People In UP Village Offer Prayers At Saffron Painted Toilet Thinking It’s A Locked Temple

There’s a very fine line between bhakti and blind faith. Remember the scene from PK where Aamir Khan’s character places a stone under a tree and people begin praying and offering ‘chadhava’ to it?

Something similar recently came to light in the Hamirpur district of Uttar Pradesh when people mistook a saffron-colored toilet building to be a temple, reports Khaleej Times.

The toilet building was inaugurated a year back but due to some unknown reasons it never opened for public use. People from Maudaha village started offering prayers outside the locked door assuming there was an idol of a deity inside.

“The building that is located in the premises of the community health center, was painted saffron and shaped like a temple. People believed it to be a temple and no one bothered to clarify. It was only recently that an official told us that it was actually a toilet,” Rakesh Chandel, a villager told Gulf News.

He also said that the saffron color of the building caused confusion and the building has now been painted pink.

Chairman of the Maudaha Nagar Panchayat, Ram Kishore, said, “This public toilet was built by the Nagar Palika Parishad around a year ago and the contractor had it painted saffron. The color caused much confusion and people mistook it for a temple.”

Though the color of the building has been changed, it’s not yet made operational for the public. Moreover, most of the toilets constructed as a part of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in the state are painted saffron.