India, Jan. 11 -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that forces that had opposed the reconstruction of Somnath temple are still active, now working through "other malicious means" instead of swords and the repeated attacks on the temple over centuries could not be explained just as "acts of economic plunder".

Speaking at the Somnath Swabhiman Parv held at Prabhas Patan in Gujarat to mark 1,000 years since Mahmud of Ghazni's invasion of the Somnath temple in 1026, Modi said "If the attacks on Somnath were only for economic loot, they would have stopped after the first major plunder a thousand years ago. But that did not happen. The temple was attacked again and again, its idols were broken, its form was altered repeatedly, and y...