Dhari Devi a Hindu temple located on the banks of the

Alaknanda River The Alaknanda is a Himalayan river in the Indian state of Uttarakhand and one of the two headstreams of the Ganges, the major river of Northern India and a river considered holy in Hinduism. In hydrology, the Alaknanda is considered the sourc ...

between

Srinagar Srinagar (; ) is a city in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in the disputed Kashmir region.The application of the term "administered" to the various regions of Kashmir and a mention of the Kashmir dispute is supported by the tertiary ...

and

Pauri Garhwal Pauri Garhwal is a district in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Its headquarters is in the town of Pauri. It is sometimes referred to simply as Garhwal district, though it should not be confused with the larger Garhwal region of which it is ...

in the Garhwal Region of

Uttarakhand Uttarakhand (, ), also known as Uttaranchal ( ; List of renamed places in India, the official name until 2007), is a States and union territories of India, state in North India, northern India. The state is bordered by Himachal Pradesh to the n ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. The temple is home to the upper half of the idol of the goddess Dhari, while the lower half of the idol is located in Kalimath, where she is worshipped as a manifestation of the Goddess

Kali Kali (; , ), also called Kalika, is a major goddess in Hinduism, primarily associated with time, death and destruction. Kali is also connected with transcendental knowledge and is the first of the ten Mahavidyas, a group of goddesses who p ...

She is considered to be the guardian deity of Uttarakhand and is revered as the protector of the

Char Dham The Char Dham ( ), or the Chatur Dhama (), is a set of four Hindu pilgrimage sites in India, consisting of Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri and Rameswaram. Badrinath, Dwarka, and Puri are shrines of Vishnu, whereas Rameswaram is a shrine of Shiva. ...

’s. Her shrine is one of 108

Shakta pithas The Shakta pithas, also called Shakti pithas or Sati pithas (, , ''seats of Shakti''), are significant shrines and pilgrimage destinations in Shaktism, the mother goddess denomination in Hinduism. The shrines are dedicated to various forms of ...

in India, as numbered by Srimad Devi Bhagwat.

2013 Uttarakhand floods

On June 16, 2013 the original temple of the goddess was removed and shifted to the concrete platform at a height of about 611 metres from the Alaknanda river, to give way to the construction of the 330 MW Alaknanda Hydro Electric Dam built by Alaknanda Hydro Power Company Ltd (AHPCL), a subsidiary of infrastructure major. Hours after the idol was moved, the region faced what would become one of the country’s worst natural disasters since the

2004 tsunami On 26 December 2004, at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+7), a major earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2–9.3 struck with an epicentre off the west coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The undersea megathrust earthquake, known in the scient ...

. The

2013 North India floods In June 2013, a mid-day cloudburst centered on the North Indian state of Uttarakhand caused devastating floods and landslides, becoming the country's worst natural disaster since the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, 2004 tsunami. The r ...

were caused by a multi-day

cloudburst Cloudburst in New Orleans A cloudburst is an enormous amount of precipitation in a short period of time, sometimes accompanied by hail and thunder, which is capable of creating flood conditions. Cloudbursts can quickly dump large amounts of wat ...

resulting in devastating floods and landslides washing away the entire shrine town and killing hundreds of people. Locals and devotees believe, Uttarakhand had to face the Goddess’ ire as she was shifted from her ‘mool sthan’ (original abode) to make way for a 330 MW hydel project that was left in ruins after the flood. A similar attempt in 1882 by a local king had resulted in a landslide that had flattened Kedarnath. A new temple was constructed at its original location.

References

{{Reflist Hindu temples in Uttarakhand Rudraprayag district Shakti temples

External links

Dhari Devi Temple - Uttarakhand