Preparations For Shivartari Festival Kicks Off In Chitti Ghatti Mansehra

Three-day 16th Shivartari annual festival would start from 20th February, 1000-1500 Hindu devotees would participate from all over Pakistan

ABBOTTABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 6th Feb, 2020 ) :Three-day 16th Shivartari annual festival would start from 20th February, 1000-1500 Hindu devotees would participate from all over Pakistan.

This was stated by the Lingham Shiva temple Chitti Ghatti Mansehra Priest Darshan Lal while talking to APP.

He further said that 15 years back we have started to annul the Shivaratri festival where up to 200 devotees participated and every year the number of participants has increased, last year around 800 people from KP, Punjab, and Sindh arrived at the temple.

Besides traditional invitation we have also invited the Hindus from around the world on the temple's Facebook page and mentioned that Pakistan is a peaceful country where interfaith harmony is exemplary, adding Darshan Lal said.

Giving the details of Hindu devotees who are visiting the temple he said that they are mostly from Peshawar, Nowshera, Mardan, Kohat, Rawalpindi, Sialkot, Islamabad, Hangu and few from the UK also.

He said that although I was serving as a priest for the last 22 years on some complaints MPA Ravi Kumar has appointed a new priest from Peshawar, who did not come to the temple after passing two weeks and despite termination of my services I am completing the arrangements for the Shivratri festival.

Darshan Lal stated that as the numbers of devotees are increasing every year we also need extra facilities including washrooms, langar khana accommodation, moreover land grabbers also captured a vast area of the temple whose case is under trial.

Last year Deputy Commissioner Mansehra deployed 700 policemen and elite force officials for security arrangements for the three days long Shivaratri festival.

Mansehra Shiv Temple is one of the oldest still in existence and use in Pakistan, dating back at least 2000 years. In 1947-48, it was forcibly seized by some local land mafia group who illegally occupied the local property of weaker folk and they also sealed up the temple on this site, covering about an acre or more of land close to Chitti Gatti village.

From 1948 to 2008 the Shiv temple was sealed up abandoned and out of bounds to local or any other Hindus.

The temple had several very significant and unusual features, including the famous 'Durga cave' up on a hill beyond it, where there was a small cave with a lovely freshwater spring bubbling out of the ground, where religious pilgrims to the temple takes bathe purify themselves and offer respects to the goddess Durga, before going down to the main Shiv temple and one of the oldest and biggest 'Shiva Lingam' idols anywhere in this region, inside a special little sanctum that in fact precedes this old temple by at least 800 year