Plight of Hindu Temples

Plight of Hindu Temples.

Reproduced from Forum for Religious Freedom.

The British government in collusion with local leaders in Orissa
took over the properties of the famed Puri Jagannath temple in 1878. Continuing the stance of
the British regime and its proxies towards the appropriation and looting of Hindu temples, Indian politicians after Independence in 1947 concocted the fatally flawed, and the blatantly antisecular, Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act (HRCE Act) in 1951 to “provincialise the administration of Hindu Religious Institutions.” Under its aegis, variously amended and often challenged by Hindu groups over the years, the state governments have taken over thousands of temples, generally under the pretext of preventing “mismanagement” by Hindus. In other words, Hindus, and only Hindus, are not considered capable of managing their places of worship without government oversight.


In 2002, from the 2,07,000 temples in Karnataka the government took in revenues of Rs.
72 crores, returned Rs. 10 crores for temple maintenance, and granted Rs. 50 crores for
madrasas, and Rs. 10 crores for churches. The fundamental question to be asked is: Why is money from Hindu temples disappearing into government accounts in the first place, to be distributed to other third party interests, be it non-Hindu or otherwise? Why did only six crores make it back to the temples that generated the Rs. 72 crores? An estimated 50,000 temples have shut down during the last five years in Karnataka due to lack of resources. How can this happen if there is a surplus Rs. 66 crores of Hindu temple money in the hands of the government?

Under the openly Christian evangelical regime of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. Samuel Rajsekar Reddy, the Tirumala Tirupati Devaswom (TTD) authority, which is controlled by his state, frontal assaults have been made on the very hills of the beloved temple of Lord Balaji in Tirupati. In March 2006, the government demolished a centuries old, 1000 pillar mantapam in the Tirumala complex. The state government has not denied a charge that 85% percent of revenues from the TTD, which collects over Rs. 3,100 crores every year as the richest temple in India, are transferred to the state exchequer. The non-temple use of this colossal amount of money is not fully accounted for by the government. Temple watchdog groups have alleged that the government has allocated Rs. 7.6 crores of TTD money towards repairs and renovations of mosques and churches in a recent year. JRG Wealth Management Limited, a Christian owned
organization, was given a lucrative contract to procure materials for the prasadam that is given to temple devotees. On January 21, the Chief Minister announced the sponsorship, using TTD money, of a hockey tournament in his parents’ name. An attempt to take over five of the seven hills that belong to Lord Venkateswara, according to legal deeds, and hand them to Christian institutions, was thwarted last year only when Hindu religious leaders, under the aegis of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha united to lodge strong, and unprecedented, protests. TTD wealth is being distributed as gold bars “for the poor”, with no transparency as to who the “poor” are who will get the temple’s riches. There are plans to build a ropeway to the hills to make it a more appealing commercial tourist attraction. While owing the TTD Rs. 1,500 crores already from various earlier proceeds, the government is trying to take away another Rs 500 crores from TTD for state irrigation projects! There have been allegations of TTD appointees being non-Hindus, but these are hard to verify since many Hindus who convert to other religions keep their original names for various benefits. TTD's medical and educational institutions have also been turned into centers for proselytization by Christian missionaries.

Elsewhere in Andhra Pradesh, out of 420,028 acres owned by temples in Vishakhapatnam, Kakinada, Guntur, Kurnool, Warangal, and Hyderabad, 60,843 acres were allowed to be occupied illegally by professional land grabbers.

In Sabarimala, the forested hill with the famous temple of Lord Ayyappa in Kerala, 2,500 acres of temple property have been sold by the Communist government controlled Travancore Devasvom Board to a non-Hindu group. Even though this Board gets about Rs. 250 crores every year in income, it is almost bankrupt today, after years of government diversion of funds. Rs 24 crores from the Guruvayoor Devasvom have been spent on a drinking water project in ten nearby panchayats, which include 40 churches and mosques.

In Bihar, government control over the temples through its Hindu Endowments department has resulted, according to the Religious Trust Administrator, in the loss of temple properties worth Rs. 2000 crores.

In Kerala, the communist state government has promulgated an ordinance on February 4, 2007 to disband the Travancore and Cochin Autonomous Devaswom Boards (TCDB) and usurp their already limited independent authority over 1800 Hindu temples. In Orissa, the NDA state government is on its way to sell some 70,000 acres of Jagannath temple endowment lands due to a financial crunch brought about by its own mismanagement of the temple’s assets. The BJP government in Rajasthan is planning to auction off temples and transfer their control to the highest bidders, even if they are from the other religions. Under the 'Apna Dham, Apna Kam, Apna Nam' scheme, a 30-year lease would be signed between the state government and private bidders on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis, similar to national highway construction projects! Many other outrageous proposals of the same kind abound across many states.

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