‘Hindus, Muslims together guarded Dhaka temple’

“Nothing untoward has happened here from that day till today,” Ashim Maitro, one of the main priests in Dhaka, said.

Describing the deity of the ancient Dhakeswari Temple here as a “mother to all humans”, a priest of the revered shrine said several Hindus, Muslims and others from the local community had come together to guard it soon after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh.

The centuries-old temple in old Dhaka has many mosques in its vicinity and chimes of temple bells at times merge with the sound of ‘azaan’ emerging from nearby mosques. PTI on Friday visited the Sree Sree Dhakeswari National Temple, one of the prominent ‘shakti peethas’, and interacted with priests and members of the Hindu community who visited the shrine. “Members of the local communities helped. Muslims, Hindus and others came to stand guard outside the temple so that no harm comes to the temple,” the priest said. “Nothing untoward has happened here from that day till today,” Ashim Maitro, one of the main priests, said.

“During the movement, most of the Hindus had confined themselves to their homes and there was a thin presence of the community at the temple. Now, the number of people coming to the temple is slowly growing. This Friday more people came here than on the Friday before,” the priest said.

Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, people from all communities come here, and “there is no restriction” but people have to follow timings, he added. People from outside Dhaka in Bangladesh and even from India come to visit this ancient temple. Nearly, every day, people from the Indian community in Bangladesh visit the temple, Maitro said. Maitro, born in the year of Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, says, “Now, it feels normal here,” adding about 1,000 people visit the temple daily.

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