Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Monday, Oct 14, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Monday, Oct 14, 2002 |
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Opinion
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Trends Columns - Offhand Tirumala not alone
THE Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr Chandrababu Naidu, during a recent visit to the Tirumala Hills to have an early morning darshan of Lord Venkateswara, had the sudden inspiration to go round the temple complex, inspecting the kitchen and mingling with the milling throngs in the maharprakaram. He also went into some cottages maintained and rented out by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Trust (TTDT) to see for himself the quality of the facilities and their upkeep. Everywhere, he was taken aback by the shockingly unhygienic conditions. He was greeted by huge piles of foul-smelling garbage in the temple complex itself, while the environs of the cottages were a revolting sight with rubbish lying around. Lighting and toilet in the cottages were in poor shape. The unkindest cut, a betrayal of the trust reposed by countless devotees from all over the globe, was the lack of cleanliness in the kitchen, producing millions of the famous laddus, the prasadam eagerly sought as the symbol of the Lord's grace and blessing. What is surprising is not what Mr Chandrababu Naidu found, but that, having been in power for so many years, with thefamous shrine right under his nose, and with all his vaunted savvy in good governance, he had to take so much effort to discover what had been known to so many for so long. The intriguing part is that being the richest temple administration and having enough resources to put its best foot forward, it should be so slipshod, inefficient and callous. It is to be hoped that his stern orders to set things right, or else to the Chairman and the Executive Officer of the TTDT, who sheepishly accompanied him on his inspection, will have some perceptible impact in the near future. It would be naive on anyone's part to assume that Tirumala is alone in evoking images of the sorry state of maintenance and cleanliness. There is hardly a Hindu temple I know of which can be said to conform to minimum expected standards in these respects. Having gone to Kasi Vishwanatha temple once, I shudder at the thought of going there again. I have been horrified to see in the garbhagriha of some temples cockroaches and rodents scampering on the sacred vessels kept close to the deity and on the body of the deity itself while the priest is performing the puja, unfazed by the sight. Why should it be so in the case of Hindu temples when, within the same country, shrines of other religions, such as mosques, churches and gurudwaras, are kept so invitingly spick and span? Even the temples built in the UK, the US and other foreign countries are invariably resplendent models of all that abodes of gods and goddesses should be. When this is possible for Hindus living abroad, why not for their co-religionists in India?
B. S. Raghavan
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