Book review: Historic Temples in Pakistan by Reema Abbasi and Madiha Aijaz

Reema Abbasi and Madiha Aijaz's magnificent photo-essay profiles the core of Pakistan's millennia-old Hindu heritage - its temples - and makes a strong case for keeping pluralism alive in the 'Fortres

For many Indians, especially those who are Hindu or Sikh, reading anything about Pakistan’s religious minorities can be a painful affair. As if Partition was not enough, subsequent events have brought death and destruction to these beleaguered people.

More than 30 years after Mard-e-Momin Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq started his Islamisation programme, all of Pakistan is paying the price. There are regular attacks on the two biggest non-Muslim minorities, Hindus and Christians. There are also non-Sunni firqas, which are under siege — the Shias and the hapless Ahmadis, declared by the Ulema and the government to be Wajib-e-Qatl, to be killed by every ‘true Muslim’ as a religious duty.

I picked up veteran journalist Reema Abbasi and photographer Madiha Aijaz’s Historic Temples in Pakistan: A Call to Conscience with trepidation. Poring over it reaffirmed what I had been hearing all along — of the country’s minorities being in a state of siege.

  Still, the book’s very publication is a reaffirmation of faith in humanity. There are still people in Pakistan who have the courage to examine and profile its pre-Islamic past, which is currently dying a slow death. The work, say its authors, is a call to Pakistanis to take charge of their destiny and make their society more pluralistic. Abbasi states in the preface: “At times like these, civilisations in denial can reinvent themselves through free expression of faith and ideas…the time is now ripe to put paid to divides that are like to cost an entire country its rationale….”

The book has many layers. Not only does it profile Pakistan’s most ancient and important Hindu temples, but also details their histories, locales, architecture, the people whom they serve and the dangers they have faced and are facing.

Five of the six sections in this book are on the temples in the four provinces that make up Pakistan. Abbasi does not include the temples of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, like the hallowed Shardapeeth in the Neelum Valley on the Line of Control, or the Raghunath and Shivala Mandirs in the city of Mirpur.

Balochistan has a single temple profiled — the Hinglaj Mata Mandir — one of the Shaktipeethas of the subcontinent. According to legend, Sati’s head fell at this spot when Vishnu whirled his chakra at her corpse and it smashed into pieces.

The temples of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are grouped into one section. The most prominent is the fabled Katas Raj near Chakwal in Punjab. One of South Asia’s better known Shiva temples, it is among the two spots (the other being Pushkar) where Shiva’s tears fell in his grief over Sati’s death and formed a pool. The spot is also the site where Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandava princes, was questioned by a Yaksha, who turned out to be Dharma in disguise, testing his son. There are other temples in the cities of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and one in the town of Mansehra in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

But it is Sindh, Hinduism’s last stronghold in Pakistan, that constitutes the lion’s share of the book. Three sections detail its temples — in the teeming metropolis of Karachi, in the districts of Umerkot and Tharparkar in the Thar Desert, and in riverine Sindh, along the course of the (once) mighty Indus.

Pakistani temples are located in a variety of locations. Hinglaj is in a giant cavern on the desolate Makran coast. The Varun Dev Mandir is on Manora Island off Karachi. The famed Sadhu Bela temple is on an islet in the middle of the Indus in Upper Sindh, neat Sukkur. The temples of Umerkot and Tharparkar are in a hot, though strikingly beautiful desert. Katas is located in the Salt Range, a unique elevated geographical feature amidst the otherwise flat, Punjabi plains. And the Shivala Mandir in Mansehra is in the Himalayas.

Pakistan’s Hindu temples are dedicated to all three of the faith’s main branches — Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism. Deities worshipped include Shiva, Vishnu and his avatars, Rama and Krishna, Ganesha and Hanuman and the Mother Goddess in all her forms. But there are others too. The temple at Manora, for instance, is dedicated to Varuna, lord of the oceans. In Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, sage Valmiki is worshipped.

The book reminds us that most of the Hindus left in Pakistan are Dalits, as caste Hindus fled during Partition. In Punjabi cities like Lahore and Pindi, as well as Peshawar, the main temples are those of Balmikis, the Dalit community also found across North India. In Sindh, most Hindus are Dalit Meghwars or tribal Bhils.

A permanent theme in the book is the Hindu-Muslim syncretism that still astonishingly survives in Pakistan, especially in Sindh. For instance, Varuna in Manora is the Hindu Jhule Lal/Udero Lal in interior Sindh, who is also worshipped by Muslims as Zinda Pir or Khidr, a revered figure in Islam, especially Sufi mysticism. The Ratneshwar Mahadev Mandir in Karachi’s posh Clifton sits alongside the dargah of Hazrat Abdullah Shah Ghazi, Karachi’s patron saint. Both, Shiva and the Pir are considered by Sindhi society as the city’s guardian protectors against the Arabian Sea’s fierce waters.

But the dangers to Pakistan’s temples far outweigh such harmonious co-existence. Most temples profiled in the book were attacked by frenzied mobs when the Bahri Mosque came down in Ayodhya in 1992. That time saw the razing of 1,000 historic temples from Pakistan’s landscape, notes Abbasi. Since then, some temples have been reconstructed with funds from Hindus, Muslim feudals and sometimes, the government. But the picture is far from rosy, concedes the author.

The last chapter in the section on riverine Sindh highlights an even more important issue: the declining murti makers of Pakistan. There are no Hindu craftsmen left. Inevitably, the task falls to Muslims like the subject of the chapter: Fakira. Even there, the numbers are declining. Most murtis are thus brought from India. In places like Punjab, however, you have to make do with images, so virulent is the sentiment against idol worship.

The book’s most powerful appeal lies in Madiha Aijaz’s photographs. Colourful and vivid, they are a treat for the eyes. After reading the book, I was deeply depressed. Then I read a line on the back cover, which is the book’s main message, and my blues ebbed away. It read: ‘As long as life is infinite, faiths will be indestructible.’

Historic Temples in Pakistan: A call to conscience
Author: Reema Abbasi
Photographs by Madiha Aijaz
Publisher: Niyogi Books
Pages: 296
Price: Rs 1,250