{"id":10427,"date":"2011-09-03T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2011\/09\/03\/hindu-temple-at-the-british-army-base\/"},"modified":"2011-09-03T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-03T12:00:00","slug":"hindu-temple-at-the-british-army-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2011\/09\/03\/hindu-temple-at-the-british-army-base\/","title":{"rendered":"Hindu Temple at The British Army Base"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/news\/blog\/2011\/aug\/29\/gurkhas-hindu-temple-in-lashkar-gah\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>AFGHANISTAN, August 26, 2011 (by Riazat Butt): &#8220;This is the Goddess Durga,&#8221; says Lance Corporal Prithvi, gesturing towards the shrine containing a statue of the Hindu deity. &#8220;She represents power. At this moment we pray to her because she gives us power to defeat evil forces.&#8221; Above the shrine is a hanging featuring the God Hanuman, to its right a poster of the Lord Shiva, to the left another poster of the Goddess Durga and, next to her, a poster of Lakshmi. <\/p>\n<p>The temple is in Lashkar Gah and has only been open a few months. &#8220;It was one of the first things we did when we got here in April, as soon as our freight arrived,&#8221; says Prithvi, from 2nd Battallion the Royal Ghurka Rifles, who is originally from Nepal. Every morning the 20 Gurkhas say prayers, light candles and apply the tilaka to the statue.<\/p>\n<p>It is Prithvi&#8217;s second tour of Afghanistan. &#8220;In my first tour we were ground-holding, we were fighting and it was a different experience. We lost some our friends. Because of the situation, I&#8217;m glad there is somewhere to pray.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is the only temple of its kind. When the Gurkhas leave Lashkar Gah, so will the temple. <\/p>\n<p>View a gallery of the Gurkhas&#8217; Hindu temple at http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/gurkhas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source AFGHANISTAN, August 26, 2011 (by Riazat Butt): &#8220;This is the Goddess Durga,&#8221; says Lance Corporal Prithvi, gesturing towards the,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}