KATHMANDU, NEPAL, January 4, 2009: [HPI Note: This series of articles portrays the dispute at Nepal’s Pashupatinath Temple, where a long-standing tradition of having Indians as the main priests has been forcefully challenged by Nepal’s new Maoist Government. ]
Nepal’s Foreign Minister has blamed his Maoist allies for the removal of Indian priests at the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu and accused Prime Minister Prachanda of not punishing the people who stormed the shrine on Thursday.
The Young Communist League, the youth wing of the ruling Communist Party of Nepal, on Thursday defied court orders and appointed their own priests at the temple in place of Indian priests who claim they have been conducting rituals at the shrine for 300 years.
“The Prime Minister is responsible for this. This is against Hinduism and this is against Hindu sentiment,” Foreign Minister Upendra Yadav told CNN-IBN from Kathmandu. Yadav accused the Maoists of bringing politics into a “religious matters”.
Devotees, for the first time in the history of the temple, were unable to offer worship on January 1 because of the controversy.