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A temple dedicated to martyrs

India is a country of temples of numerous gods and godesses.

A temple dedicated to martyrs

Members of the Anti Corruption Society, villagers and children pay homage to martyrs at the Inquilab temple at Rao village in Yamunanagar district. Tribune photo



Shiv Kumar Sharma

India is a country of temples of numerous gods and godesses. The Inquilab temple at Rao village in Yamunanagar district has something special about it; it has statues of the heroes of the freedom struggle. 

Residents of Rao village and other villages of the area assemble in the temple every evening to pay floral tributes to the martyrs and salute them. They celebrate their martyrdom day before noon and their birth anniversaries in the afternoon.

The temple has been built under the banner of NGO Anti Corruption Society (ACS). Advocate Waryam Singh, state president of the ACS, is the man behind the construction of the temple.

He says in 2000 he watched movie “Shaheed” in a cinema house of Yamunanagar. He was then studying in Class X. The film impressed him so much that he decided to do something in the memory of the martyrs of India. Then with the help of villagers he started the construction of the Inquilab temple at his Rao village in 2007. 

The society has installed the statues of martyrs Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, Udham Singh, Lala Lajpat Rai, Mangal Pandey, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Ashfaqulla Khan, Durga Bhabhi and Subhas Chandra Bose in the temple.  Besides, portraits of more than 100 martyrs have also been kept. A large statue of ‘Bharat Mata’ has also been constructed on the premises of the temple.

Amarjit Singh, vice-president of the ACS, says that our countrymen remember the heroes of the freedom struggle only on Martyr’s Day on March 23 every year, but at Rao village they are paid homage and saluted every day. He adds that villagers treat martyrs like their gods.

“Besides holding a special programme on the occasion of martyrdom day, we pay homage to the great heroes of our nation every day,” says Amarjit.

Without a miss, the temple is cleaned every day. Members of the ACS and villagers clean the statues of the martyrs every evening before paying them homage with flowers and saluting them.

The ACS organises programme ‘Shaheedo ki Pathshala’ in the temple every Saturday. Students of Government Primary School at Rao village participate in the programme and are told about the martyrs. Examinations are also conducted to assess their knowledge about martyrs.

The ACS has been raising its voice against term ‘terrorist’ being used for Indian martyrs in history books, says Santosh Bhardwaj, a resident of Rao village and state secretary of the ACS.

The ACS has also urged the Central government to set up a Bharat Inquilab Commission in the memory of martyrs, who were martyred between 1857 and 1947. It has also written several letters to the Central government in this regard.

“Successive Central and state governments had been giving sufficient attention to our soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the country after 1947 but did nothing remarkable for those who had laid down their lives between 1857 and 1947. Descendants of several martyrs are living across the country, therefore the Central government should work for their welfare and also set up a Bharat Inquilab Commission,” says Waryam Singh.

He says that the Inquilab temple is one of a kind in the state. The government should organise a state-level martyrdom day function here every year to pay respect to the heroes of the freedom movement.

“Sometimes we have to do rounds of ministers, MPs, MLAs and officers of the local administration to invite them to the martyrdom day function as chief guest”.

More statues are being installed in the temple with the help of public contributions. The state government had recently provided Rs 4.25 lakh for raising a boundary wall around the temple, but it proved to be insufficient. Therefore, the construction of the boundary wall could not be completed,” says Waryam Singh.

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