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By : Muhammad Adil Lakho, Beenish Rafiq, Pareesa Afreen, Mahnoor Hameed, Syed Nameer Ali & Um-e-Taqdees
June, 2022.
History of Temple:
History of Temple:
The present building of this temple was constructed in 1849. It is an important and ancient temple of Karachi for hindu community. It is situated on M.A Jinnah road, karachi. The temple is notable for its size and frontage, over 32,306 square yards (27,012 m sq) also because it is the only Swaminarayan temple in Pakistan. This temple is visited by the minorities mainly for all the festivals celebrated beautifully in the center hall of the temple.
Founding Stone of Estate Trust Swami Narayan Temple
Pakistan is culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse.The Hindu community is so assimilated within the culture of Pakistan that; it is difficult
to recognize them as Hindus. In the past, the Muslims and Hindus showed respect for their other religious saints and holy places, but with the passage of time the situation has changed.
According to official estimates, 4.5 million Hindus live in Pakistan. The majority of Pakistan's Hindu population is settled in Sindh province where they share culture, traditions and language with Muslim residents.
Hindus are the largest religious
minority in Sindh, but facing discrimination at all levels, i.e., economic, social,political, and legal. They are living as a second-class citizen of the country. We found out about the living being of hindu community when we did a visit to Shree Sawaminarayan Mandir, Karachi.
The area around the temple is surrounded by residential houses where the majority of hindu community resides.The people there spend their life doing daily chores. On a daily basis many people from hindu community visit the temple for prayers. During the visit to the temple we faced multiple issues, there were many measures that were being taken by the authority of the temple one of them was that they do not allow outsiders from other communities inside the temple. There are even security guards at the main entrance who do not allow unauthorized or non-community based people to enter.The reason behind this strictness is that the past incidents about validation of different temples by the muslim mobs had made hindu community so insecure and concerned about their worship places.
The Architectural Structure of the Temple
When we approached the authority of the temple to shoot our multimedia and documentary, they were so inspecting about why and for what purpose we wanted to go inside the temple which took alot of our time to make them trust us. Even when we asked them to give us permission to take pictures and shoot videos inside the temple or to take interviews, they immediately refused from shooting any video of the temple or to interact with any person inside, the authority of the temple only gave us a specific area of the temple to take pictures of and later they also reviewed all the pictures taken.
The authorities didn't allow us to interact or to take pictures of people visiting the temple and those who were living in the residential area were also restricted. During reviewing the pictures from the camera when they found some pictures off the limit they requested us to delete those specific pictures on the spot.
Through this experience we found out how minorities are living in Pakistan and that's how they react towards outsiders. They are very insecure, over protective and restrictive in terms of their lives, religions and worship places. Although this has been taken as a negative perspective by us but the reasons behind their fear has been justified a lot in different ways, their worship places aren't safe either. The Hindu community has also faced social discrimination, their society within Pakistan and elsewhere has historically been divided by caste, a system of social stratification in which the lower castes are often seen as inferior.
All Religious minorities in Pakistan continued to face discrimination and persecution, such as misuse of the anti-blasphemy law, forced conversions of non-Muslims girls, and enforced disappearances has developed this fear in them that they have to live so conservatively in an independent nation. While on the other hand we all know that Islamic Republic Of Pakistan promises freedom and a peaceful life for all the minorities in terms of their ways to live life, worship or beliefs.
Quaid-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah delivered these historical remarks in his speech
“You are free! You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the state,”
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