Rebuilding of Somnath

01The vow at Prabhas

The first of the twelve Jyotirlingas had been sacked by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1026, and attacked again by the armies of Alauddin Khalji in 1299 and of later Gujarat sultans; Aurangzeb ordered it destroyed once more. When Patel came to Prabhas on 13 November 1947, after Junagadh had joined India, he found the ruined shrine by the sea and announced that it would be rebuilt. K. M. Munshi, then a minister, led the work.

02Built by the people

Gandhi advised that the temple be built from public gifts and not from government funds, and so it was; the Shree Somnath Trust was formed to raise and spend the money. The ruins of the older temple were removed and the new one designed by Prabhashankar Sompura in the Maru-Gurjara style. Patel died in December 1950 before it was ready. Prime Minister Nehru objected to the President attending, but Rajendra Prasad went, and installed the Jyotirlinga on 11 May 1951.

03What it meant

Munshi wrote in Somanatha: The Shrine Eternal (1951) that the temple which had been destroyed and raised again so many times stood for the spirit of a nation that would not die. A statue of Sardar Patel stands at the temple gate. The first major temple rebuilt by the free nation on a site of destruction, Somnath set the pattern that Ayodhya would follow seventy years later.