A curious incident happened in Uttar Pradesh last week. The Uttar Pradesh Police razed down a temple dedicated to Corona Mata, which came up a few days ago at Juhi Shukulpur village in Pratapgarh district. The villagers built the temple with the objective of seeking blessings from the Goddess to save themselves from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Corona Devi temple in Pratapgarh is not the first such religious response to the pandemic. During the first wave, many people from the states of Assam, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh started worshipping Corona Mata; temples were dedicated to the Corona goddess even in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
Usually, if a roadside temple or religious structure is brought down, citing civic obstruction, the Hindutva ecosystem amplifies the matter as an attack on Hinduism. However in the case of the demolition of the Corona Mata temple, we didn’t see any such outrage. In fact, the decision to bring down the newly constructed temple was taken in a state ruled by the BJP whose Chief Minister, Ajay Singh Bhist who goes by the name Yogi Adityanath, is very sensitive to anything related to Hindu religious traditions and symbolism.
So, why was the temple brought down? That too when India has a long and rich tradition of worshipping Goddesses related to diseases?
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