Lahore is the capital of Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan. It has a rich cosmopolitan history and was the principal city of the vast plain of the entire Punjab region for many centuries, and was the capital of the Sikh empire of Maharaja Ranjit Singh until the mid-1850s when it was conquered by the British. Before the partition of British India in 1947, Lahore had a large Hindu, Sikh and Jain population. In 1941, 64.5% of the population of Lahore was Muslim, while about 36% was Hindu or Sikh.[2] At that time, the city contained numerous Hindu temples, Jain temples, and Sikh gurdwaras. The overwhelming majority of Lahore and West Punjab's non-Christian minority population fled to India at Partition, while East Punjab was similarly depopulated of almost its entire Muslim population. For example, on the eve of Partition, Amritsar was about 49% Muslim, whereas in the 1951 census, the figure had dropped to only 0.52%,[3][4] while Ludhiana was 63% Muslim prior to Partition, but 97% Hindu and Sikh in the 1961 census.[5] As a result of religious demographic changes and political tensions, almost all Hindu and Jain temples have been abandoned in Lahore, although several important Sikh shrines continue to operate.
The condition of temples in Lahore is not good, it is not like that the city lack temples but they are not maintained so much as Hindus migrated from Lahore in 1947 en masse. In 1992 after demolition of Babri Masjid, in Pakistan especially in Lahore, temples were attacked and destroyed, many temples were completely destructed.[6]
Hindu temples
Rattan Chand Temple, Lahore in 1880
Only two Hindu temples are currently functional in Lahore.[7]
^"Forced Migration and Ethnic Cleansing in Lahore in 1947, Ishtiaq Ahmed, 2004" (PDF). Retrieved 24 April 2012.
^Talbot, Ian; Tatla, Darshan Singh (2006). Epicentre of violence: partition voices and memories from Amritsar. Permanent Black. ISBN 978-81-7824-131-9.
^Ispahani, Farahnaz (2 January 2017). Purifying the Land of the Pure: A History of Pakistan's Religious Minorities. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-062167-4.
^Virdee, Pippa (February 2018). From the Ashes of 1947. Cambridge University Press. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-108-42811-8.
^"The fate of Lahore's Hindu temples show the city's shift from a cosmopolitan to monolithic culture".
^ a bOnly two functional Hindu temples in Lahore
^One Hindu temple in Lahore, and no crematorium Archived 1 July 2006 at the Wayback Machine
^"Hindu, Sikh temples in state of disrepair". Daily Times. 16 April 2004. Archived from the original on 2 March 2012. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
^"TEPA to remodel roads leading to Jain Mandir Chowk". Daily Times. 1 June 2007. Archived from the original on 2 March 2012. Retrieved 24 April 2012.