Oh God!

If God, religion, and spirituality are matters internal and private to a person, what is the role of temples and community worship? This question has been answered rationally and eloquently by many learned scholars and sages. While confessing my inability to paraphrase these, I accept the relevance of temples for some simple reasons. We may not be able to perform elaborate vedic rites at home due to logistics and resource constraints. So, we may satisfy ourselves by participating in these (kumbhabishekam etc.) at temples. Many temples have a history behind them about the origin of the idols – they have been imbued with saannidhyam and chaithanyam. So they radiate benevolent waves which we can receive. But that is not the focus for this blog item.

Today when you go to a temple you need to worry about a hundred things and if God happens to be one of them you are lucky. Recently I went to a temple and had a harrowing experience. I had visited the same temple several times in the 70’s and 80’s and returned with pleasant memorable experiences. I could freely enter, go around, worship; the air used to be cool and the white sand soft on the feet. No one would speak to you a word, no one would offer advise as to what pujas to perform and no one would even volunteer to narrate the sthala puranam to you. You are totally on your own. No hassles of any sort. I used to say that THIS is the definition and benchmark for a temple.

On 29 Mar 2012 my experience was totally different. The place where you keep your bag and footwear has become more bureaucratic. While trying to enter through the main entrance someone orders you to enter through the North gate. You need to walk barefoot through public road with all dirt and stones to reach the North gate. Again, to enter the inner square, you are asked to go to the North side. There the person herds you back to the East side. When you tell him that you were directed to North side by his own colleague he says that for the last 300 years no one has been let in through the North side. At the East side, you are asked to form a single file queue. Suddenly someone comes and tells you to stand three abreast. After you enter, you are disallowed to cast your eyes on any of the other deities – Garudan, Hanumar or Narasimha. After entering the sanctum sanctorum, you thank your stars if you don’t trip and fall on the narrow wooden steps as a result of poking and beating by guards securing the God. God has mysteriously chosen a reincarnation of one of the female demons as His close proximity personal security guard. The display of lathis and batons by temple employees and security agents was a new sight for me as I had not gone to the temple for almost a decade. After all this, did I have darshan of the God? Difficult to answer, an honest answer would be “No”, because I was always concerned about not becoming a victim of the Security Madam’s shoves. It was also a new experience for me to see a priest who is the disciple of a learned scholar acting as tourist guide for a group of wealthy tourists from North India, the scene reminding me of Puri Jagannath temple and the soliciting by pandas.

What has caused this degradation? The only reason I can think of is that the temple has been found to be a treasure house! But, what is the connection between discovering treasure and devotees being subjected to ambiguous and inconsistent set of instructions? Need to control crowds is acceptable but lack of clarity in guiding the crowd is not acceptable. Use of batons to shove the crowd inside the temple is totally unacceptable. Many tourists would not know that they should not prostrate in the monolithic block in front of the deity. Inflicting a whiplash on the bare back of a devotee is cruelty perpetrated right under the nose of and right under the eyes of the Lord!

The younger generation is accused of being too much “this”-worldly and not having space in their minds for religion and spirituality. But, many of them have an open mind and are willing to experience for themselves before accepting or otherwise. Are temples responsible to drive youngsters away from religion?