After protests, govt orders restoration of removed Jain idols in Pavagadh

The members of the community gathered at Pavagadh police station on Sunday night and expressed anger over the incident. As the agitation spread to Vadodara, Surat and other parts of the state on Monday, Panchmahal Superintendent of Police Himanshu Solanki and District Development Officer (DDO) DK Baria visited the site, and held a meeting with members of the Jain community as well as the temple body to resolve the matter. At the meeting, it was decided that the temple body would restore the idols at the original site.

“We have received a complaint but the present focus is on ensuring that the idols are restored in their original place. We are investigating the matter but the work on reinstalling the idols is on at the moment. We have held a meeting with both parties to resolve the issue,” SP Solanki said.

The idols that were allegedly removed. (Express File Photo)

DDO Baria, who is in charge of the district in absence of the District Collector, said that the meeting between members of the Jain community and the temple body had been “fruitful and yielded positive results”.

Members of the Jain community, however, gathered in large numbers at the District Collectorate offices in Surat and Vadodara on Monday, submitting a memorandum in protest.

Sanghavi — following separate representations submitted to District Collectors in the state — said that the government has directed the Panchmahal district administration and district police to look into the matter and “restore the idols.” “No individual or Trust is empowered to demolish a statue or temple. An investigation has been ordered in this matter after Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel received the ground report and directions have been issued to have the statues reinstalled in their original place,” Sanghavi said.

The FIR was lodged later in the day at the Pavagadh police station following a complaint by Kiran Duggad, member of Navkar Aradhna Bhavan Trust of Halol against unidentified persons. The FIR states that Duggad received a call from a friend who was visiting Pavagadh on Sunday to inform him about the removal of the statues. “My friend informed me that statues of spiritual leaders of our community were lying in a broken condition on the old stairway of Mahakali temple on Sunday. When we visited the spot, we found the statues, including one of Lord Neminath (one of the Jain Tirthankaras) in that state. The persons responsible for hurting religious sentiments should be booked,” the FIR quotes him as saying. The case has been registered under section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Niraj Jain, a member of Shree Samast Vadodara Jain Sangh, said that while a temple belonging to the Jain community located near Machhi on the Pavagadh foothills belongs to the Pavagadh Jain Kshatriya Shwetambar Murtipujak Trust, the Jain idols – lined along the staircase – were under the care of the Mahakali Temple Trust. “The entire site is under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Without the permission of the competent authorities, no one can remove such idols that are believed to be at least thousand years old… We have demanded an FIR in the case against the temple trust. In fact, the Jain community was about to begin restoration of the idols as many inscriptions on the idols are currently illegible and we do not have many details about the same. One of the seven idols is of Lord Neminatha,” Jain said.

Surendra Patel, president of Pavagadh Temple Trust, told The Indian Express, “Some authorised members of the Jain community had approached us a few days ago and asked us to remove the idols as they were to conduct a restoration process… However, some other members of the Jain community are objecting to it. We have informed the authorities about this and we have also begun the process to restore the idols… so the controversy has been closed.”