Sunday, August 5, 2007

Needed: Temple Entry For All

I have been thinking about the controversy surrounding the issue of temple entry to those born non-Hindus but are believers. A lot of arguments and counter arguments have been raised, with the ever obscurantist and casteist Nair Service Society throwing its weight (?!) behind those who want to maintain the skewed system of caste-based privileges.
But there are some larger questions to be asked before we approach this issue. For one, who decides someone is a believer or a non-believer? Can the temple priests vouch for someone's belief just because s/he has declared that s/he is a believer in the Hindu religion? For all you know that person could still be a non-Hindu in the core of his being!
Second question: if Hindus pride themselves to be the most inclusive religion with the loftiest of philosophies, why look into the question of someone's belief at all? If you really believe all creation is one, does it matter if some worm or homo sapien believes that s/he does not belong to the Hindu faith!
The argument has been raised by some that restricted access is needed in temples to maintain their purity. From what I have seen in various temples, there is no specious argument than this. Do you think all Hindu temples are clean and pure because only Hindus are allowed? I would disagree.
Also, this leads to another question: is spirituality connected to outer cleanliness. There were many men of god who were regarded highly for their spiritual achievements but who scarcely washed their bodies. And from my own experiences, I have felt the temples in Tamil Nadu and North India had better spiritual vibrations than those in Kerala with their haughty priests and Tantric rituals and restrictions.
In my humble opinion, Hindu temples should be open to everyone but with reasonable restrictions put in place to maintain harmony and cleanliness. Let us remember that even now many curious non-Hindus visit some of these temples without the guardians of Tantric rules even knowing it. Yesudas, who expressed his interest openly in visiting Guruvayoor cannot visit the temple (despite him being a great devotee and his records being played at every temple!) while many non-Hindus visit the temple daily without anyone knowing it! At the very least, it would be a farce to maintain this restriction when you can never really enforce it.
Also, we need to realize that this new world in which we live has little need for these retrograde traditions. We need to do away with them without a second thought and we need to do that fast. And for that to happen, each one of us need to approach the issue without the baggage of traditions that we have, a baggage the likes of NSS leaders and the Namboodiri priests are using to keep us from seeing Light!

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