Ishfaq-ul-Hassan

Srinagar: It took 18 years for the bells to toll again on Sunday in the historic Mata Uma Bagwati shrine at Uma Nagri-Bari Angan in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district.

The temple had been closed ever since several complexes at the shrine were set ablaze by miscreants in 1992.

The idol of the goddess had been broken and dumped in the spring inside the complex.

No religious functions were performed there all these years.

Eighteen years on, the All Pandits Migrants Coordination Committee (APMCC) led by its president Vinod Pandita took the initiative to reopen the shrine. Around 2,000 people, mostly Kashmiri migrant pandits from Jammu, arrived here to participate in a maha yagya to mark the reopening of the revered shrine. The yagya started on Saturday afternoon and the puran ahoti was on Sunday afternoon.

“A wooden portion of the temple was set ablaze and the idol of the goddess was broken into parts and thrown into the spring. We retrieved the idol, cleansed and renovated the temple before it was reopened again to the public,” said Pandita.

On Sunday, the temple was a spectacle of Kashmiryat, a reminder of the state’s pluralistic ethos which had taken a beating with the onset of militancy which forced thousands of pandits to migrate to Jammu. Hundreds of Muslims from adjacent villages thronged the site to welcome the pandits.

“I had come to meet my classmate Ratan Lal Pandita who had migrated in 1990. It was dream come true to meet him after a long time,” said an emotional Ghulam Nabi Reshi.

For Ratan Lal too it was a memorable moment. “The atmosphere is electric and I met my old friends and neighbours again.We are very happy to see Hindus and Muslims together again,” he said.

Before 1990 there were 60 pandit and 12 Muslim families in this village. All the pandits migrated in the aftermath of militancy. Last year, however, one family returned and continues to live in the village.

Around 56,148 families have migrated from Kashmir since the onset of militancy in 1990, of which 34,690 families are living in Jammu, 19,338 in Delhi and 2,120 in other parts of the country.

Mata Uma Bagwati was the tenth shrine reopened by APMCC in Kashmir valley.

“Our organisation will raise funds from the public to rebuild temples damaged in the last two decades in Kashmir. It will be done in a phased manner,” said Ravinder Pandita, secretary APMCC.

Source : DNA