Two days on, another abandoned Shiva temple discovered in Aligarh

Aligarh: Leaders of Hindu right-wing organisations have announced that another abandoned Shiv temple was discovered at Sarai Miyan, a thickly-populated Muslim locality under Delhi Gate police station in Aligarh.

The discovery came on Thursday evening, barely 36 hours after a similar abandoned temple was found and revived at Sarai Rehman locality, another Muslim-dominated locality under Bannadevi police station area.

Harshad, secretary of the city unit of the Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), who arrived on the spot along with Ankur Shivaji, a leader of the Bajrang Dal, and many others said the locked temple premises were in a state of complete mess with idols strewn all over debris.

The locks on the gate were broken in the presence of the police and the temple was cleaned up, and purified amidst religious slogans, he added.

Superintendent of Police (City) Mrigank Shekhar Pathak told reporters late on Thursday night that meetings of peace committees are being held in these localities to ensure that these temples are fully restored and worship is carried out in a peaceful manner.

"So far, there is no report of any unpleasant or untoward incident from the above two localities," he said.

According to local residents of Sarai Miyan, during the communally disturbed period before and after the demolition of the Babri mosque, the city witnessed communal riots leading to migration of Hindus and Muslims. This demographic shift led to both ghettoisation as well as creation of new colonies.

During this period a number of places of worship, especially roadside temples, were abandoned particularly in communally-sensitive areas.

Mohammad Aqil Quershi, a local resident said there no worship was taking place at the temple for the past several years and no one used to visit the premises either. He said local Muslim residents, however, built a boundary wall on their own initiative to ensure that there was no encroachment of the temple land.

There are conflicting versions regarding the age of the temple and also of the time from which this place was abandoned.

However, most residents were of the opinion that "no worship was conducted for three or four decades" after Hindu residents of Mahour caste, who are mainly petty artisans and labourers specialising in furnaces connected to lock making operations, migrated following communal riots in that area.