Curious tempest over temples

Over the last few weeks, there has been a storm over so-called ‘illegal temples’. While there is some justification in the outrage, it also sounds suspiciously like a political strategy.

I USED to love the view from my house when I first moved in. There was a huge mining pond with smooth waves running over it, a soothing sight at any time of the day.

A small island, less than 2m square, floated on the pond with a few banana plants on it. Every morning, the island would be to the left of the house. Over the day, it would float all the way to the right, ending up some 300m away by night.

The next morning, it would be back where it started. It was like clockwork, and it was beautiful.

This was back in the early 1990s. Few people lived there, just a bunch of random low-cost housing areas and a lot of squatters, many resettled into longhouses. Mine was among the first housing estates there.

The area was cut off from the rest of the world by the Klang River on one side, and the mining pond on another. There was only one route in and out. The first new link to an area called Taman Sri Manja came only in 2001 – a little sandbridge over the pond.

Some distance behind the house, by the Klang River, was a village the locals called “Kampung Benggali”. A misnomer, of course – the place was full of Punjabis, Sikhs and a handful of Indians.

The Punjabis were mostly milk sellers and the place was full of cowsheds. There was one shop run by a Chinese man, the only sundry shop in the whole area.

A temple and a gurdwara were there. They had been there since the 1970s, I was told.

Fast forward to 2025, the pond is gone, reclaimed over the years. Housing estates, flats and condominiums are sprouting over a 29ha area, and thousands of people have moved in. A bridge has been built over the river, linking Old Klang Road to Kesas Highway and Puchong. Traffic is heavy, jams are common.

And just like that, the temple and gurdwara are suddenly illegal buildings.

Apparently, somewhere around 2017, the place had been gazetted as an extension of a small Muslim cemetery that had been at the far corner of the river.

The two houses of worship are now accused of encroachment and trespassing. I say they are victims of circumstances. If the government official who had signed the land over to the cemetery had instead signed it over to the temple and gurdwara, they would be legal.

A piece of paper and a signature made the difference between legal and what is now being decried loudly as “haram”. I am told it was all because someone wanted to woo Malay votes before an election.

These two places of worship aren’t the only ones that are under attack. There are many like them but these are two I can vouch for. I have seen both temple and gurdwara since the late 1980s.

No one in their right mind wants illegal buildings sprouting on land owned by others, whether they are places of worship, houses where people live, or warongs selling kuih and tea. That is wrong, and any such building should be demolished and the trespassers evicted.

But that is the job of the local council, the police and landowners. It’s not for loud preachers and the ordinary Joe to take the law into their own hands. The right way is to lodge police reports and let the authorities do their jobs.

There really are so-called “trespassers” who are caught in a bind even though they did no wrong. Indeed, many temples were built on rubber estates with tacit approval of the British authorities.

When the British left, the temples were in a quandary as the areas in question were transformed.

For instance, there are temples in Putrajaya – which is almost completely Malay – and Cyberjaya, which also has few Hindus.

These places were once Prang Besar Estate, Galloway Estate and Raja Alang Estate, among others. Indians, most of them Hindus, lived there before being displaced. The temples may now have to move too, to be where the Hindus are.

To clamour for them to be demolished outright, though, is not the answer. That would be draconian.

The outrage also seems suspiciously political, with some converts being used as tools. After all, these temples – which seem to face the brunt of attacks – have been around for decades.

They were there when Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was prime minister. During the leadership of Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri, they were still there. But no one was doubling over in pain.

But with the unity government, which is led by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and also includes DAP, the pain has somehow become unbearable.

Many are being suddenly driven crazy at seeing these temples, so much so that they are even willing to chip in to buy bulldozers to tear down the temples themselves.

Sadly, most politicians, and even the police, seem powerless to stop these insane acts of vandalism and threats to the nation’s security. Any act of demolition by those without authority is not just illegal, it could also blow up into something far more dangerous.

Amazingly, it has taken a PAS MP to move in to quell the situation. Dr Halimah Ali has suggested a “window of amnesty” for a study to see which temples can be legalised, admitting that these disputes have been left unaddressed for years.

Those that do not deserve to be legalised – there are claims some of them are used as cover for gangsters – can then be torn down. There should be no dispute about that.

I must salute Dr Halimah. What she suggests is probably the best solution, something that should have been carried out years ago.

I remember MIC moving to have all temples registered back in the 1990s.

Why they were not all legalised back then is a question that needs to be asked. As for the answer, only God knows.