Illegal encroachment by GOD

This is a country where millions sleep without food daily and gallons of milk is spilled over the statues, where millions sleep under the stars and where temples are studded with Gold.

It’s all on God’s name! Nothing new in it and it’s not only Gurgaon’s story; this menace has spread all over India, in all the big and small cities, towns and villages. Illegal religious structures have encroached upon footpaths, streets and public spaces. And the nuisance seems destined to stay.

Does not matter how much God loving I might be, but the sight of these temples or dargah encroaching upon the footpath is bound to upset me and many more like me. But the apathy is we can’t do anything against it in this country, which is mad about their religion. Such illegal religious structures are un-likely to be razed, because the civic authorities fear it might hurt religious sentiments. All this, despite a clear Supreme Court direction (issued in 2009) that the State Governments ought to stop the mushrooming of such encroachments.

At HUDA City Center Chowk

Earlier I felt that the Supreme Court directive could make the removal of these structures easier, but it didn’t work out. Then Mr. Praveen Kumar Hooda has provided some optimism in this naysayer environment when he used Strong-arm tactics to rid the City from illegal encroachments, but his bulldozers were also confined to the homes and shops of the mortal ones, he couldn’t step forward towards these religious shops.

In last five years I had seen a 2X3 feet broken statue of Hanuman ji converting into 300 sq. feet temple on a footpath near Bristol chowk and there are many more; a big 3000 sq. feet temple acquiring green belt at Huda City centre chowk might have also been started from a some broken statue of some God or may be a Peepal tree.

Near Medanta Medi City (Sector 47)

They cut thousands of trees on the name of development (for metro construction / road widening) but they could not put their saw on Peepal tree; doesn’t matter if its in-between the road, doesn’t matter if it’s causing traffic havocs, doesn’t matter if someone looses his life in an accident because of that. Only God knows the link between him and the Peepal; I am sure these people who worship it, don’t have a clue about it.

It is quite impossible to remove these encroachments without flaring public emotions in a god-fearing country like ours. But we must need to do something; it needs both, hard line tactics by the civic authorities and the support of we citizens. But till now the indications are that the City and the country would just have to live with the existing structures.