Rights activists in Pakistan have petitioned a government commission to investigate the alleged demolition of a Hindu temple in eastern Punjab province and called for its reconstruction and the removal of alleged encroachments. The complaint followed the discovery of the century-old temple in ruins after heavy monsoon rains on August 21 in Saraj, a Muslim-majority village in Narowal district. The village has about 350 Muslim and 100 Christian households but no Hindu residents, according to community members.
In an August 25 application to Pakistan’s One-Man Commission on Minority Rights, local activist Muhammad Alyas accused the deputy administrator of Sialkot of failing to prevent the alleged occupation of the 1,037-square-meter temple property by Muslim residents. “Taking advantage of the climatic situation, the building of the Hindu temple was demolished, its existence was erased and turned into a heap of rubble to establish a madrassa [Islamic seminary],” Alyas alleged, calling for the eviction of those occupying the property.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court established the one-man commission, headed by former police chief Shoaib Suddle, in 2019 to oversee implementation of its landmark 2014 judgment on protecting religious minorities.
In December, Alyas also complained to the chairman of the Evacuee Trust Property Board in Lahore, alleging that villagers had removed and sold the temple’s kalasha, or crowning finial, as well as bricks from a residential building on the property. “Nobody could have dared to hurt religious feelings had the Gujranwala district administration taken timely action on the complaint and ensured punishment for those responsible for selling the precious crown of the temple and demolishing a quarter,” he said.
The ETPB is a federal statutory body responsible for managing and protecting evacuee trust properties and Hindu and Sikh religious shrines.
Rana Iftikhar Ahmad of the Auqaf Department in Sialkot, which administers religious properties and shrines, rejected allegations that the temple had been deliberately demolished. “The locals have evidence of three feet of water standing in the temple compound,” he said. “The residential premises of an abandoned temple or gurdwara can be rented out according to department policies.”
Ratan Lal Arya, a Hindu member of the Narowal District Peace Committee and the Pak Dharam Astan Hindu Committee, said the district has no functioning Hindu temple despite having about 1,600 Hindus. “At least 45 temples across the district are being used as livestock sheds or converted into residences and shops amid increasing real estate values after the government built a university and a stadium in the district in 2018,” he said.
“We are even afraid to visit the site because of the madrassa that continues to operate on its premises,” he added. Arya said decades of conflict between Pakistan and India, the Islamization policies of the 1980s and the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in India had contributed to a sense of insecurity among local Hindus. “Preserving Hindu heritage can improve the image of Pakistan and attract tourism,” he said.
Samuel Pyara, a Christian and head of the nongovernmental Implementation Minority Rights Forum, visited the temple ruins on August 24 and accused local authorities of failing to protect the site. He also rejected the claim that the temple simply collapsed because of heavy rain. “The bricks had marks of hammer strikes and had fallen to one side in the street. That’s not how buildings collapse because of rain,” Pyara said.
He pointed to a madrassa flag and banner displayed on the temple’s boundary wall as evidence, in his view, of encroachment on the minority place of worship. “Sadly, neither the Sikh minister for minority affairs in the Punjab provincial government nor the local administration took any notice of such a big disaster till Aug. 26,” Pyara said.
“The only positive note is that a Muslim complained to the one-man commission. Historic places of worship must be restored irrespective of whether local followers are present,” Pyara added.
According to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics data from the 2023 census, Hindus are Pakistan’s largest non-Muslim religious minority, accounting for about 1.6 percent of the country’s population.
For Pakistan’s Hindu minority, the alleged demolition of the Saraj temple is a painful reminder of the vulnerability of their heritage sites, even as rights activists and the One-Man Commission on Minority Rights seek to uphold the Supreme Court’s 2014 judgment protecting religious minorities and their places of worship.
