The first temple to be consecrated by the Dogras at Srinagar is Gadadhar Temple, again a temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu, which was built in the heart of the Shergarhi, once the citadel of the Afghan rulers of Kashmir. Like the Karkotas, the Dogra house also tried to recast Kashmir as a “Vaishnavite land”. The commissioning of temples dedicated to the deity was a conscious attempt in this direction, though, in the end, it failed to reshape the native Hindu community. However, the transfer of this new cultural and artistic tradition from the plains was not new.
Even earlier, when Ranjit Singh’s army had freshly arrived in Kashmir, marking an end to five centuries of uninterrupted Muslim rule, one of the initial acts of the new rulers was the construction of two temples in the city, the Anandeshwar Temple at Maisuma, right opposite to the royal citadel of Shergarhi, and the Devi Temple at Pokhribal on the site of the former Mughal city of Naagar Nagar. Both were constructed in the same year, 1820, by Kashmir’s first Sikh subedar, Diwan Moti Ram. Both the temples were commissioned around a natural feature by the Hindu and Muslim citizenry of the city. Yet...
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