Why tamper with Hindu rituals? Congress asks BJP on building Kedarnath temple in Delhi

The Uttarakhand Congress on Monday criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party for constructing a new Kedarnath temple in Delhi and accused it of tampering with the Hindu Vedic traditions, reported The Indian Express.

The Kedarnath temple is one of the four major Hindu shrines in Uttarakhand. The Kedarnath shrine is dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had last week laid the foundation of a Kedarnath temple in Delhi.

The temple is meant for elderly or infirm pilgrims who cannot make the Kedarnath pilgrimage, Surendra Rautela, who is the president of the Kedarnath Dham Trust Delhi, said, according to The Indian Express.

However, the Congress on Monday alleged that the BJP was tampering with the Hindu tradition and franchising the Kedarnath temple.

“Just as the BJP previously created dozens of its own shankaracharyas, in addition to the traditional four [by going] against Vedic tradition, they are now tampering with the glory of jyotirlings,” The Indian Express quoted Congress spokespersons Garima Mehra Dasauni and Sheeshpal Bisht as saying on Monday.

The shankaracharyas head four shrines called peeths situated in Joshimath in Uttarakhand, Dwarka in Gujarat, Puri in Odisha and Sringeri in Karnataka. The shrines were founded by the eighth-century religious scholar Adi Shankaracharya.

Kedarnath is a jyotirling, which according to Hindu religious texts, is from where the deity Shiva...

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