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The Pioneer > Online Edition : >> Lack of priests holds off rites in Multan temples
- Biswajeet Banerjee | Lucknow
- Kazmi was in UP to visit his ancestral village in Amroha, around 300 km south-west of Lucknow. His father Syed Ahmad Saeed Kazmi belonged to Amroha. The family migrated to Multan in 1935.
The international wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which provides Hindu priests to the overseas temples, said it can supply priests if the Pakistan Government was ready to give visas and security to them.
Apart from Prahlad and Sun temples, some shrines in the Sindhu valley are also hit by the priest crunch. Prahlad temple is an important religious place for Hindus because it is believed that the festival of Holi started here.
“The Pakistan Govern-ment tried to restore religious rituals in these temples because the local Hindu population is missing their religious traditions,” he said, but added that Hindu population has declined in the region. He, however, refused to give reasons for this decline.
The United Nations had offered to adopt Sun temple and Sindhu valley temples as World Heritage sites but the Pakistan Government had rejected the proposal, Kazmi said.
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