KARACHI: When a handful of poor Hindu devotees arrived at the Karachi Press Club (KPC) on Friday to protest the desecration of their temple, the place was already occupied by Muttahida Qaumi Movement workers carrying out a symbolic hunger strike and their scouts sealing off both ends of Service Station Road.

Waving the Pakistani flag along with the red temple banner with the gold border, they tried to reach the KPC gates but were stopped in their tracks by the scouts who then called some senior party workers to speak to them. After realising who they were and what they were there for, the barriers were removed for them to pass through. The loud music being played by the MQM workers was also then switched off for the small group, which included elderly women and children. The placards they carried demanded severe punishment for the culprits along with requests to remove the IG Sindh from office.

Read: Disquiet over Karachi temple desecration

On January 21, during Durga pooja at the Shitala Mata temple, located inside a small lower middle-class Hindu home in the quarters near Gate No5 of Karachi Zoological Gardens, three men in white shalwar kameez, and sporting beards, stormed the temple waving their TT pistols as they told everyone to get out. A goddess deity, Bhavani Mata, lost one of its left arms in the scuffle that followed. The temple Maharaj Hira Lal, who also formed the Shitala Mata Mandir Bachao Committee, has since been trying to get an FIR registered about the incident but has had no luck in getting it done so far.

“Earlier, we had no clue as to who the men were. But now we have a good idea about what is going on as we have received more threats. Actually we get unwanted visitors every other day now, telling us to go away. They don’t want Hindus living among them, and Hindus indulging in ‘pooja pat’ is even more unwelcome and frowned upon. We have also been threatened by men in police uniform,” said the Maharaj.

“The temple is small but there is nothing small about the miracles that have taken place there,” said Gurmee Bai, an aged woman among the protesters. “Women considered barren conceive after visiting the temple only once, people suffering from smallpox or chickenpox have seen their blisters disappear,” she added.

Vani Bai, another elderly woman, said that the temple also had Kali Mata’s footprints which ‘appeared quite suddenly’ during pooja about eight years ago. “Please give our mata the respect she deserves,” she wept.

Asked why they had come waving the Pakistani flag for this protest, Vani Bai said, “It is to remind you respectable citizens that we are also a part of this country. We respect this flag, too. This flag which has a white portion on one side signifies our part of the nation,” she said while wiping away her tears.

Meanwhile, Maharaj Hira Lal said that the quarter occupied by his family for some 60 years now, where his father grew up, too, was not owned by them, of course.

Neither does he work for Karachi Zoological Gardens. “But these quarters are occupied by people working in other Karachi Metropolitan Corporation departments also and not just the zoo. It is actually allotted to a relative of ours, a sweeper with Lyari Town,” he informed.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2016