Delegates garland the statue of saint Ravi Das at the Mahavir Temple in Patna on Friday. Picture by Nagenrda Kumar Singh

Patna, Feb. 18: At a time when temples in some parts of the country are turning away devotees on the basis of caste and creed, the Mahavir temple in Patna is embracing diversity and incorporating the traditions of other religions.

For the past few years, both Hanuman and Buddha are worshipped here and today Mahavir temple authorities installed a statue of Dalit saint, Ravi Das, on his birth anniversary on the premises of the temple.

The process of incorporating different religious beliefs in the temple had started in early 1980s when former IPS officer Kishore Kunal got involved in the management of Mahavir temple located near the Patna Junction.

After installing the five-foot statue of Ravi Das, which was brought from Jaipur and is made of Makrana marble, Kunal said: “We believe in equality among human beings. The Ramanand sect with which the temple is associated has believed in and practiced non-discrimination for hundreds of years.”

He added this is the second temple after Chittorgarh Kumbha Shyam Temple where the statue of saint Ravi Das has been installed. The statue cost Rs 2.5 lakh and weighs around 2 tonnes and it has taken more than three months to give finishing touches. Kunal first helped in building the temple through voluntary labour. On June 30, 1993, as the secretary of Mahavir Mandir Trust, he took a revolutionary step by getting a Dalit priest, Phalhari Suryavanshi Das from Ayodhya, as the head of the temple.

Kunal had been the adviser on the Babri Masjid demolition issue to then Prime Minister V.P. Singh. Way back, when he was the head of the Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts he made a Dalit, Janardan Manjhi, the chief priest of Ram Janaki temple at Paliganj, near Patna.

Kunal said: “Mahavir Temple is an ideal religious trust and other trusts should emulate its ideas. The temple is committed to establish co-ordination between religion and society and several steps have been taken in this regard. The temple aims to bridge the gap between upper and the lower castes of the society.”