RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Van­dals smashed parts of the Williamsville Hin­du tem­ple over the week­end but strange­ly left the mur­tis and the pre­cious jew­els adorn­ing them un­touched, along with the mon­e­tary of­fer­ings with­in the tem­ple.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the tem­ple, smashed con­crete blocks lay strewn around the tem­ple com­pound. In­side, the wor­ship area was filled with dusty chunks of con­crete, and the locks had been smashed.

Ex­press­ing her deep dis­tress at the van­dal­ism, tem­ple sec­re­tary Vashti Sookoo called for jus­tice.

Say­ing she was dis­turbed that some­one would de­lib­er­ate­ly wreck their cher­ished tem­ple, Sookoo said: “We try to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty, not to take away from it. To know that so­ci­ety has de­clined so bad­ly is a shame on hu­man­i­ty. I am very hurt to have to re­port this to T&T. What are we be­com­ing in so­ci­ety?”

Sookoo, who al­so serves as the coun­cil­lor for Re­form Man­a­ham­bre, high­light­ed the tem­ple's ac­tive mem­ber­ship of 100 and its vi­tal role in the Williamsville area.

She em­pha­sized its open-door pol­i­cy, cater­ing to in­di­vid­u­als from var­i­ous re­gions who vis­it for de­vo­tion and week­ly gath­er­ings.

“This is a pub­lic tem­ple; it was built by mem­bers of the Williamsville com­mu­ni­ty. Con­tri­bu­tions came from through­out T&T. We got as­sis­tance un­der Mr. Pan­day to com­plete the tem­ple,” she ex­plained.

Con­sid­er­ing the ex­tent of the de­struc­tion, Sookoo ex­pressed the need for as­sis­tance to re­pair and se­cure the tem­ple, which holds deep his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance.

“This is a tem­ple built by our fore­fa­thers. It start­ed as a shed, and gen­er­a­tions came down to de­vel­op it in­to what it is now. It's not a pri­vate tem­ple; it's a com­mu­ni­ty tem­ple, and chil­dren have grown up here. We al­ways try to raise funds to bet­ter the tem­ple. I can't see why peo­ple would want to do some­thing like this,” she lament­ed.

She said un­der the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion the tem­ple was re­fur­bished. The late Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Dhan­raj Singh was al­so a sup­port­er of the in­sti­tu­tion, she added.

Sookoo called up­on the pub­lic to co­op­er­ate with the po­lice in solv­ing the case.

“If you wit­nessed any per­sons here, please get in con­tact with Princes Town po­lice, Help us bring jus­tice to this in­sti­tu­tion and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty by help­ing us iden­ti­fy the in­di­vid­u­als who did this," she ap­pealed.

Ad­dress­ing the van­dals, she said: “The mes­sage: pray for your­self be­cause you are des­e­crat­ing a re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tion. You have des­e­crat­ed this tem­ple, and you have des­e­crat­ed your fam­i­ly for gen­er­a­tions to come. Pray for your­self and your gen­er­a­tions for­ward.”

Mean­while, Pooran Nanan, the as­sis­tant sec­re­tary, re­vealed that the van­dals ar­rived at the tem­ple com­pound in a green Mit­subishi Lancer. He said ini­tial­ly, the nois­es gen­er­at­ed by the de­struc­tive act were mis­tak­en for con­struc­tion sounds, but it was on­ly on Sun­day morn­ing it be­came ap­par­ent that de­struc­tion was tak­ing place with­in the sa­cred site. Nanan al­so not­ed that the bur­glar-proof­ing in front of the door was strange­ly ab­sent on the night of the in­ci­dent.

He said the in­ci­dent had left mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty shak­en.