When Kashmir saw the shift of power in 1339 AD, the cultural and religious symbols of Hinduism – Temples became the target of Muslim rulers. This was due to their religious orientation and their psychology of forcefully spreading Islam, and the resultant was the brutal destruction of Hindu shrines and temples.

 

 

It is learnt that the first attack was a proselytizing order by a self-proclaimed Sufi, who resorted to forceful stoppage of new constructions of Hindu temples, idol worshipping and even disallowing of repairing of such religious sites that needed maintenance. The fiat also allowed the usage of materials from destructed sites to be used in building Mosques! The then sequence of events led to Islamisation of Kashmir.

 

 

It became a common practice for the Muslim rulers to defy Hindu culture by labelling it un-Islamic. Their destructive campaign of supressing ethnical culture with obscurantism, coupled with power and hatred was a perfect recipe for dominance. Iconoclasm was a fashion, along with forceful religious conversion was prevalent in the past six centuries. Jonaraja, a Kashmiri historian was a witness and penned these incidents.

 

 

 

Nothing changed after 1947 where the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir acceding to the Union of India. As hapless victims to a tyrannical order the state, governments of all political hues vigorously worked out the single-point programme of marginalising and edging Kashmiri Hindus out of their natural habitat for ethnic cleansing.

 

 

In 1978 various SROs issued by the government not only and strengthened the Muslim Auqaf Act but also allowed Muslims to grab the temple lands without check and constraint for their transmission to Muslim Trusts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pakistan’s ISI planned roping in of political activists in Pakistan occupied Jammu Kashmir (PoJK), along with the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), initiated armed insurgency in the Kashmir Valley in the mid-1980s. JKLF trained its cadres in the Valley and claimed the killings of Pandits beginning with the murder of Tika Lal Taploo, a BJP leader and Lawyer in Jammu and Kashmir High Court.

 

 

Hamid Sheikh, Ashfaq Wani, Javed Mir and Yasin Malik, became the pioneers of the terror in the valley. They had crossed the LoC and trained themselves in terrorist camps in PoJK. Although they were arrested by BSF and handed over to Police which registered cases against them, but an order of then CM Farooq Abdullah, led to their release.

 

 

As per records, Panun Kashmir, an organization of internally displaced Pandits submitted a detailed list of more than a thousand 1341 killings in the valley and other parts of the state by Pakistan sponsored terrorists with the ones belonging to JKLF to the Indian National Human Rights Commission.

 

 

Apart from these, more than 70 temples and lands attached with them were cruelly confiscated from the possession of the Pandits who proffered their claims supported by relevant revenue records but were arbitrarily dismissed and rejected. The temples of historical importance were aggressed and huge portions from them sliced away to be offered to the Muslims as booty in a platter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Kaloosa Temple – The Kaloosa village, located in the Bandipore district of UT of Jammu Kashmir had a temple has been desecrated and its main idol was broken or stolen.

 

 

2. Sadamalun – The It is a hermitage with lots of land attached with it which are said to have been grabbed by the Muslims. The mahant was hacked to pieces.

 

 

3. Pattan Ruins - The temples at Pattan which were ravaged and destroyed by the infamous Sikandar, the iconoclast, have been further devastated by the modern-day iconoclasts. That is how the ruins have dwarfed. The huge slabs that were still standing giving it the look of temples belonging to the hoary past have been removed and broken into heaps of pebbles.

 

 

4. Kanimoja Gantamulla - The huge stone held in great reverence at Gantamulla has been broken with hammers. Its half is missing and half is still standing. There were three hooves of the sacred cow at the same place and Kashmiri Pandits would throng the place on a particular day and date to have their "darshan". One hoof has been maliciously destroyed.

 

 

 

 

5. Hanumat Kund, Kupwara - The Hanumat Kund at the place of Halmatpora was a spring of oozing waters. It was held in reverence even by Muslims. Gujjar Muslims are said to have desecrated the spring by offering it meat and since then it is said to have dried up and it has now been filled up with stones and boulders.