Ramna Kali Temple

About

The Ramna Kali Temple, long remembered as the Ramna Kalibari, stands in the Ramna area of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Set on a 2.25-acre site beside the former Dhaka Racecourse, now Suhrawardy Udyan, and across from the Bangla Academy, the shrine is dedicated to the goddess Kali and has been a centre of Hindu devotion since the days of the Mughal Empire.

In Nepalese folklore the temple is said to have been founded by devotees of Kali who came down from the Himalayas to Bengal. Although it had stood for centuries, the precinct was largely developed in the early twentieth century under the patronage of Rani Bilashmoni Debi, wife of Rajendra Narayan, when its tall shikhara rose as one of the most prominent landmarks of Dhaka. Beside it stood the Ma Anandamoyee Ashram, with a large dighi serving pilgrims and the wider neighbourhood.

On the night of 25 March 1971, the Pakistan Army launched Operation Searchlight against the Bengali nationalist movement in what was then East Pakistan, triggering the Liberation War. Two days later soldiers entered the Ramna Kali Mandir complex and within an hour killed more than a hundred people, including Hindu devotees and Muslims who had sought refuge with them. The original temple was demolished.

A reconstruction of the complex was announced in 2017, supported by the government of India, and the rebuilt temple was inaugurated on 17 December 2021 by President Ram Nath Kovind of India, who described the shrine as a symbol of the spiritual and cultural bond between India and Bangladesh.

History

Founded in the Mughal era and expanded in the early twentieth century under Rani Bilashmoni Debi, the temple was destroyed during the night of 27 March 1971 by the Pakistan Army as part of Operation Searchlight, which targeted Hindu sites including the Jagannath Hall at Dhaka University. Reconstruction was announced in 2017 with Indian support, and the rebuilt temple, the Ma Durga Mandir, and the Radha Krishna Mandir within the same precinct were inaugurated on 17 December 2021.

Significance

For the Hindu community of Bangladesh, the Ramna Kali Temple is a place of both ancient devotion and modern memorial. Its renewal binds the worship of Kali to the remembrance of those killed in 1971 and to the long history of Hindu religious life in Dhaka.