GOD FOR ALL

GOD FOR ALL

   Temples play a big role in Indian culture. Most Indians go for darshan, an eye-to eye- contact, of their favorite deity as often as possible. Even the poorest will save up enough money to be able to make a pilgrimage to their cherished temple. Festivals make temples even more important. On certain religious days, one can get killed trying to enter a temple.  

   

   Visiting temples for darshan and offering gifts to the Gods and Goddesses is such an integral part of our culture, temples end up amassing a lot of wealth in the form of cash, gold and silver. Just to list the top three temples: Padmanabhaswamy Temple, in 2011, was recorded as having $23.3 billion, in addition to gold ornaments, sack full of diamonds, 17 kilo gold coins dating back to East India Company, golden bow, and much more.  Tirupati temple’s deity is clad in 1000 kilos of gold. People drop bags of diamonds and gold at times at the feet of the deity, around 50,000 pilgrims visit daily donating up to  $ 140 million. The Sai Temple of Shirdi has gold and silver jewelry worth $ 6.86 million.

   

   In a country where we have over 300 million deities, it is unfathomable for an average person like me to imagine the wealth hoarded inside our temples.

   

   Whether it is a regular day of the week or a festival for celebrating a deity’s birthday though, you will always find a large number of homeless, poor and elderly people outside of the temple, with their hands stretched out, begging for food or money. Often, a mother will be sitting with a small child in her lap while her slightly older child goes into the crowd of worshipers drawing attention to him and his mother.

   I don’t condone begging or bothering faithful worshipers as a proper behavior, but it does make me wonder if any person who had enough food to eat, enough clothes and shoes to wear, a shelter to call home, would that person need or want to engage in the behavior we find outside of the temples? When did poverty become a crime?

   

   While I am not an economist, a social worker, a politician with power or an industrialist with influence, I am a person who observes the world around her keenly and thinks about the issues of the world deeply. I often find myself wondering how the extremes of wealthy temples and unfailing poverty immediately outside of them can be reconciled. I have come up with an idea that might make it balance things out a bit.

   

   How about Government requiring permits to build temples? If a permit application process is already in place then, I would like that the Government require that the builders of the temple also build a homeless shelter with an elementary school inside. The size of the shelter should be the same size as the temple. The shelter should also provide vocational training for the homeless people that live in the shelter.

   

   There is a potential for misuse of the shelter. But at the rate at which the temples build wealth, surely, they can afford to hire staff to investigate and research the situation of each of the resident to make sure that no person who has personal resources abuses the temple’s resources. The added benefit of such a system is that if there are people who enjoy begging and refuse to be housed in the shelter, they will not crowd outside of the temples and bother the faithful visitors to the temple.

  

   After all, isn’t that the true nature of religion, to help the helpless and feed the hungry? If there ever was a mandate from God, it was probably that of kindness and not of ornate, ostentatious and wealthy temples.

-Ela Pandya