How Muslim Residents Preserved Teetwal’s Sharda Temple Land—and Helped Restore a Shared Pilgrimage Site

At the Sharda Yatra Temple in Teetwal, near the Line of Control in north Kashmir, a local interview recalls an unusual act of trust across generations: Muslim residents kept the land associated with an old Hindu pilgrimage base camp intact after the upheaval of 1947, and helped the community reclaim it decades later. The interviewee also says local residents provided the first voluntary labour for the new temple’s boundary wall. His hope that a mosque might stand nearby is an expression of interfaith goodwill, not evidence that such a mosque has been approved or built.

What the Teetwal interview describes

In an August 2026 Instagram interview shared by Sufi Hidayah and The Himalayan Report, a woman asks about the safeguarding of the site over roughly eight decades. Her interviewee affirms the account and says the first labour contribution to the temple’s boundary wall came from people living in the area. He recalls the Save Sharda Committee’s arrival in September 2021, and describes the nearby temple and gurdwara as places of worship that can coexist. He also says he would welcome a mosque there. The precise identity of the interviewee is not independently established in the available records, and the reported wall-building contribution remains his firsthand account rather than independently documented construction expenditure.

From the 1947 rupture to the 2021 handover

Teetwal was a stop on the traditional pilgrimage route to Sharda Peeth, the historic Hindu shrine and learning centre across today’s Line of Control in the Neelum Valley. The area previously had religious and travellers’ facilities, including a dharamshala and gurdwara, which were destroyed amid the 1947–48 conflict. The more recent Sharda Yatra Temple in Teetwal should not be confused with the ancient Sharda Peeth ruins across the border.

Contemporary reporting in April 2022 recorded villagers saying that they had kept the disused pilgrimage-base-camp land safe for the Hindu community, with local residents helping bring it back into use in September 2021. In December 2021, The Indian Express reported Save Sharda Committee founder Ravinder Pandita’s account that Teetwal residents—including Iftikhar Ahmad, Captain Ilyas and Ajaz Ahmad—helped identify the former base-camp land. Later accounts describe a handover of 23 marlas, with different reports using slightly different measurements for the wider site. These are reported land-handover and local-history accounts, not a substitute for independently inspected title deeds.

The phrase ’80 years’ in the reel is therefore a rounded description, not an exact measured period. The gap between 1947 and the 2021 handover was about 74 years.

Rebuilding a temple and a gurdwara

The Save Sharda Committee and supporters began reconstruction after the land was identified and the December 2021 ground-breaking. The Sharda temple was inaugurated in March 2023; the neighbouring gurdwara was also restored and reopened. Reporting has described Muslim villagers, Hindu organisers and Sikh participants working around a site of significance to more than one religious community. That collective history matters more than portraying the land’s revival as the work of only one group.

The temple’s revival also connects to a longer unresolved issue: access to the ancient Sharda Peeth on the other side of the Line of Control. The Save Sharda Committee has sought renewed pilgrimage access, while cross-border movement has remained subject to political and security restrictions. Rebuilding in Teetwal restored a local pilgrimage point, but did not by itself reopen the route to the original shrine.

What this episode establishes—and what it does not

The safeguarding and eventual return of the site are supported by reporting that predates this reel, including attributed statements from local Muslim residents and the rebuilding committee. The account of the first boundary-wall labour comes from the interview and should remain attributed as such. The interview does not demonstrate a formal proposal to build a mosque, and a speaker’s aspiration should not be mistaken for a decision about land use.

Preserving another community’s place of worship through decades of absence, and enabling its return, is a meaningful act of respect for religious freedom and shared heritage. Teetwal’s experience cannot erase wider conflicts or prove that all communities everywhere receive equal protection. It does show that local choices can protect a minority community’s religious connection to a place, and that cooperation among Muslim residents, Hindu pilgrims and Sikh devotees has had concrete results at this site.