Debating the concerns of various groups is very important, it must also be based on the realistic ground situation and the intentions and motivations of various leaders involved. The amount of inter caste hate that exists is a reality that be understood before any talk of collective efforts. The fake stories and the narratives peddled by the media personalities always targeting one community has become a shining medal of achievement. That would be some Brahmanical patriarchy and a constitutional creature found no issue with it but had serious and urgent problems with UPSC jihad. The Supreme Jokers have their heads in fantasy lands disconnected from reality treated like royalty by all other classes because everyone must survive. One group is trying to consolidate political power with single minded focus with a long term objective and creating a vote bank and new image for itself. Nothing wrong in his attitude. Hindus must remember that it was Hindus who created the discriminatory constitution, implemented the most bigoted laws, implemented in the most secular way and looted the sacred temple treasures. Hence it is important to have the right type of people and provision for exclusion from temple without which the justice cannot be delivered in any manner.
Which temple board has been able to stop the conversions?
Even the richest temple belonging to Srinivasa has not been able to stop the conversions in Tirupati and there are even non-Hindus employees in the institutions belonging to the temple who could be replaced by Hindus with ease. The constitution of the board is not that important. Conversions are happening because the constitution is basically anti-Hindu and the reconversion efforts of Hindus are not matching the conversion efforts of non-Hindus. When the secular state fails to enforce rule of law, the temple management cannot do anything. In many cases, the temple management is fighting the Hindu government from trampling the rights of Hindu deities.
Everyone wants to talk of conversions but nobody has given the caste wise breakup of the conversions. Which caste groups are being converted? If the conversions of the alleged Dalits are happening, then the there are large central and state commissions and large number of people in powerful posts to see to it that there is no fraud and coercion to protect the interests of the dalit community. If upper caste people are getting converted, then there is no commission to even think and they are left to fight their own battles against the anti-Hindu state and conversion forces. The conversion of some caste groups is now being relooked seriously because of the reservation benefits being grabbed by the neo converts through a dubious nexus of certificate generation scams. Who is to blame for this? It is not the temple nor its management. Placing every failure of every individual at the doorstep of the temple is not a good thing to do.
As a matter of fact, there are many temples managed by those who are not part of the fiefdom with massive contributions by various members of the society and there are still conversions happening. So, blaming the management of temples for conversions is a bad strategy.
Will the entire Hindu demography of all castes collectively fight to protect Dharma?
Dharma is a too big a term. First let us talk of fiefdoms. There are political and government power guaranteed by the constitution for the creation of specific fiefdoms in order to distribute the power equally among all the citizens. This is necessitated because one group of citizens are not expected to care for the interests of other groups. Hypocrisy, thy name is Indian Constitution.
Additional constitutional bodies exist to harass some citizens and provide additional privileges to some citizens because of crimes committed in the history and some of these crimes may be happening even to this day. Is the discrimination only done by one community and no discrimination happens in reverse? When the entire narrative is against one community and its oppression of all other communities with facts pulled out of thin air is the intellectual norm, then how can there be a collective effort? There can be smaller group of individuals working on a very broad goals like the RSS.
Unless there is a level playing field the collective effort of all castes will never happen. Even in the affairs of a small local temple, the caste groups fight amongst themselves over the control based on the political affiliations. When members of a community who in reality are abused by some other community, but in general take sides with their abusers to seek justice for the imaginary crimes of the past, what kind of unity are we talking about? The National and State Commissions first must educate the communities about the unity needed in the Hindu community and then there can be a collective effort.
If we want to manage the temples, let the caste be kept out of the doors of the temple and this too will be asking too much from communities because of the associated privileges and the victim cards. Let the temples run as they are run in the present with the government kicked out of the temple management, then there are laws and rights to ensure equality. Why to create a global solution for a local problem? The global laws in India have failed miserably to ensure equality because the basic premise was wrong.
What is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander?
The British took control of temples for a different issue and was never to do a favour to Hindus. The government asked the various princely states to choose either Bharat or Pak and they merged with Bharat and with that we have India that is modern day Bharat. The government was duty bound to honour its commitments and it failed in its commitments and then at each step it acted more like a brown sahib towards the Hindus pulling one brick at a time from the foundation of the society and today we are debating whether there should be a caste-based seats in the temple management. Some individuals want to use their caste for gaining everything and then claim others have caste privilege.
Discrimination is a national issue and which group discriminates which group must be backed with correct data. Let the crimes be reported caste wise and then we shall talk of collective efforts. The hate propaganda among different communities will ensure that there cannot be collective effort for specific purposes. The jokers of this nation were fighting for equal representation in an anti-corruption body alleged called the Jokepal. RSS is clueless about the affairs of the temple as an organisation as their focus was not religious agenda but something else. They are trying to bring people together and creating better Hindus and they are quite successful in that.
But their failure to understand the Sabarimala issue and the subsequent U-turn on such an important judgement tells the depth of their intellectualism in matters of Hindu religious interests. The lack of efforts to uphold the rights of the alleged Dalits in the minority aided institutes is a glaring example about their lack of focus on religious issues. One organization cannot do everything and nobody could blame. In the same way, RSS should not be considered as the gold standard for all matters related to Hindus. The hundreds of mathas with an established tradition must be some reference points and if any friction points exist, then they must be bridged by individuals with sufficient intelligence and scholarship accepted by all or else the society must be allowed to exist with the friction points with no scope for divisions.
There were no efforts to correct the textbooks, no efforts to make the level playing field for Hindus and then all the evils are placed at the door of one community and their fiefdoms. Where is this hatred coming from? If one looks from the eyes of a castiest brahmin (managers of temples, owners of fiefdoms), the feeling would be that the government does not gives them any reservation, no benefits based on caste, religion; has taken away the lands if he had any and now is usurping the temples where they hold some authority. The government which never protected the properties of the deity is more interested in meddling in the affairs of the deity. From the eyes of a castiest dalit, he would love to see the brahmin kicked out of the temple in order to take revenge for some issues which might be real or imaginary. The different treatment for prasadam, the lower status granted to them all come into the mind and the throwing out the brahmin may be a justice.
The reality may be somewhere in between, but the extremists and the intolerant will win. It is important to reduce the hate against one community and then reclaim the equality of all communities. It will be a walk on thin ice and the extreme elements will create much more nuisance and the efforts of consolidating the Hindu political power by the BJP may simply fail. How much outcry have we seen from dalit leaders when the bigoted statement was given in one of the media, where a dalit man having sex with a brahmin woman is the revenge for the alleged crimes committed by the brahmin community. There are many more brahmin abuses but who cares because it is cool to abuse a non-political entity and there are talks of collective efforts.
First the goose and gander must be brought to the talking table and the mutual abuses must be reduced and then only the sauce be served to both groups. The nuisance that would be created by the extremists among the various groups related to temple, is what may be causing the BJP to not change the status quo and make sure that its largest vote bank is kept satisfied by taking over more temples and then claim of giving back temples.
Fiefdoms, I would say a cabal which would claim untouchability, women’s issues, secularism, rights of this community, that community and everything under the sun, except the rights of the deity and his preferences in his house. Do not deliver global solutions to local problems and there is no need for an axe when a thorn could be removed with a needle.
Author: Vijendra Bhat can be reached on Twitter
Twitter: @SPHEREHEADSAYS
