INDIA, March 25, 2021 (Firstpost, by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev): Last year, the government of Tamil Nadu submitted a report to the Madras High Court stating that in 11,999 temples in the state, there is no puja or ritual taking place as there is no revenue. In 34,000 temples, there is only one person to manage all the affairs of the space. While 37,000 temples record a revenue less than US$115 per annum. They estimated that around 12,000 temples will die in the next few years. An official statement by the government attests that 1,200 Deities have gone missing, stolen. Several police officers have written books claiming that thousands of Deities are fake, as the original statues have been stolen and replaced with counterfeits in the last 25 years. This is not social media sensationalism. This is a stark reality that we are facing. If we continue like this, in another 100 years, except for a few major temples, all of them will be extinct. How did we end up here? First of all, a temple is a subjective affair. You cannot run a temple with mere employees. You need passion and devotion for it. But right now, temples are in government control, and someone who has no feeling for the temple is managing it, so naturally, they will not keep it well. A temple is not a business but the soul of the community. It can only be managed with tremendous involvement and devotion.

Stranglehold on temples: A colonial legacy. Why is the government managing temples? There is a long history to this. In 1817, the first Madras Regulation was passed and the East India Company – a corporate – took over the temples. Their idea of a temple was land, gold, diamonds – wealth. They transported everything they could, and what they could not is left here in the temples. Then in 1840, there was a directive to release the temples back; this was a consequence of Christian missionaries who protested that it was disgraceful for Christians to manage pagan temples. Anyway, the gold was taken, so they had no business there anymore. In 1925, temples were becoming the hubs of organizing freedom movements, so the Madras Religious and Charitable Endowments Act was brought in, to bring them under government control. Since the minority communities strongly protested, their places of worship were released, and only Hindu temples were held. After independence, the Tamil Nadu Religious and Charitable Endowment Act was passed. The Tamil Nadu temples are under the control of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR & CE) Department. If you read the fundamental rights granted to every Indian citizen in the Constitution and then look at the HR & CE laws, it is absolutely outrageous. The very fact that a certain community is targeted, and cannot keep its own places of worship, amounts to nothing less than apartheid. Why is it that everyone else can manage their religious affairs, but one community, which is the majority community, cannot?

Much more at source.
https://www.firstpost.com/india/why-indias-temples-must-be-freed-from-government-control-9460381.html

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