Diwali in Peshawar...

Temple in Peshawar (pics: Shabbir Imam)

Hindus celebrated Diwali at this historic 160-year-old temple at Peshawar in northwest Pakistan after it was reopened to the minority community after six decades on a court’s orders. Scores of Hindus, including women and children, visited the Goraknath Temple at Gor Khatri, which was reopened after Phoolwati, the daughter of the shrine’s cleric, petitioned the Peshawar High Court.

Phoolwati and her son Kaka Ram have claimed that the temple, which has been controlled in past decades by the police, Evacuee Property Trust Board and the provincial archaeology department, belongs to their family.

Though a two-judge bench of the High Court ruled last month that Phoolwati had failed to provide evidence of her family’s ownership of the temple, it directed authorities to reopen the shrine for religious purposes. The court observed that stopping religious activities at a place of worship was against all laws.

Kaka Ram said his father, Pandit Kamoram, had refused to move to India at the time of Partition in 1947 and decided to settle in Pakistan. The temple is small and surrounded by nine rooms on two sides. The white temple with three domes in the middle of an enclosure has two small rooms with statues of deities. Red, black and yellow pennants and flags have been hoisted over the temple.

Women get busy with food preparations

Two little girls pose inside the temple 

Om Namh Shivay written in Urdu