The Sun Temple in Orissa along the East Coast of India has been an enigma. Built over 12 years with more than 1200 artisans with incredible architectural ideas and artistic conception, as a temple to honor the Sun God, completed in approximately 1280, it was never consecrated.

Stories of a magnet that held the temple together but had to be removed when it began to affect vessels in the Bay of Bengal – the removal of which caused a major portion of the temple to collapse – add to the enigma. Even Vasco da Gama’s name in s included in some variants of the story. Other variants point to Lord Curzon requiring the removal of the magnet.

The temple has three entrances. The southern entrance has two horses that welcomes the entrant. The eastern entrance has, two sets of statues of single rocks, each with a lion sitting on an elephant with a man lying on at the feet of the elephant. It is the northern entrance, though, that is important to this story. Again consisting of two statues of single rocks, each has a man sitting on an elephant with another man in a state of helplessness at the feet of the elephant, perhaps to be trampled.

Our guide, registered with the tourist infrastructure associated with the temple, had done a reasonably good job describing various aspects of the temple architecture and the intricacies of the murals along the walls of the temple. As we stepped to the northern gate, he told us that the statues pointed out that the Hindu would be victorious over those who believed in the Islamic faith.

It took me a few seconds before I understood the implications of what our guide had mentioned. On further querying he said that he was right and that this had been described as part of the official training.

However, this seemed rather intriguing given that by the time the temple was built, Muslim presence in Eastern India had been rather minimal and had consisted mainly of incursions in the western half of India and the era of the Delhi Sultanate had only begun. On pointing this out, our guide backed off and said that he may have learnt of this from other tourists and may be he was wrong and he would not repeat this to other tourists.

He then went ahead and took us back to the temple and told us that the story about the magnets – which he had described in great detail earlier – was in fact false and presented to keep tourist interest high. In fact, there had been no physical magnet (as that would have affected the working of local communities too, he added) and that the temple, which was never used, had seen the growth of large trees along the walls in the interstices of rocks and had broken down over the years as these trees broke under their own weight.

While our guide may have attempted to resolve these rumours that he had first fed us, a number of questions remained.

While I related this story to some friends, they told me that while they have visited Qutb Minar numerous times, when they visited it last year, the tour guides there described that the tower was actually built on a Ganesh Temple, going to some length to point out what the deciphered as parts of the old temple in the current structure. There is no historical evidence of this and such stories only add to increased antipathy and hatred. Unfortunately, it is on government premises, in sites of national and historical significance that such rumor mongering continues.

To what extent has religious discrimination taken root in India where common people are re-interpreting symbols to sow seeds of hatred? How would a local Hindu family understand such a story? It would reaffirm the bigotry today with symbols from 8 centuries ago. We are not wrong about these Muslims. How would a local Muslim family visiting a tourist site of its own nations understand such a story? It would reaffirm that we were always hated. That the Hindus always were prejudiced against us. It is perhaps even pointless to ask how the numerous tourists coming to this site would understand this story.

One thought remained, though, as we left the Sun temple, following the setting sun. With divisions having taken root at this level, who needed outside agencies?

On a less philosophical note, we wondered whether the Government of Orissa or the Central Government knew that these were the stories being presented by the local accredited guides and whether they had expressed their complicit approval.

- Sanat Mohanty

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