RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Yet an­oth­er Hin­du mandir has been des­e­crat­ed, this time in Siparia.

The van­dals broke through a gate at the Siparia Shi­va SDMS Mandir on High Street, Siparia and up­root­ed sa­cred re­li­gious flags (jhan­dis) on the com­pound of the mandir. 

The des­e­cra­tion was first dis­cov­ered on Mon­day when the Pres­i­dent of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) Pan­dits Parishad, Pun­dit Capildeo Ma­haraj re­alised that the front gate had been prized open. 

“Some­one called me and said the gate looked fun­ny and when we came here we saw they had pulled out all the jhan­dis and every­thing was strewn on the ground,” he said.

Pun­dit Ma­haraj said the jhan­dis had been plant­ed af­ter they did poo­ja and he said who­ev­er com­mit­ted the act will face con­se­quences.

He said he had no for­give­ness for the one re­spon­si­ble for the des­e­cra­tion say­ing they will suf­fer a dire karmic faith.

“This is a cru­el act, whoso­ev­er did it, there is a price that one has to pay for such ac­tions. The cul­prits will suf­fer ma­jor prob­lems and dif­fi­cul­ties. You might hear some­body go mad and run in front of a ve­hi­cle. These are the things that will turn out here,” he pre­dict­ed.

He added, “Since our his­to­ry in Siparia, it’s the first oc­ca­sion that we had such a sit­u­a­tion take place. Our neigh­bour­hood is friend­ly and op­po­site we have the An­gli­can church. We make our car park avail­able for each oth­er when­ev­er we have a func­tion,” he said.

Mean­while, An­gli­can priest Fa­ther Aaron Charles, of the St Christo­pher An­gli­can Church lo­cat­ed op­po­site the mandir, con­demned the act.

“It tells us of the sad state of our so­ci­ety. You are des­e­crat­ing the place of wor­ship, our so­ci­ety is de­grad­ing holy places like these,” he said. Fa­ther Charles said many peo­ple came to the mandir for help and sal­va­tion.

  When con­tact­ed, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the SDMS Vi­jay Ma­haraj said he did not think the van­dal­ism was an in­di­ca­tion of re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion. He said the in­trud­ers did not get in­to the mandir but in­ter­fered with the flags out­side. He said it could have been a men­tal­ly de­ranged per­son. A re­port has been made to the Siparia po­lice and of­fi­cers are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

Last May, the Cara­po Shiv Mandir in Ari­ma was des­e­crat­ed with corned beef, an in­sult to Hin­dus who con­sid­er the cow a sa­cred an­i­mal. Four months lat­er in Sep­tem­ber, the Car­li Bay mandir was al­so des­e­crat­ed and a Bib­li­cal scrip­ture from the book of Ex­o­dus was paint­ed on the walls.