Bhagyalakshmi Temple - Charminar, Old City, Hyderabad

Religion is being tampered by the political parties for their dramas

Really there is no issue about Bhagyalakshmi temple – Charminar, Hyderabad. All religion people are living together very happy in Old City Hyderabad. But few people are making controversies about the Bhagyalakshmi Temple for their personal benefit. There is no mistake from the both religion, if they really want to solve the issue smoothly they can do, but few people don’t want to do this.

Bhagyalakshmi temple is a  located in Old city, Hyderabad, at the base of the city's famous Charminar monument.

Every year, Bhagyalakshmi temple is decorated for Dasara and Deepawali for a few days. The entire decoration is 30-50 feet. Diwali is celebrated world wide by Hindus to convey the message of enlightenment and destruction of evil. Goddess Lakshmi   birthday falls on the day of Diwali and also during the 5th incarnation of Lord Vishnu, he rescues Goddess Lakshmi from the prison of King Bali.

The temple has been a subject of controversy due to its location in a Muslim-majority area, and the alleged threat it poses to the historic Charminar structure. In the 1960s, the replacement of the holy stone with an idol and the addition of a temporary shed evoked communal tensions.

In 1979, the MIM, a political party in India, called a bandh to protest against the Grand Mosque Seiqure. When the local Hindu traders refused to shut down their shops, some extremists desecrated the temple on 23 November 1979, looted the Hindu-owned shops and set fire to them.

During the Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations in September 1983, certain Hindu organizations put up big cloth banners at a number of places in the area asking for the declaration of India as a Hindu Republic. In this charged atmosphere, a Muslim threw a stone at the temple. Some Hindus desecrated a mosque in retaliation and placed idols and pictures of Hindu Gods which resulted in MIM calling for a bandh. The situation soon developed into riots, in which 45 people were killed.

During the night of 1 November 2012, the temple administration started to carry out some construction work without the permission of Archaological Survey of India, stating that they were decorating the temple ahead of the Diwali festival.

 The construction activity, which was illegal according to the ASI, was stopped by the police.^[6] This construction work at the temple premises triggered Hindu-Muslim tension in the city. Some local Muslim politicians feared that the expansion might damage the historic Charminar, which they identify with Islamic heritage. The temple authorities maintain that they were not planning an expansion and had only replaced the worn-out bamboo structures with new ones. A contingent of MIM party workers and five [[Member of the Legislative

Assembly (India) MLAs led by Akbaruddin Owaisi organized a rally, alleging that the police was facilitating the illegal expansion work. The police stopped the rally and took the MIM leaders into custody. Following this, a few violent incidents were reported in the city, including stone pelting and damage to four APSRTC buses, two cars, an ATM and a garments showroom. The city administration temporarily put a ban on the public visits to Charminar, shut down the nearby market and barricaded some of the streets. The police also prevented the Hindu leaders from organizing a march to the temple by taking the organizers into custody.