Kheer Bhawani Temple

A natural spring in marshy ground at Tulmul, in Kashmir’s Ganderbal district, has drawn Hindu worshippers for long enough that the 11th-century chronicler Kalhana already mentions a sacred spring at “Tula Mula” in his Rajatarangini — though nothing ties that early reference to a built temple or a named founder. The site as it exists today, with its spring enclosed by an octagonal pool and marble platform, took shape only in the early 20th century, when Maharaja Pratap Singh of Jammu and Kashmir commissioned the current temple, dated to 1912, along with the pond; Maharaja Ranbir Singh had earlier built the site’s first dharamshala (rest house), and Maharaja Hari Singh later added further renovations. Devotees hold that the spring’s water changes color, and treat unusually dark water as a warning of trouble to come, a belief reported around the 1990 Kashmiri Pandit exodus among other periods of unrest — a tradition of interpretation rather than a documented or measured phenomenon.

Kheer Bhawani (also called Ragnya Devi, and named for the milk-and-rice kheer offered here) is regarded as the presiding deity of Kashmiri Pandits, and the temple’s Jyeshtha Ashtami mela each May or June remains one of the largest Kashmiri Hindu gatherings after the Amarnath Yatra. Since the 1990 exodus scattered most of the valley’s Hindu population, the shrine has continued to function through the care of a small number of resident priests and caretakers, with visiting pilgrims from outside Kashmir supported by security arrangements around the mela — making the temple as much a living marker of a displaced community’s continuity as a place of everyday worship.