Pakistan to reopen Jain Temple

Pakistan to reopen Jain Temple

Pakistan has completed the reconstruction and renovation of the historic Jain Temple in the Punjab capital and will now reopen it.
After the 1992 demolition of India's Babri Mosque, the temple, which stood tall in all its splendour at the Jain Mandir intersection in Lahore, was partially demolished by an enraged mob.

After Hindu zealots backed by right-wing groups like the BJP razed the Babri Mosque, around 30 Hindu temples were damaged in Pakistan.

Now, some 30 years later, Supreme Court Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed has ordered that the sites of the Jain and Neela Gumbad (Blue Tomb) temples be examined and efforts taken to restore them. The directive specified that the work be completed as soon as possible and that a preliminary report be produced within one month.

"I visited the location on December 2 and also appeared in court in this regard," says Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, a member of the National Assembly and a member of a Supreme Court commission on minority rights.

"All religions have the right to exercise their faith in Pakistan, according to its own Constitution." "I'm proud of the fact that we're setting an example for others," he remarked.

History of Jain Temple

The area of Nagarparkar serves as a transitional zone between the Rann of Kutch's marshes and salt flats and the dry land of stabilised sand dunes and the neighbouring pink granite Karoonjhar Mountains. Until the 15th century, the Arabian Sea covered much of the country, while the region around Nagarparkar created an area of raised and perennially dry ground.

For several decades, Nagarparkar was a centre of Jainism, and the affluent local Jain community built several lavish temples in the adjacent hills between the 12th and 15th centuries, which are considered to be the pinnacle of Jain architectural expression.

With Jain ascetics settling in the Karoonjhar Mountains, the location became known as Sardhara, a place of pilgrimage. In 1650, the Nagarparkar region was regarded as the "most glorious of all Indian districts."

The Arabian Sea began to migrate away from Jain commercial centres as silt from the Indus River deposited in the Rann of Kutch, reducing Jain power in the region. Changes in the coast line caused a wide-scale migration in the local Jain population in the 19th century, and remaining Jains fled the area after the Partition of British India in 1947, while several of the temples are still preserved by the area's significant Hindu community. Several new temples have been established in neighbouring Rajasthan, some of which have roots in Nagarparkar.