New Delhi: The Shri Kedarnath Dham Delhi Trust will replace the word ‘Dham’ with ‘Temple’ in its name, in a bid to placate the priests who are miffed with the construction of a shrine replicating the Jyotirling located in Uttarakhand.
This comes a day after the priests at the Rudraprayag temple put their agitation on hold following a meeting with Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami and reaching a consensus on the name change of the trust and the structure of the shrine that would come up at Burari.
“The priests in Kedarnath thought that we were building a Dham in Delhi. A Dham can never be created; it is the work of the gods. We are only building a temple on the similar lines,” said founder-president of the trust, Surinder Rautela.
He further said that it was hard to replicate the edifice but the temple would be built on similar lines like the Kedarnath shrine in Uttarakhand.
“We don’t even have the Jyotirlinga. So, this is not any attempt to tamper with the glory of that temple but it is for the weak and infirm and can’t make it to the temple in Uttarakhand,” Rautela said.
There are 12 Jyotirlingas which hold a special place for devotees of Lord Shiva, and Kedarnath is the northernmost of these holy shrines. Kedarnath is also a part of the Char Dham pilgrimage circuit in Uttarakhand.
Dhami had found himself in a spot of bother after he had laid the foundation of the temple in Delhi’s Burari. According to the priests of Char Dham, the construction of Kedarnath temple in Delhi’s Burari is against religious customs and traditions.
How plan unfolded
Rautela claimed that he was infected with Covid in 2022 and that his health had deteriorated to the point where doctors had given up hope. He, however, survived and felt that he had not done enough for Kedarnath.
“I felt like I should do something for the god so that the people would remember,” Rautela, 54, told ThePrint.
Driven by this realisation, the Uttarakhand native approached friends and relatives to support the project, leading to the formation of the Shri Kedarnath Dham Delhi Trust two years ago. After a two-year search for land, Rautela, now a retired businessman, found a site in Delhi’s Burari and proceeded to lay the foundation stone for the temple. The trust now has 200 contributors dedicated to the temple’s construction.
Days after the Uttarakhand Chief Minister laid the foundation of the temple on 10 July, the priests at Kedarnath went on protest with their main contention being that the Jyotirling’s name was used for “commercial purposes”.
Later, on Tuesday, Vinod Tiwari of Kedar Sabha was quoted saying that the agitation was put on hold at the “directions of their president Raj Kumar Tiwari who had met the chief minister.”
The priest said that during the talks with the CM, a consensus was reached regarding changing the name of the temple and the trust in Burari. However, he said that if the changes were not made, they would move to the court.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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