Save the ancient Hindu temple caves!

Not many know that amidst a slum dwelling inJogeshwari lie India's most ancient Hindu temple caves

History and sightseeing enthusiasts from the city often make trips to different parts of the state and the country to explore ruins, forts and rock-cut caves, while so many actually lie right under our noses — one such being the Jogeshwari caves.

These caves are well worth a visit as it was the first large Hindu stone-cut temple, say historians and archaeologists. Archaeological Survey of India's Superintending Archaeologist Madan Singh Chauhan writes about the caves, "It is one of the finest specimens of Brahmanical rock-cut architecture and bears similarity with other splendour specimens like the Elephanta caves' Cave 1 and the Ellora." Dating back to the 520 to 550 AD, the cave is dedicated to Lord Shiva and has a sculpture representation of Shiv Parvati playing the dyuta among other things.

Over the years, the local community has set up many deities in the caves. The Pathare Prabhu community set up the temple of the Hindu deity Jogeshwari Mata, after whom the locality gets its name. This temple reportedly dates back to 200 years, say historians. The cave also houses an ancient Shiva temple, a Dattatray temple, a Hanuman and a Ganesh temple.

Considered the longest ancient Hindu cave, in 1909, the British Government notified it as an archeological site, but it was only in 1931 that the caves became more accessible, eminent historian and activist, late Sharada Dwivedi once mentioned to this writer.

Its rock-cut passage is eight feet wide and around 50 feet long and leads to an open courtyard, which opens into a portico with 10 pillars. This portico was once very richly carved. The main sanctum has 20 pillars that divides the basalt stone caves into four aisles and the central hall. There are carvings all over. Unfortunately, leakage has destroyed most of it.

However, the ASI sprung into action to salvage whatever was left after a PIL was filed to protect the city's ancient caves in 2008.

Dwivedi told Bombay Times once how after reading about the "pathetic conditions" of the caves in the papers, she visited the sites with her driver and photographer. "I saw for myself that there was no regard for the ancient structure. All kinds of anti-social elements crowded the place." Dwivedi later went on to be a part of a special committee set up to study the historic caves in Mumbai after the PIL by an NGO demanded their protection.

Even the ASI officials had then acknowledged that the Jogeshwari Caves were the worst affected. "In 2005-2006, more than 600 trucks of debris was cleared from the rooftops of the caves," an official from the restoration wing of ASI tells us. And post the submission of the report by the special committee in 2009, ASI authorities started with restoration of the pillars and covered all openings with a mesh to tackle the bat menace.

Says the official, "Due to accumulation of rain water over the years, the pillars, that were last restored in the 1960s had decayed. In 2011, we restored all the pillars with RCC work, leaving one at the entrance, for people to identify how the original looked," he says.

Today, while a lot of the carvings have been lost due to unchecked leakage, encroachment and misuse, miscreants who'd earlier crowd the caves are at least no more. Instead, one often finds local school children coming here to find some solitude in the company of their books. A lot more, however, remains to be done.