Today's Editorial

Today's Editorial - 06 October 2024

How India’s temples are run

Source: By Deeptiman Tiwary: The Indian Express

As the Supreme Court hears petitions seeking a court-monitored probe into the alleged adulteration of the ghee in Lord Venkateswara’s laddu prasadam, Hindu organisations have revived their demand to free temples from government control.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has announced a nationwide campaign, and Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan has called for a “Sanatana Dharma Rakshana Board” to look into all issues relating to temples.

How are religious places run in India?

Muslims and Christians manage their places of worship and religious institutions through boards or trusts run by the community. In the case of many Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist places of worship, however, the government exercises considerable control. Hindu temples form the majority of the around 30 lakh places of worship in India (2011 census).

Temples in Tamil Nadu are managed by the state’s Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department. The AP government controls and appoints the head of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), which runs the Tirupati Temple.

States use a part of the income from offerings and donations at large temples for the administration and upkeep of those and smaller temples, and for welfare activities that may or may not be connected to the temple — such as running hospitals, orphanages, or schools/ colleges that provide secular education.

Several states — including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan — have enacted laws that give the government the power to administer temples, their incomes and expenditures.

The erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir enacted The Jammu and Kashmir Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Act, 1988, to manage, specifically, the Vaishno Devi Mata Shrine in Katra, Jammu.

States draw their power to enact such legislation from Article 25(2) of the Constitution, under which a government can make laws “regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice”, and “providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus”.

Religious endowments and institutions are in List III (Concurrent List) of the Seventh Schedule, which means both the Centre and states can legislate on the subject.

How did Hindu temples come under government control?

The historical evidence for the construction of monumental temples dates back to the Mauryan period (321-185 BCE). Throughout Indian history, kings and nobles have donated land and riches to temples, which emerged as centres of culture and economy. The larger temples often promoted agriculture and irrigation, and were significant economic drivers.

In the medieval period, invaders repeatedly attacked and pillaged India’s fabulously wealthy temples. The colonial rulers sought to control them — and between 1810 and 1817, the East India Company enacted a series of laws in the presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, giving themselves the right to interfere in the administration of temples, purportedly to prevent the misappropriation of their income and endowments.

In 1863, the British enacted the Religious Endowments Act, which handed over control of temples to committees set up under the Act. However, the government retained considerable influence through judicial jurisdiction, the extension of the Civil Procedure Code and Official Trustees Act to temples, and the Charitable and Religious Trusts Act, 1920. In 1925, the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act empowered provincial governments to legislate on matters of endowments — over the years, this law gave enormous powers of oversight to a board of commissioners, which could even take over the management of a temple.

After Independence, the 1925 Act became the blueprint for various states to enact their own laws to administer temples. The first such Act was the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, passed by the State of Madras in 1951, which paved the way for the supervision of temples by the HR&CE department, and provided for the appointment of an Executive Officer.

Around the same time, a similar law was passed in Bihar. The Madras law was struck down in court, but a new one was enacted in 1959 with a few modifications. Today, most states in South India follow similar legal structures to control temples. It has been argued that government intervention is necessary to ensure that all castes are allowed entry into Hindu places of worship.

How old is the demand for freeing temples from government control?

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) passed the first resolution in 1959. The Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS), the top decision-making meeting of the RSS, urged the Uttar Pradesh government “to take steps to return this (Kashi Vishwanath) temple to the Hindus”. The resolution noted that the “tendency of the government to establish its control and monopoly, directly or indirectly, over the various spheres of life is becoming more and more pronounced over the last few years”.

In 1988, the Akhil Bharatiya Karyakari Mandal (ABKM) of the RSS called upon the “various state governments to respond to the legitimate demand of the Hindu society and hand over the temples to the right representatives of Hindu devotees”. The ABKM resolution said government control over temples was “unfair, unjust and discriminatory”, and alleged that “governments are taking over temples with an eye on their enormous funds”.

Religious leaders in South India have from time to time sought control over temples. The VHP, which has been raising the issue since the early 1970s, passed a resolution at its meeting in Faridabad in 2021 demanding a central law to free temples from government control.

Over the past 10 years, the BJP has often echoed the RSS. At an election rally in Telangana last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the Tamil Nadu government of taking over Hindu temples, an allegation that TN Chief Minister M K Stalin refuted strongly. Former BJP MP Satyapal Singh introduced private member’s bills to free temples from government control in Parliament in 2017 and 2019.

In December 2019, Trivendra Singh Rawat’s government in Uttarakhand enacted the Uttarakhand Char Dham Devasthanam Management Act to establish a board to manage the Char Dham temples and 49 other temples. After protests by priests, local residents, and politicians, the Pushkar Singh Dhami government withdrew the Act in 2021 and abolished the board.

In 2023, Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s BJP government in Madhya Pradesh loosened state control over temples in the state. Similar steps were announced by Basavaraj Bommai’s government in Karnataka, but they could not be implemented before the chief minister demitted office.

What is the legal position on this issue?

There have been arguments in favour of freeing temples from government control, but courts have been mostly reluctant to interfere.

In the 1954 Shirur Mutt case, the Supreme Court held that a law that takes away the right to administration of the religious denomination and vests it in another authority would be violative of the right guaranteed under Article 26(d) (“…Every religious denomination or any section thereof shall have the right…to administer…property in accordance with law.”). However, the state has a general right to regulate the right to administration of a religious or charitable institution or endowment, it held.

In Ratilal Panachand Gandhi vs. The State of Bombay (1954), the Supreme Court said that in matters of religion, the right of management given to a religious body is a fundamental right that no law can take away; however, the state can regulate the administration of trust properties by means of valid laws.

In Pannalal Bansilal Pitti vs State Of Andhra Pradesh (1996), the SC upheld the validity of a law that abolished the hereditary right over chairmanship of a trust administering a Hindu religious institution or endowment, and also rejected the contention that the law must uniformly apply to all religions.

In 2022, lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay filed a writ petition in the SC to free temples from government control. The SC, however, said that under the present arrangement, temples have “catered to the larger needs of society and not only their temple”, and reversing this would “turn the clock back” to the days when “all these temples…these centres of religion, had become places of wealth”. Upadhyay withdrew his petition.

 

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