The stampede at Naina Devi temple: Man-made disaster and UPA cannot be exonerated!

The stampede at Naina Devi temple: Man-made disaster and UPA cannot be exonerated


! It is not personal opinion of Sushma Swaraj, but a boiling feelings of an India, who has been listening to and witnessing to bombings, killings of innocent people, etc. Even if we keep quite or try to forget, the events recurring show a pattern, linking places and people. It is not the questioning blaming UPA, but as they rule, they are responsible. It cannot be simply neglected that the state government should have taken care of such untoward incidences etc., cannot fetch water. After all, the Central Government ultimately have ruling and deciding authority.

One of the Sakti-Peetas


: According to legend, Lord Shiva’s consort Sati once burnt herself alive in Yagna to avenge an insult to Lord Shiva. The distraught Shiva picked her corpse and gyrated his horrified dance. Then Lord Vishnu unleashed his Chakra and cut the Sati’s body into fifty one pieces to save the earth from Shiva’s wrath. All the fifty one places – where parts of Sati’s body fell, became known as Shakti Peeths It is believed that Sati’s eyes fell at the place where this temple is situated. Therefore, this  temple is called Naina Devi. The word Naina is synonymous with Sati’s eyes. This temple has a website with all details at: http://www.nainadevi.com/aarti.html

How to reach the temple


: Temple of Shri Naina Devi Ji is situated on hill top in Bilaspur Distt. ofHimachal Pradesh in India. This famous temple is connected with National Highway No. 21.Nearest Airport is Chandigarh which is connected with New Delhi by Jet Airways and Indian Airlines Flights. The distance of the shrine from Chandigarh is approx. 100 kms. Motorable roads connect this shrine from Anandpur sahib & kiratpur Sahib. Taxis can be hired from these places. Distance from Kiratpur Sahib to shrine is 30 Kms of which 18 Kms is drive in the Hills. From Anandpur Sahib the distance is 20 Kms of which 8 Kms is drive in the hills. In the past people used to trek from Kaulan Wala Toba near Anandpur Sahib to the shrine. Frequent State Transport bus services are available from all important cities of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh.

The programme is well-known



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The website gives details of the round the year programmes as follows.







Navratras is divided into sets of three days to adore different aspects of the supreme goddess. On the first three days, the Mother is invoked as a powerful force called Durga in order to destroy all our impurities, vices and defects. During the next three days, the Mother is adored as a giver of spiritual wealth, Lakshmi, who is considered to have the power of bestowing on her devotees the inexhaustible wealth. The final set of three days is spent in worshipping the mother as the goddess of wisdom, Saraswati. In order to have all-round success in life, we need the blessings of all three aspects of the divine mother; hence, the worship for nine nights.

The man-made stampede


: The stampede on a slender trail leading to the famous hilltop Naina Devi temple in Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh on Sunday killed 146 people, mainly women and children, and injured about 230. According to officials, rumours of a landslip uphill triggered the stampede as terrified people started running down. More than 5000 devotees were on their way to the temple, situated at a height of about 4000 metres, at the time of the incident. Since this was an auspicious time of the year, the rush was more, said a temple official.

The communication network in the area was affected due to bad weather and rescue operations were hampered due to fog around the site. Most of the injured have been referred to the Ropar hospital in Punjab and PGI Chandigarh. Television footage showed slippers, torn clothes and bags with flowers and offerings lying along the narrow path winding up the hill. People thronged hospitals looking for relatives. A television channel showed a young woman pleading for water in a corner as rescuers brought in more injured people on stretchers. Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal rushed to the spot and supervised rescue operations. He announced an immediate relief of Rs. 1 lakh each to the next of kin of the deceased and Rs. 50,000 to those seriously injured. A magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the incident. A similar stampede occurred here in 1983, claiming 36 lives.

PTI reports


: As men, women and children stood in a serpentine queue, suddenly all hell broke loose. In 15 minutes, between 9.30 a.m. and 9.45 a.m. rumour of a landslip triggered a huge stampede. Groups of devotees returning from the temple ran down and crashed into pilgrims trekking up the four km road to reach the temple. Children and women clutching the hands of their near and dear ones got separated in the rush to escape the feared landslide, realising little that they were hurtling to another form of death. As devotees tried to outpace one another to find an escape route, they tried to jump over the railings along the road leading to the temple. Coming under massive human pressure, the railings gave way and people fell down along the slope. Several women and children, who could not jump the railings and stuck to the regular path, were trampled upon, witnesses said.

Government, Temple administration and others have not learned the crowd-management


: The temple has put-up a wonderful website with e-darshan, arthi etc., but it is regrettable that the management could not have any proper crowd-management methods regulating the devotees to go near the sanctum sanctorum and have darshan. Everybody knows that thousands of devotees are coming at the prescribed dates with devotion. When crores of rupees are spent on cineme, cricket and parliamentary tamashas, why not the government take care of the pilgrims and devotees, who have been faithfully following such practices for thousands of years. When talk about hi-tech management, finance etc., and even people like Lallu started teravching IKMs, and foreign students, what is the fun of Indian devotees getting killed like this?

Rumour cannot be accepted as the reason


: David Petley, Wilson Professor, Department of Geography, Durham University has given important details with photos as follows at his blog: http://daveslandslideblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/naina-devi-temple-stampede-in-indNews reports today report a tragedy in HimachalPradesh when a stampede at a Hindu temple at Naina Devi led to at least 130 women and children being crushed to death. Initial, unconfirmed, reports suggest that the trigger for the stampede was a rumour of a landslide. Thus, for example, MyNews.in reported that: “Additional District Magistrate C P Verma said that the tragedy took place when people gathered at one place in the temple following rumours of landslide and rolling down of stones from a nearby hilltop.” It is not clear as to whether this means that the rumour was that boulders were rolling down the hill, or that the rumour circulated as boulders were falling. The Naina Devi temple has a long history of landslides, which may at least in part explain the rumour. The temple was destroyed in a landslide in 1880 that killed 151 people, a fact that may have been in the back of the mind of the pilgrims when the rumour spread, though this is of course just speculation. The Wikipedia page for the Nainital, the city in which the temple is located, has rather fascinating before and after pictures of the 1880 landslide:

Indian historians and others are culprit for not telling the past


: If the Indian historians do not know the facts, having known the facts, they have not informed the government and guided the people with nthe past historical knowledge, then, there is a reason to believe that these historians – particularly, the elite, eminent categories – who come immediately to support anti-Indian, anti-Hindu forces by giving statements or writing articles in “The Hindu, EPW etc., are the real culprits behind this terrorist mafia. Take the issues of Ramjanmabhumi or Ram-sethu, because of the crores of money involved all sorts of historians, immediately come to the stage, media or conference and declare that it is man-made, Rama was a myth, he drank rum-whiskey such things of the past, he was not an engineer, he did not build the bridge, he build the bridge, but he himself destroyed and so on! Remember, my dear Indians, when all these nonsenses were going on? Just few days before, that too, in India’s highest legal forum and temple of Justice – the Hon’ble supreme Court of India. Who were telling such nonsense – the eminent advocates, senior counsels, legal luminaries competing with historians? What historians were doing? They must have been enjoying the week-ends at five-star hotels drinking.

Should we require cell-phones, CCTVs etc?


When innocent people are getting killed like this based on “rumours” and bomb-blasts, what is use of claiming that India has third largest country to have scientists and all?. What is use of Indians having cell-phones (bole baby bole nonsense), CCTVs, helicopters etc? Or the government want to treat Hindus differently? It cannot be considered or taken as isolated incidence, as it is happening sequentially targeting Hindus only. Why Naina Devi temple after Vaishanavi Devi? Why there was no “rumours” during earlier year Navarathris? Why the same train going through the same line does not catch fire earlier? With all our scientific wisdom, analytical wisdom, super-intelligentsia etc., we cannot simply brush aside such orchestrated incidences.

Government is alive or dead?


With vice / sinful manipulation the UPA government has regained the power joining hands with new breed of power brokers leaving the earlier ones. But, they have been busy with political activities with wide publicity going to foreign countries for one reason or the other. When people are getting killed in Kashmir for the Vaishanavi temple issue, now devotes got killed at Naina devi Temple, why they evade from the local important issues? When they cannot liveds of India within India, how they are going to ask for the killings at Embassy at Afghanistan? First odf all, why should we embassies in such terrorist countries, where there is no peace at all?

VEDAPRAKASH

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