It’s More Than Just About Tirupati Laddoos

The Tirupati “contaminated laddoo” controversy, now lobbed into the lap of the Supreme Court, is in danger of diverting attention from the real issues Hindus face, in attempting to claim their religious rights under Article 25.State control of temples is the norm in southern states, and it may increasingly become a reality elsewhere as politicians eye the wealth of these institutions. The bench hearing the laddoo petitions has already made some caustic comments about the politicisation of the issue, but this should not blind us to the larger reality where Hindus, and Hindus alone, face discrimination when it comes to running their own temples.Many arguments, including those made in the TOI edit (Don’t Load The Laddoo, Oct 1), support state control of temples.* It is said that big temples with large revenues are receivers of public largesse, and hence cannot be given back to private parties to run. Really? And why does this logic apply only to temples?* Even where temples are indeed run by private trusts or bodies, the state intervenes if a part of the institution’s work relates to “secular activities”. Question: Can secular work really be separated from religious activity in a religious institution?* It is concerns about caste-based discrimination that convince many “progressive” Hindus. The Constitution itself provides that the state can make laws to provide for “social welfare and reform, or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus”. This provision makes Hindus the Constitution’s step-child, targeted for interventions unlike any other religion.Consider an analogy. Companies can pollute the environment, regardless of whether they are in the public sector or private. So if you want less pollution, you can have a law that mandates certain practices and penalties for all companies, regardless of the sector they belong to. You don’t nationalise companies just to reduce pollution.If we apply this logic to temples, to prevent discrimination against some castes, you need a religion-neutral law, not state control. The state can monitor, reprimand and even intrude into the religious domain to set things right. It cannot permanently reduce religious places to public entities. A state is not meant to run religious institutions.Quite simply, Article 25, which encourages religious freedom and mandates state intervention only for Hindu religious institutions, is in contradiction to Article 14 that promises equality before the law.The question for those who want temples to remain under state control is this: can temple funds be used only to run and administer such institutions or should they be used to propagate Hinduism in the same way church and mosque can? If temple funds cannot be used for propagation, should churches and mosques not, in all fairness, be restrained in the same way?Now, for a more nuanced point. Temples are not public institutions like state enterprises or public parks where everybody has equal rights. Temples are public-private institutions, as they are imbued with history and heritage, and if some of them have inherited a tradition where some families or groups have exclusive rights to run them, it does not amount to unconscionable discrimination against others.Just as a company promoter and his inheritors cannot be ousted just because the company has become too big, the logical way to reduce family control is through anti-trust legislation and/or forced divestitures of other businesses. In the case of temples, new franchises of the same deity can be opened to other groups. Indian temples have diverse traditions, some more conservative and traditional and others more liberal. Are we saying that conservative temples have no right to exist in India, when everywhere in the world conservative churches and mosques are allowed to do their own thing?Thanks to the constitutional handicap, judiciary has bent over backwards to intrude into religious spaces in the name of social justice. In the Sabarimala judgment, one judge used the untouchability argument to end the unique practice of not allowing women in the reproductive age to visit the shrine because the deity, Lord Ayyappa, is worshipped as a celibate. A differentiated practice cannot be labelled as discrimination, especially when this “discrimination” is one temple’s practice, and not universal.Let’s say a group of women decide to set up a “Stree Shakti Mandir” where female deities are worshipped, and only women priests officiate. Would this constitute discrimination against men, or is it just the right of free citizens to form their own associations and build institutions with their own rules and traditions?A petition filed by the late Swami Dayananda Saraswati as far back as 2012, seeking to free temples from state control, is still to see the light of day. Judiciary needs clarity of vision and courage to deal with this aspect of religious discrimination, in which it has been complicit for decades.