NEW DELHI: Around the same time that Turkey was converting the historic Chora church of Istanbul into a mosque, Pakistan demolished an old Hanuman temple in Lyari, Karachi. Also demolished were the homes of about 20 Hindu families that lived near the temple. After Hindus from the locality gathered around the rubble of the ancient temple and protested, police made investigations and sealed the area. Pakistani newspaper, The Express Tribune reported that Lyari's Assistant Commissioner Abdul Karim Memon has ordered a probe against the builder who has demolished the temple.
Locals said that a builder had allegedly purchased the land around the temple and wanted to build a residential complex. Though he had promised the Hindus that the temple would not be touched, he demolished the temple and Hindu homes amid a coronavirus induced lockdown. Mohammad Irshad Baloch, a local, told The Express Tribune: "It is an injustice as a place of worship has been destroyed. It was an old temple. We have been seeing it since we were children."
Brick by brick, Pakistan has been getting rid of its Hindu heritage. Its Hindu minority - a handful in number, lies battered in a few pockets under the fear of conversions and kidnappings of women. With every passing year, the numbers have been dwindling.
Since the partition of India in 1947, Pakistan has made vigorous efforts to shake off thousands of years of rich Hindu, Jain and Buddhist history that dominated the region before Islam took roots as Haroon Khalid writes in this baleful feature, "How archaeology in Pakistan is forced to deny the nation's Hindu past". Even hard evidence in the form of archaeology is made evasive and forced to twist in deference to Islam. The governments have been reluctant to accept the nation's non-Islamic heritage which keeps propping up every now and then. Just last year during excavations, which had been stopped for a considerable number of years, Hindu statues and artifacts were discovered near the 1,500-year-old Panchmukhi Hanuman Mandir in Karachi.
The search for a Muslim identity or an Islamic civilization in the land of the pure is akin to the quest for the holy grail. Unfortunately, the past - whether in the culture, the language or the history always takes a u-turn and brings back the seekers to its ancient roots - of a Hindu civilization which stood long and well-entrenched with a built heritage of temples going back 1,500 years.
The frustration has developed into resistance towards acceptance and cherishing of a minority culture and its symbols. This hate has spread across the land. It is not confined to a handful of regions or people. The poison against minorities, particularly Hindus, has seeped deep into the society. Since separation from India, hundreds of Pakistan temples have quietly disappeared and many have morphed into shops, mosques and other buildings. The efforts to erase the past have been vociferous.
Demolition and conversion of minority places of worship is not new in Pakistan. Almost every month there is a new controversy - a temple razed to the ground or converted into a mosque. Rewind to June when Prime Minister Imran Khan wanted to prove his secular credentials and allotted money to build a Krishna temple in Islamabad, but the boundary wall of the temple was demolished within days. (IANS)
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