Kerala and Maharashtra government to take over temples

[aneeshm]

That's right, the "secularists" now want total control over the temples which were already overtaxed (that is, taxed over the normal rate for other secular institutions, as in Sabarimala, where pilgrims are taxed at an extra 30%).

And the following story is an excellent illustration of what I mean when I say "media bias".

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/kerala-rids-gods-abode-of-red-tape/32524-3.html

Thiruvananthapuram: The Left Front government in Kerala has passed an ordinance scrapping the 56-year-old Travancore-Cochin Devaswom Act.

The ordinance is an attempt to curtail the powers of the Travancore and Cochin Devaswom boards, which manage most of the temples in Kerala.

The decision comes in the wake of allegations of corruption in the Travancore Devaswom Board, which governs the Sabarimala temple and earns about Rs 70 crore a year.

“Not only against this, action will be taken against the person involved in this. There were corruption charges against all boards, except the first and the second,” says Kerala Minister for Devaswoms, G Sudakaran.

The three-member Devaswom board will now include one woman and one member from the SC/ST community.

The board's activities will also undergo judicial review from time to time. The government’s move has obviously not gone down well with the board members who have reacted sharply to the issue.

The board has reacted sharply to the government's move.

“We will go to the court now to see that we get justice. The government says the board is corrupt. Even then what’s the need for such an ordinance when you have a vigilance enquiry on and when already a judicial commission is also looking into the charges against the board,” says a Travancore Devaswom Board member, Punalur Madhu.

By promulgating this ordinance, the government seems to have drawn the first blood in its battle against the Travancore Devaswom board.

But now the big question is: how far the government will keep away from the day-to-day activities of temples in Kerala, which otherwise will have serious implications?

The only two changes mentioned are that a woman and a SC/ST person will be on the board, to make it look as it is purely a progressive measure.

Two questions:

One: the Left consistently maintains that STs are not Hindu. Then why this addition? Bloody hypocrites.

Two: Why is it not mentioned that this basically give the government total and absolute power of the management of temples? They can interfere in the day-to-day affairs of temples, they can appoint and fire priests willy-nilly, they can do basically anything that happens to catch their fancy at the moment. They will have complete control over temple funds, over the smallest details of management, over EVERYTHING.

How people tolerate this is beyond me. If the same thing was done to Mosques, the country would burn, and if it were done to Churches, the Western media would pick it up as another "Hindu nationalist" ploy or something (even though it was done by Marxists).

[Fake Boris]

You could be buying flowers instead of shopping for indignation, y'know.

[molly bloom]

Good.

Let them demolish the ugly ones, keep the remainder as tourist attractions and use the cleared sites for free hospitals and schools and sex education clinics.

[Provost Harrison]

You're just one character away from having the word 'ashtray' in your title

[Jon Miller]

I would heavily protest this in the US. I feel like I don't know enough about the origins of Hindu civilization to make a sweaping response here.

JM

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Good.

Let them demolish the ugly ones, keep the remainder as tourist attractions and use the cleared sites for free hospitals and schools and sex education clinics.

QFT

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
You could be buying flowers instead of shopping for indignation, y'know.

QFT

[lord of the mark]

Re: Kerala and Maharashtra government to take over temples

Originally posted by aneeshm
That's right, the "secularists" now want total control over the temples which were already overtaxed (that is, taxed over the normal rate for other secular institutions, as in Sabarimala, where pilgrims are taxed at an extra 30%).

And the following story is an excellent illustration of what I mean when I say "media bias".

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/kerala-rids-gods-abode-of-red-tape/32524-3.html

The only two changes mentioned are that a woman and a SC/ST person will be on the board, to make it look as it is purely a progressive measure.

Two questions:

One: the Left consistently maintains that STs are not Hindu. Then why this addition? Bloody hypocrites.

Two: Why is it not mentioned that this basically give the government total and absolute power of the management of temples? They can interfere in the day-to-day affairs of temples, they can appoint and fire priests willy-nilly, they can do basically anything that happens to catch their fancy at the moment. They will have complete control over temple funds, over the smallest details of management, over EVERYTHING.

How people tolerate this is beyond me. If the same thing was done to Mosques, the country would burn, and if it were done to Churches, the Western media would pick it up as another "Hindu nationalist" ploy or something (even though it was done by Marxists).

The question arises of whether, in a society where religion has had undule social power in the past, the state has the right to enforce its power over religion, to weaken said social power, or should respect a wall of seperation. In the west the clear parallel is the "juring" church of the French Revolution. Which of course, didnt turn out that well. The general consensus in the West is that such things dont turn out to well. Except among bitter haters of religion, who look with nostalgia toward Jacobinism, or Leninism, or both. Who, Im afraid, are among the few people who are going to bother responding to your post on Indian current events.

Personally, what I dont enough of, is the degree of social power Hinduism was able to maintain under the Moghuls and under the Raj. Far less than Catholicism in old regime France, Id suspect.

[aneeshm]

Re: Re: Kerala and Maharashtra government to take over temples

Originally posted by lord of the mark


The question arises of whether, in a society where religion has had undule social power in the past, the state has the right to enforce its power over religion, to weaken said social power, or should respect a wall of seperation.

That brings up a lot of tricky issues.

First - who decides what constitutes "due" and "undue" social power? The state? If you give this decision to the state, then you end up giving them the power to interfere in religious affairs whenever they want.

Second - if the social power was gained purely by means of the public institutions which the religion has built, does this mean that the state destroy those institutions?

If, for instance, a certain temple feeds over ten thousand poor people every day, do they tell them to stop doing that? Do they tell the temple to stop printing Hindu religious books and selling them at subsidised prices (subsidised by donations from devotees)? What do they do, exactly, if the source of the power is the good work they do (as it usually is)?

And if the source of the power is the respect they command, what then? Does the state point a gun (that's what it amounts to) at the head of the chief priest, and tell him to only write things which confirm to the state agenda? To only further the state policy?

Thirdly - any interference from the state in religion is basically a violation of the wall of separation. That wall was erected for a reason - to keep the Church away from the state. But in India, we need the opposite - we need to keep the state's grubby paws away from the Temple, because of the wealth the temples command (Tirupati Temple is the second-largest concentration of wealth in the world, after the Vatican, and if they decided to launch a donation drive in order to surpass the Vatican (which they NEVER will), they'd surpass the Vatican in roughly one day). The state wants access to this money so that they don't have to risk the state's revenues in porky ventures which they can force the temples to undertake due to their total control.

Fourthly - this will be a complete violation of the Hindu ethos. Temples are expected to be the caretakers and moral guardians of Hindu society, and if the state does nothing, they will automatically end up doing that job. It's already happening, in fact - Hindu institutions, not necessarily religious in nature, are springing up to do the jobs the state has failed to do.

Originally posted by lord of the mark

In the west the clear parallel is the "juring" church of the French Revolution. Which of course, didnt turn out that well. The general consensus in the West is that such things dont turn out to well. Except among bitter haters of religion, who look with nostalgia toward Jacobinism, or Leninism, or both. Who, Im afraid, are among the few people who are going to bother responding to your post on Indian current events.

So basically, it didn't turn out well when they tried it over in France?

Originally posted by lord of the mark

Personally, what I dont enough of, is the degree of social power Hinduism was able to maintain under the Moghuls and under the Raj. Far less than Catholicism in old regime France, Id suspect.

Under the Mughals, it was roughly the amount of power the Tzar had under the Communists.

Vijaynagar was the last empire where a full-fledged Hindu state, based on Hindu Brahminical law, existed. Since the destruction of that state, there has not been a purely Hindu empire in India. Hinduism has never commanded power since then.

[aneeshm]

And one thing many people don't realise is that Hinduism never exerted undue power over the state, because there was an informal separation of religion and state since the very beginning. You can see that in the writings of Chanakya, probably the earliest compiler of Hindu law. Religion does not play much of a role at all in his writings.

In fact, he's s confirmed cynic - he suggests that when money is urgently needed, a ready-made shrine should be installed in some village overnight, the whole thing should be made to look like a miracle, money be collected from the donations devotees give, and then the shrine should "disappear" the next night, on to another village. Not really the writing of a religious man, is it?

[Nubclear]

And one thing many people don't realise is that Hinduism never exerted undue power over the state,

Just ignore the untouchables over there!

[Imran Siddiqui]

We should really get our information about India from Lordshiva.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Tacc

And one thing many people don't realise is that Hinduism never exerted undue power over the state,

Just ignore the untouchables over there!

There is no mention of untouchability in Chanakya's work, nor in the Manu Smriti, nor in the Vedas, so I think you just got pwned.

You make the mistake of equating social (caste) and religious systems.

Untouchability was something which was continued as a practice by people, not by state fiat. And anyway, there hasn't been a Hindu state for roughly three hundred years, so you can't make that comparison, either.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
We should really get our information about India from Lordshiva.

He's not in India.

[Imran Siddiqui]

But he was, and is a lot less crazy and a lot less biased than you .