For the people of Orissa, Shiva - one of the three central deities of Hinduism, the god of paradoxes, the god who forever creates and destroys - was the lord of their land. In Shiva all opposites ...

Earlier in the evening, hundreds of Hindus, including Shahi and his friends, performed rituals for Shiva at the nearby Divya Dham Mandir, a vast temple with larger-than-life statues of the gods ...

He said these statues would be replaced with those of Alwars and Nayanars, essentially saint poets and devotees of Lord Shiva and those of Tamil scholars and freedom fighters. Although Annamalai ...