Both Punarutthana and KBSV Bharat have dedicated phone numbers that people can call on or send images or information regarding temples that need attention.

In Kerala, in most places, the temples have been razed to the ground and the sites have only the foundation of the structures left. The KBSV Bharat Trust activities to #reclaimtemples involve not just cleaning the place and sensitising the people but also having to create temporary structures and work for a complete re-installment of permanent ones.

The portal Reclaim Temples features all the work undertaken in this direction by the groups. It aims at systematising the collection of data on temples and will serve as a public database for temples in ruin. The information will be crowdsourced, and all the photos will be mapped to the pin code at the village level, enabling easy access.

The portal, which is also the one that started the twitter tag #reclaimtemples in 2015, was launched by a group of people, who now work under the registered KBSV Bharat Trust. “Reclaim Temples is not an organisation. It is an objective. And so, there is no single person as a leader, we are all workers in this direction. Any of the organisations may take up the activity that needs attention, but deliberately no flag or any such branding exercise has been designed for ‘Reclaim Temples’ since this is not about organisations,” said Vimal C V, who runs the website.

“#reclaimtemples is an aspiration, an objective and a movement to rebuild the destroyed Hindu temples of Bharat and reclaim the Hindu heritage that was destroyed and occupied illegally during the invasion of Bharat by foreigners,” he said.

“With over 30,000 temples lying in ruins, as per official figures, they are estimated to be around 70,000 in Karnataka, and around 200,000 across the nation, if we do not act now, at the rate at which the decay and degradation are happening, in five years’ time, they will all be lost. It is a huge effort, as even one temple a day implies decades of action,” he added.

One temple after another, the work in this direction is now gathering momentum and moving at a pace the volunteers themselves hadn’t imagined, as people from all over the country and the world have started writing in to these trusts and individuals, offering to help. On their part, they are also ensuring that they do all it takes to turn these temples into not only places of worship but also local centres of art, culture and learning by encouraging locals to put the premises of the temple to productive use. And, ask if they fear that this activism may bring them uninvited troubles, the words that echo in unison are Dharmo Rakshati Rakshitaha (Dharma protects those who protect it).

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