Kolkata: The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) has filed a public interest litigation in the Calcutta High Court, challenging the naming of a newly-consecrated Jagannath temple in West Bengal’s Digha as ‘Jagannath Dham’.
The petition has been admitted by a division bench, comprising Justices Soumen Sen and Smita Das, with a hearing scheduled for Thursday or Friday.
According to official records, the Digha temple is officially named the Shree Jagannath Dham Cultural Centre. The VHP argues that, as per Hindu tradition, only the four temples at Badrinath, Rameswaram, Dwarka, and Puri can be called ‘Dham’, making the designation inappropriate. Additionally, the VHP’s counsel raised concerns in the petition that some sweets distributed as “Prasad” at the Digha temple were made in shops owned by non-Hindus, which they claim has hurt Hindu religious sentiments.
The newly-constructed Rs 250-crore Jagannath Temple in the coastal town has been in the thick of controversy since its inauguration on April 30. Various stakeholders, including the public, servitors, Gajapati Maharaj Dibyasingha Deb, religious gurus like the Shankaracharya, opposition political parties and the government of have in unison argued that the use of the word ‘Dham’ with the shrine infringes upon the spiritual and cultural legacy of the original Shree Jagannath Temple in Puri, which has historically been known as ‘Jagannath Dham’ and is one of the four Dhams of Hinduism in India.
The BJP in Bengal has also accused the administration of playing with the sentiments of Hindu devotees by distributing “sweets from local shops” as “prasad” of the temple.
