Team Herald
PONDA: In a State known historically as a nerve center of communal harmony and interfaith relations is now going to the polls with its Chief Minister, out of the blue, saying that temples destroyed over centuries ago during the Portuguese rule had to be rebuilt.
He made these remarks at one of Goa’s best-known temple the world over, at Mangueshi temple at Ponda, at the inauguration of the tourism development infrastructure project. He said, “In the 60th year of Liberation, the State should start rebuilding temples destroyed by the Portuguese. During the Portuguese time our forefathers had shifted their deities to safer places. There are many temples damaged by the Portuguese rulers that need to be rebuilt.”
He did not stop there. Carrying on he said, “I am not asking for anything else. I am just asking you to strengthen our hands to reinstate Hindu Sanskriti (culture) and Mandir Sanskriti in the State.”
The remarks have shocked people across faiths. A prominent and veteran industrialist known to be a close sympathizer of the BJP remarked, “I don’t believe this. These remarks are totally uncalled for.”
The issue of rebuilding temples can only be rhetoric and words meant to send a political message linked with religious and polarizing overtones, aimed to only divide. There is no tangible data to ascertain where the temples that were purportedly destroyed were present. And it is almost certainly that those areas if they are identifiable at all have been “developed”.
Moreover developing more temples was never a part of any political, religious, or any development strategy of Goa, to even expressed by the BJP in all these years
Union Minister of State for Tourism and Ports, Shripad Naik, Tourism Director Nikhil Desai, Mangueshi Temple President Subray Nadkarni and sarpanchas of various panchayats of Priol constituency were present.
