Temples belong to devotees, not rulers

Social media has gained incredible popularity over the past few years as an open source of information and knowledge sharing platform.

The original intention of social media space was to interact with larger sections of people in real time and leverage the potential of social media technologies to enhance dissemination of news and have easy access to useful information and connect with different groups.

But at least in the Indian context, the social media seems to have become more of a tool to indulge in personal attacks on individuals and their activities and weapon in the hands of political parties to use abusive language against rivals.

It does not matter if the targeted person is a politician, an educationist or a religious head or a mystic. Logic takes a backseat in all such cases of postings on social media.

Instead of creating a debate on any issue, the attack is diverted on the person who had initiated the debate and he is accused of being anti Hindu or anti some caste or religion.

The latest issues that are trending are whether temples should be made free from the government control or not and whether it is necessary that the rituals in temples should be performed by a particular community or if properly trained, anyone can become a priest.

This issue gained importance as the Tamil Nadu government last year submitted a report to the Madras High Court stating that in 11,999 temples in the State, there is no pooja 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 Rs 10,000 per annum. They estimated that around 12,000 temples will cease to exist 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 idols 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.

One requires pure devotion and passion and not just employees who have no feelings to manage temple rituals. A temple is not a business but the soul of the community. It can only be managed with tremendous involvement and devotion.

It is also said that in Tamil Nadu alone about 44,000 temples with over half a million acres of land are under the management of the government of Tamil Nadu. However, the revenue from all this is only Rs 128 crore per annum.

In comparison, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee which has 85 gurdwaras in their hands, their budget is over Rs 1,000 crore. For 44,000 temples that belong to a community comprising 87 percent of the population, a revenue of Rs 128 crore smacks of abysmal mismanagement.

For example, look at the way gurdwaras are run – the amount of food that the langars provide, and how they reach out to people in times of need. Imagine the budget that temples could have, given the amount of land revenue they could earn. They could do so much more.

The government can then attend to pandemics, natural disasters, and other crises that occur in the region. Sounds interesting but then the question is: "If you give the temples back to the community, will they manage them better? Maybe they will do worse."

Even Gurudwaras managements are not free from extreme kind of politics and there is no guarantee that if you leave the temples to devotees, they will manage them in a wonderful vibrant way.

Well, thus goes the debate and such healthy arguments can help the society and the governments to come to a conclusion.

But what is happening is a section of social media which claims to be the protector of Hinduism is busy in trolling all those who are in favour of freeing temples from government control instead of building a case for or against.

It is time the social media underwent major transformation and became a powerful and useful tool in shaping the society instead of spreading hatred against individuals or institutions.