pandits in government employ were told they would continue to recieve their regular paychecks while they were in Jammu.

By most accounts, the Kashmir conflict didn’t begin till around September of 1989, so by the time the exodus began, violence in Kashmir was no more than 5 months old. The violence in Gujarat went on from February-May 2002, a period of about 4 months. Nor did the atmosphere in Gujarat return to “normalcy” thereafter; 5 years after the riots, more than 20,000 Muslims remained in refugee camps (official figure). Many of the “rehabilitated” Muslims returned home only to find that their towns and villages had been declared “Muslim-free” and were forced to live in the new Muslim ghettoes of urban Gujarat.

Nor is there any evidence of a “systematic effort” to ethnically cleanse the Pandits. As I already pointed out…a grand total of 109 Pandits were killed through 1990, and even the government admits that the militants killed more Muslims in those days than Pandits.