A Classic Case of Media conspiring against HINDUS: Shopian Rape-Murder

Media misrepresented key facts on Shopian rape-murder: Praveen Swami Journalists share responsibility for fanning south Kashmir violence, judge says

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Justice Jan: Media guilty of spreading falsehood, inciting violence and Hindus for the Shopian rape-murder

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For the most part, Justice Jan found, the media misrepresented forensic evidence Blood on a victim’s forehead was “shamefully distorted and projected as a mark of sindoor”

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Ever since May, when the bodies of two women washed up near Shopian, journalists have chronicled the multiple failures of administration and policing that allowed the tragic deaths to spark off some of the worst street violence ever seen in Jammu and Kashmir.

Following the release of the findings of the Justice Muzaffar Jan Commission of Enquiry, the Jammu and Kashmir Government has announced that it intends to prosecute four police officials for some of those failures.

But both journalists and the Jammu and Kashmir Government have maintained a stoic silence on one institution blamed by Justice Jan for spreading falsehood and inciting violence: the media itself.

Stories fabricated?

Justice Jan’s report highlights disturbing evidence that some journalists may have fabricated elements of their stories.

Early in June, several Srinagar-based journalists reported that one victim’s husband had received a call from her at 7 p.m. on May 29. During the call, the accounts said, the victim reported that she was being chased by CRPF personnel.

In their testimony to the Jan Commission, though, the victim’s husband and her brother made it clear that she had never owned a mobile phone, a fact first reported in this newspaper. Jammu and Kashmir police investigators attached to the Commission studied 32,686 cellphone calls made in Shopian on May 29, and were able to establish that none was made to or from any phone that may have been in the victim’s possession.

Efforts were also made by sections of the media to suggest that the local police may have sought to hush up the case on the orders of their superior. Journalists in particular turned on Constable Mohammad Yaseen, who was reported to have made several phone calls to superiors even as a search for the victims’ bodies was underway — evidence, it was argued, of the unusual interest of his bosses in the case.

In fact, the Commission found, Mr. Yaseen had made only four calls during the whole day and none between 10 p.m. on June 29, when the search for the victims began, until 6 a.m. on June 30, when the bodies were found.

Local resident, Jamal-ud-Din Wani, claimed by the media to be an eyewitness to the killings, was alleged to have been abducted after the bodies were found. The Jan Commission found him living in a tent at the hamlet of Dehgam, close to Shopian, where he works as a watchman at a local seminary.

For the most part, Justice Jan found, the media misrepresented forensic evidence. Media accounts insisted that both women appeared to have been badly beaten and gang raped. However, the Jan Commission states, pathologists found no evidence to support the proposition of gang rape. Moreover, only one victim’s body was found to bear visible external injuries. Claims that one victim was pregnant at the time of her death, Justice Jan states, were also wrong.

Perhaps in order to buttress claims that the two women had been raped before they were killed, some journalists asserted that their clothes were torn. However, witnesses interviewed by the Jan Commission said that the women’s Feran and shalwar were intact.

Most disturbing, though, is Justice Jan’s finding that the media incited hatred by broadcasting communal propaganda.

Based on the accounts of individuals claiming to be eyewitnesses, newspapers said that one victim’s forehead had been smeared with sindoor — an allegation that suggested that the rapists were Hindus, and the rape itself macabre religion-driven hate crime. However, the Commission noted, the red marks on her forehead were in fact blood from a head wound. “The flow of blood,” the report states, “was shamefully distorted and projected as a mark of sindoor.”

Noting that this kind of reporting has fuelled violence in Jammu and Kashmir, Justice Jan has suggested that “firm guidelines are made to ensure that, before publication of any news, the authenticity of the news be verified.”

'Love Jihad' - A Jihadi Organisation to trap Hindu girls

Heart rending Love Jihad statistics from God's own Country

This is happening in Bhaarat not in any Middle East country or Pakistan or Bangladesh

Parents in Kerala suffer from extreme anxiety and fear from the time their young daughters leave home for school or college till she is back home. Official statistics say that about 8 girls are reported missing under suspicious circumstances everyday in Kerala and this is the reason for their growing anxiety and fear.

Based on the statistics of the Crime Record Bureau of Kerala Police, Kochi's National University of Advanced Legal Studies carried out a study in which it was found that the number of girls missing from Kerala was 2167 in 2007 and 2530 in 2008. The police or other investigative agencies have no information regarding nearly 600 out of these girls. The actual number may be much more taking into consideration the fact that these are the statistics of only the cases that have been registered.

Many of the cases are those of couples falling in love, then eloping and marrying, but information about such cases are gathered within 2 or 3 weeks. The question remained as to what happened to the others. The investigation then ultimately led to the now global disaster called Love Jihad.

The activities of Love Jihadis became more aggressive in Kerala in 2006. This led to the sudden increase in women and young girls disappearing from Kerala.

Jihadi Romeos promise to marry unsuspecting young girls within 6 months if they convert to Islam and take and dump these girls in the conversion centers. These Romeos then go for their next prey. These girls are subject to various tortures for weeks in these conversion centers. There is information that these girls are shipped to foreign countries after drugging them. They are shipped from the unmanned coasts of Kochi, Kozhikode, etc., to Mangalore, Goa, Chennai, Lakshadweep, from where they are taken abroad. They are taken to the Gulf countries under the false pretence of a job and forced into prostitution once they reach there.

It was found in investigations that many of the muslim girls found in police raids in the red light areas in Kochi and Kozhikode were actually Hindu-Christian girls who had converted to Islam in places like Mangalore and Bangalore.            

The statistics of the Jihadi conversions in Kerala since 2006 are shocking. The number of those converted in this way was 2876. Cases were registered in only 705 of such incidents. Kasargod tops the list of Jihadi conversions with a figure of 568. Only 123 incidents have been registered with the police.

The numbers from 2006 till 2009 of such Love Jihad conversions on a district basis in Kerala is staggering. Below is a table giving the data district wise in Kerala with total incidents, cases registered, and those brought back with the help of various institutions and friends. The statistics of Waynad district are not available. 

Sr.No.	Districts	Incidents	Cases Registered	Rescued
1	Thiruvananthapuram	216	26	6
2	Kollam	98	34	7
3	Alappuzha	78	22	6
4	Pathanamthitta	87	36	11
5	Idukki	156	18	9
6	Kottayam	116	46	13
7	Ernakulam	228	52	26
8	Thrissur	102	41	19
9	Palakkad	111	19	9
10	Malappuram	412	88	31
11	Kozhikode	364	92	29
12	Kannur	312	106	27
13	Kasargode	586	123	68

Central investigation agencies have recieved information that 4000 such girls all over India who have been converted under Love Jihad are being trained for Jihadi activities by Pakistan-based terrorist organizations.

Recently, an incident that left Keralites in a shock was the suicide of three girl students in Ambalapuzha. The reason behind that is being cited as Love Jihad. The three girls, Anila, Veni, and Julie, committed suicide as they were being tortured by their classmates, Soufar and Shanavas. Soufar and Shanavas reportedly have links to NDF, a muslim extremist organization in Kerala.

The Jihadi Romeos are given special ranks, rewards, and money for carrying out their operation of trapping more and more unsuspecting girls into this. Jahangir Razak, a former student of Kozhikode Law College, one such Jihadi Romeo, is said to have trapped 42 girls till date. He is reportedly the link between a sex racket running in Chennai and terrorist organizations. One Shajahan from Pathanamthitta has trapped 6 young girls from Malayalappuzha Panchayat itself.

Source: http://hindujagruti.org

A Looming Disaster

The below article is written by Subhash Kak way back in 2003. It is being reproduced to act as an reminder for the majority Indians.

We have received some great news about Indian economy lately, but progress could be jeopardized if resentments related to government interference in religion are not addressed. In particular, there is long-simmering discontent about the policy of government takeover of temples and it is quite likely that this will become the next unmanageable problem for the country.

The state governments have based their policy on the recommendation of the Hindu Religious Endowments Commission headed by C P Ramaswamy Aiyer in 1960 that Hindu temples and maths be considered as belonging to the public. In ill-advised judgments, the courts have upheld government regulation of the financial aspects of an endowment, as if financial control has no bearing on the management of religious affairs.

The government entered into the religious sphere when the Indian government was very aggressively pushing state control over all aspects of Indian life. Socialist ideas had very little challenge amongst intellectuals or in the media at that time. The HRE Commission made its case based on accounts of corruption and mismanagement in the temple management boards.

Even assuming that the corruption charges were true, it did not require government take-over to fix things. A legal framework guaranteeing autonomy with checks and balances to ensure good management could have easily been devised. Such a system would have had the capacity to been proactive with reforms. One could have even hoped for a declaration that all jatis are equal, and aptitude and training, not birth, is the sole criterion for priesthood.

It would have been easier for the government to achieve such a result by not becoming a part of the system. As things stand, the government temple departments have been timid in the matter of social reform, often perpetuating vested interests. Neither have they done an effective job at producing texts, doing heritage research, or training priests. Critics charge that the level of corruption is now much greater than it was during self-management.

Some Hindus supported this process of consolidation in the hope that this will provide a legal framework for the management of temples (many of which had only traditional authority and no clear legal charter) and eventually they would be separated from the control of the State.

Having 'nationalized' temples, governments in several states run full-fledged ministries for their administration. For example, the Andhra Pradesh government runs 33,000 temples and endowments with a staff of 77,000 employees to 'ensure the proper performance of pujas.'  The numbers in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala are equally mind-boggling. Many north Indian states have also established similar ministries.

Last time I checked, India's Constitution had an explicit declaration about its 'secular' character, but who cares. Meanwhile, the power-grab is great for the politicians:

1. Temple lands are often in prime localities. The politicians can sell parcels to the land mafia. The property need not be sold legally; one merely looks the other way as the mafia builds on it. Once the structure is up, India's system, which allows squatters to become lawful owners if they have occupied a property for more than twelve year, makes it virtually impossible to reclaim the land. (The squatter's law is also a reason for many communal riots when frustrations about land-grab by criminals take on religious overtones.

2. Most of the donations to the temples are made in the collection box (hundi). There are no accounting standards and the hundi can becomes a source for cash to the management.

3. It grants prestige.

4. Temple funds can be used in a variety of (non-temple) projects to help the government's popularity.

There might exist local pressure on the government to take over the function and upkeep of rural temples in return for the salary of the priest, using the income from the successful temples to subsidize the poor ones. But providing government jobs to a few priests can hardly be made the basis of public policy.

Whatever legitimate reasons one can think of, related either to good-management or temple tourism, can be taken care of by autonomous temple boards. The monolithic state-wide temple administration system, when it eventually becomes free of government control, would be a source of political infighting as seen in the case of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee in recent years. The policy of the nationalization of temples is leading to the very danger of politicization of religion that we must avoid at all costs.

Furthermore, it is doing untold damage to the principle of separation of government and religion. It is corrupting the bureaucracy and subverting the integrity of the political system. There is also resentment because the government has only taken over Hindu temples and not Christian churches or Muslim mosques.

The fact that such a policy has continued for years shows the bankruptcy of ideas in the bureaucracy. The government must define its mission with clarity. In matters outside of security, it should take care not to turn into sarkar (do-all) or hukumat(dictatorship) but rather shasan (regulator).

The longer the government continues with its temple administration, the greater the damage done to the national polity. It is a poison that the country can do without. Can't we leave the temples to the religious folks and move on with the challenges of making India a great and successful power?

Hindu Money In India Co-opted for Islam

The revelations in Sandhya Jain's article " Nationalization of the Hindu temple" (Pioneer, Oct 7, 2003) about using money from Hindu temples for Madarasas development and Haj subsidy (and churches development) are no doubt disturbing but are they a surprise?

Not really. May be to a certain extent but is this a new phenomenon?It is true, as Ms. Jain writes that these monotheistic creeds are not only at variance with Hindu dharma, but their very raison d'etre is expansion by the eradication of Hindu dharma and culture. It is a classic example of one digging one's own grave -- to put it in simple language that a common man can understand.Having said that, why are these revelations not surprising or not new? Not many Hindus realize that ever since Islam appeared on the Indian subcontinent, Hindu money has been used to support Islam. At times not only in India but abroad too.When Islam first appeared on the West coast of India, Hindu kings gave grants of land and villages to the new Muslims to build their mosques, practice and preach Islam. There is no example of any Muslim king ever giving such grants to the followers of other religions and specially to the Hindus.When Islam came to India as a victor with Muhammad bin Kasim, Hindu temples and treasuries were plundered to fill the treasury of Islam in Baghdad. The loot was several times what was spent on the military expedition to conquer Sindh. But if once a temple is plundered and destroyed, it is no longer a source of revenue. So when it was realized that the famous temple at Multan was a popular place of pilgrimage and source of great revenue, contrary to common practice of temple demolition, it was left standing. But to prove his Islamic credentials and to send unmistakable message as to who was the King, a piece of cow's flesh was hung from the deity's neck. The wealth from the Hindu temples and taxes to the extent of 50% of produce continued to support the Muslim conquerors and rulers.The Hindu wealth attracted wave after wave of Muslims from all across what is today known as Middle East and Central Asia. Muslim chroniclers like Ibn Batuta and others have left vivid accounts of such migrations and how Muslim immigrants were offered highest paying jobs at the Muslim courts and in the Muslim army of Indian Muslim rulers. Generous and regular grants were also sent to foreign Muslims rulers and Islam's Holy places.Let us not harp upon the past and jump to the present times.


In the last century:


In Hyderabad, the princely state of Nizam, 80% of the state's land was owned by the Hindus and from 95 - 97% of state revenue was derived from the Hindus. Hindus were overtaxed. And how was this revenue spent:During the 1930s the Ecclesiastical Dept. spent an annual average of Rs. 300,000 on Islamic charities, Rs. 15,000 on Christian charities and Rs. 3000 on Hindus charities. Other large sums were expended on Islamic institutions abroad.Between 1926 and 1932 RS. 10,000,000 was given to Aligarh University, Rs. 500,000 to London Mosque, Rs. 100,000 to Jama masjid in Delhi, Rs. 100,000 to a mosque in Palestine, Rs. 80,000 to a Muslim association in Turkey, and Rs. 232,000 to the travelling expenses of Muslims going to Mecca.

Even the British, to some extent, financed the Muslims at Hindus expense.

B R Ambedkar in his study of partition issue after M A Jinnah had given a call for the partition in his March 1940 address to annual convention of Muslims League at Lahore session went on to observe:

At least 50% of India's army were Muslim and these came mostly from the North West frontier area and the Punjab - principally from the areas that was demanded as Pakistan and predominantly Muslim. The government of India's total revenue was Rs. 121 crores and of this, about Rs. 52 crores were spent on the army -- an army he went to question if it could be depended upon to defend Hindu India were it to be attacked by the Muslim army from Afghanistan either alone or in combination with other Muslim nation?

Apart from the money spent on the predominantly Muslim army, the Muslim provinces contributed very little to the Central government but were a drain on the Hindu provinces. Thus even during the British rule, the Hindu money was used to support the Muslim provinces.

Hindus did not have much control as to how the British or the Muslims spent money and wealth generated by the Hindus.

Ambedkar believed that after partition the Hindus will have control over their own destiny and Hindu money will not be used to finance Muslims and Hindus will be better off. But evidently even after partition, no doubt the Hindus are better off, but Hindu money is still being used to finance the Muslims and even in activities that are directly opposed to Hindu ethos and Hindu Dharma.

But now, we cannot blame the Muslims or the British.

An Anti-Hindu clique is running the Indian Government and framing laws against Hindus

Below is a message from one concerned Hindu. And how true:

We have reached a stage where Hindu society can be saved only from outside. We have 2 extremely dangerous executive moves that have been set in motion by UPA. 

1) Bill pertaining to acts of religious violence. Here the provisions are so skewed that even if a Hindu is a victim, given Hindu is not a minority, he will still be held responsible. This does takes into account that Hindus can be a minority in a district like Mallapuram in Kerala or many such pockets in other states.

2) The second bill is about equal opportunities. This is a loose copy/paste of the America affirmative action committees. But the problem here is that this bill cover minority rights/protection in schools, colleges, offices and houses in a neighborhood. Given India has reservations this is redundant but the CON pigs have smartly tried to break into demographic cohesion of vote banks in a given neighborhood. So, if you were a home owner and you refuse to rent your house to a Muslim/Xian, there are provisions for this “minority” to lodge a complaint to this committee. Any evidence of prejudice will invite a fine of INR 500,000 and a non compliance of the committee’s recommendations in a month’s time will invite a fine of INR 100,000.

There is no use depending BJP anymore. The rainbow of Hindu orgnizations within India / outside must unite to form a block to reign upon the UPA politically. This was exactly what Francois Gautier wrote in his open letter more than a year ago to Hindu Gurudom at large.

Government Control of Hindu Temples in India: A Blatant Violation of Secularism and Religious Freedom

Both India and America are secular democracies in the sense that both have constitutions that prohibit the government from establishing a state religion or interfering with religious organizations.But there the similarity ends.While America more or less scrupulously adheres to the separation of church and state, in India the picture is dramatically different.

Not too many Indians are aware that even though India is officially a secular democracy, state governments in India can take over Hindu temples and their properties, can appoint the people who will run temple committees and operations, and can take away hundi collections and other donations from temples and use them even for non-Hindu purposes. And they have been doing this for almost six decades now all over India. Such government interference does not occur with churches or mosques or gurudwaras or other places of worship of non-Hindu faiths. They are left alone by the government, and are allowed to own and operate their institutions autonomously, without state interference. In secular India, with an 83% majority of her citizens being Hindus, Hindu temples are singled out for government control and management. A comparable analogy would be if the secular US Government were to exercise full control over the finances and collection plates of Christian churches and dictate who could be ordained as a priest or minister, and dictate the hiring and firing of Church elders. That India’s state governments routinely indulge in such practices with regard to Hindu temples, but not with the institutions of other religions, is a telling commentary on the state of religious freedom and secularism in India today.

Status of Hindu Temples

This astounding fact of a supposedly secular government operating, selling the assets of, distributing the collections of, and in other ways imposing state control -- often with appointees who are non-Hindu, and even anti-Hindu, bureaucrats or politicians -- over Hindu temples, is directly responsible for the pathetic condition of many Hindu temples in India. Many magnificent buildings are deteriorating; and even the daily ritual of cleaning and purifying the precincts is not happening. Some temples don’t even have oil for their lamps because the paltry rupees the government promised when it took over the temple seldom comes on time; priests on miserly salaries are reduced to poverty and asking for money from devotees. These are all too common sights at many Hindu temples today.

While there are many causes for the problems faced by temples, chief among them is the misappropriation of temples’ lands and monies during the last century, starting even before our Independence. For instance, the British government in collusion with local leaders in Orissa took over the properties of the famed Puri Jagannath temple in 1878.Continuing the stance of the British regime and its proxies towards the appropriation and looting of Hindu temples, Indian politicians after Independence in 1947 concocted the fatally flawed, and the blatantly anti- secular, Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act (HRCE Act) in 1951 to “provincialise the administration of Hindu Religious Institutions.”Under its aegis, variously amended and often challenged by Hindu groups over the years, the state governments have taken over thousands of temples, generally under the pretext of preventing “mismanagement” by Hindus. In other words, Hindus, and only Hindus, are not considered capable of managing their places of worship without government oversight. 

Thousands of small and medium temples, in addition to nationally and historically important temples such as Jagannath in Puri, Tirupati, Kashi Vishwanath, Vaishno Devi, Shirdi, Guruvayoor, Chamundi Devi, Dattapeeth, Kali Mandir of Patiala, Amarnath, Badrinath, and Kedarnath, are already under government control, and have been so for decades in many cases.

Examples and Effects of Government Interference

The devastation caused to Hindu temples and other institutions, as a direct result and consequence of the HRCE act, can be illustrated by a few examples:

·  The famous Siddhi Vinayak Temple in Mumbai was “nationalized”, i.e. the state government took over its previously independent board of trustees, in 1981.Various political and government appointees have siphoned off crores of rupees out of the temple’s coffers.Some of this money is given out as ‘donations’ -- of Rs. 50 lakhs or more --to other non-profit institutions, selected on the basis of political connections. These organizations may not serve Hinduism or Hindu devotees at all.Such donations continued even after the Bombay High Court issued a prohibitory order stopping them. During 2004-2005 alone, seven crore rupees were paid out to such beneficiaries out of the temple’s inflow.The government appointed trustees of this temple also spent over Rs. 24 lakhs of the temple’s money in two days on a lavish marketing event held at a seven star hotel to discuss how to promote temples as tourist attractions!In other words, the hard-earned money that devotees offer out of love and a sense of duty to a Hindu religious institution, is being used not for the benefit of the Hindu community, or to promote Hindu religious activities, but for other purposes.

·    In 2002, from the 2,07,000 temples in Karnataka the government took in revenues of Rs.72 crores, returned Rs. 10 crores for temple maintenance, and granted Rs. 50 crores for madrasas, and Rs. 10 crores for churches. The fundamental question to be asked is: Why is money from Hindu temples disappearing into government accounts in the first place, to be distributed to other third party interests, be it non-Hindu or otherwise? Why did only six crores make it back to the temples that generated the Rs. 72 crores? An estimated 50,000 temples have shut down during the last five years in Karnataka due to lack of resources. How can this happen if there is a surplus Rs. 66 crores of Hindu temple money in the hands of the government?

·    Under the openly Christian evangelical regime of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Yesudas Samuel Rajsekar Reddy, the Tirumala Tirupati Devaswom (TTD) authority, which is controlled by his state, frontal assaults have been made on the very hills of the beloved temple of Lord Balaji in Tirupati. In March 2006, the government demolished a centuries old, 1000 pillar mantapam in the Tirumala complex. The state government has not denied a charge that 85% percent of revenues from the TTD, which collects over Rs. 3,100 crores every year as the richest temple in India, are transferred to the state exchequer. The non-temple use of this colossal amount of money is not fully accounted for by the government. Temple watchdog groups have alleged that the government has allocated Rs. 7.6 crores of TTD money towards repairs and renovations of mosques and churches in a recent year. JRG Wealth Management Limited, a Christian owned organization, was given a lucrative contract to procure materials for the prasadam that is given to temple devotees. On January 21, the Chief Minister announced the sponsorship, using TTD money, of a hockey tournament in his parents’ name. An attempt to take over five of the seven hills that belong to Lord Venkateswara, according to legal deeds, and hand them to Christian institutions, was thwarted last year only when Hindu religious leaders, under the aegis of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha united to lodge strong, and unprecedented, protests. TTD wealth is being distributed as gold bars “for the poor”, with no transparency as to who the “poor” are who will get the temple’s riches. There are plans to build a ropeway to the hills to make it a more appealing commercial tourist attraction. While owing the TTD Rs. 1,500 crores already from various earlier proceeds, the government is trying to take away another Rs 500 crores from TTD for state irrigation projects! There have been allegations of TTD appointees being non-Hindus, but these are hard to verify since many Hindus who convert to other religions keep their original names for various benefits. TTD's medical and educational institutions have also been turned into centers for proselytization by Christian missionaries.

·     Elsewhere in Andhra Pradesh, out of 420,028 acres owned by temples in Vishakhapatnam, Kakinada, Guntur, Kurnool, Warangal, and Hyderabad, 60,843 acres were allowed to be occupied illegally by professional land grabbers. The state government, the inheritor of the responsibility under the HRCE Act to prevent such actions, did nothing to prevent these incursions, even though it has a staff of over 77,000 people (paid from a 15% charge on temple revenues) to look after temple interests. In August 2005, the state decided to sell 100,000 acres of the Sri Narasimha Swamy Temple in Simhachalam and other nearby temples. On March 14, 2006, the government auctioned 3,000 acres of temple lands in East Godavari district. Proceeds from these sales rarely reach the temples, which have to depend on the same government for doles to light their lamps and pay their priests.884 acres of endowment lands of the famous Sri Rama temple at Bhadrachalam have been allocated to Christian institutions by the current government. In Simhachalam, 300 acres belonging to the temple have been allocated for churches and convent schools, who even exercise an illegal authority to stop devotees from visiting the temple atop the hill! There is also an attempt afoot to take over the 500 year old Chilkur Balaji temple.

·    In Sabarimala, the forested hill with the famous temple of Lord Ayyappa in Kerala, 2,500 acres of temple property have been sold by the Communist government controlled Travancore Devasvom Board to a non-Hindu group. Even though this Board gets about Rs. 250 crores every year in income, it is almost bankrupt today, after years of government diversion of funds. Rs. 24 crores from the Guruvayoor Devasvom have been spent on a drinking water project in ten nearby panchayats, which include 40 churches and mosques. Some of these non-Hindu places of worship have larger revenues than the Devasvom, but none of them have been asked to pay towards the project, even though their members will be beneficiaries.

·      In Bihar, government control over the temples through its Hindu Endowments department has resulted, according to the Religious Trust Administrator, in the loss of temple properties worth Rs. 2000 crores.

More Government Control on the Horizon

While these tales of the terrible fate of Hindu temples under government control can be multiplied a thousand fold, and the collapse of the Hindu religious infrastructure as a direct result of government control can be documented in painful detail, it is more important at this point to pay attention to the even more ominous threats of assault that are now on the horizon.

The Maharashtra government, literally bankrupt due to profligacy (including an Indian Enron scandal of mammoth proportions) and bad economic policies, is moving forward with a bill that would enable it to take over the 4.5 lakh Hindu temples in the state. The outpouring of contributions to temples by millions of Hindus is seen as a huge cash flow opportunity by politicians of all stripes all around India. In Kerala, the communist state government has promulgated an ordinance on February 4, 2007 to disband the Travancore and Cochin Autonomous Devaswom Boards (TCDB) and usurp their already limited independent authority over 1800 Hindu temples.In Orissa, the NDA state government is on its way to sell some 70,000 acres of Jagannath temple endowment lands due to a financial crunch brought about its own mismanagement of the temple’s assets.The BJP government in Rajasthan is planning to auction off temples and transfer their control to the highest bidders, even if they are from the other religions. Under the 'Apna Dham, Apna Kam, Apna Nam' scheme, a 30-year lease would be signed between the state government and private bidders on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT)basis, similar to national highway construction projects! Many other outrageous proposals of thesame kind abound across many states.


Response from the Hindu Community

The Hindu community, after decades of apathy, disunity, and sporadic court fights to secure their rights to practice their religion without government control, has now belatedly woken up to address these fresh assaults. Local leaders have formed coalitions to take matters to court to prevent new takeovers and the sales of temple properties. The existence of the HRCE Act makes it an uphill legal battle to challenge and overturn the government’s stranglehold over Hindu temples and their assets. Recent court victories in Karnataka and Rajasthan are encouraging in this regard.


Online petitions and signature campaigns, often led by NRI Hindus who seem to be more aware and concerned about this issue than Hindus in India, have become a standard tool of the newly awakened Hindu community. Most of the mainstream media in India, especially the English TV and press, have a covert or overt anti-Hindu position, and stories of government atrocities against Hindu temples rarely make it into the news pages. Appeals often have to be made to the President of India himself for relief from open aggression against Hindu interests by state and district level government authorities. The collusion between missionary and communal forces and political parties hostile to Hindus, such as the communists and the Congress party, have further complicated the equation of elements that work against the religious freedom of Hindus. Thanks to blogs, websites, bulletin boards, and email forums that have recently sprung up, awareness about these issues is now starting to proliferate. Even as Hindu awareness grows, and the call for action mounts, the media and political parties are quick to slap on a Hindutva or fundamentalist label to discredit these grassroots efforts of Hindus to claim the same basic religious rights as Indian Christians and Muslims.

The attack on Hindu temples is an attack on the body and soul of Hinduism, because temples are the sacred and sanctified places where most Hindus practice their faith. Others may not understand our ways of worship, but to the practicing Hindu all deities represent the One Supreme Reality and Being in diverse ways and forms that make the divine accessible to all levels of religious and spiritual temperaments. The images of our gods and goddesses are not just stone or metal idols. They are profound symbols and splendorous representations of the One in its many manifestations, they are holy reminders of the divine being everywhere, they are aids to meditation and worship, and they are also ceremonially sanctified centers of spiritual energy and divine grace. Our priests should not be reduced to the status of government servants who have to depend on miserly salaries from the state that has usurped their traditional means of sustenance, and who are thereby forced to demand money, sometimes so aggressively, from devotees. Our Acharyas should not be sidelined to being helpless observers even as the institutions they are vested with leading are being reduced to insolvency.


The Way Forward

Through the millennia, Hindus have found in their temples succor for all their religious and spiritual needs, and vital sense of community with their fellow devotees. The sanctity of temples is diluted by turning them into commercial tourist attractions, their integrity as Hindu institutions is compromised when non-Hindus, or anti-Hinduism elements, are allowed to run them, and their very survival is threatened when the money of devotees is taken away by government appointees or politicians and diverted to fund external causes.


Even if there had been some rationale for the HRCE Act to improve the administration of Hindu temples in the early days after India’s independence, the exclusive way that only Hindu organizations are so targeted is a blatant violation of the concept of secularism and the religious rights and freedoms of Hindus. If Hindu temples are mismanaged or corrupt, as often alleged to justify their takeover, the sad record of Indian state governments with regard to governance and corruption in general, and their sorry record with the temples they already control in particular, hardly makes them a better candidate to look after the welfare of yet more temples! If Hindu temples need better management, the communities which support them should form the independent bodies to do so. If the traditional administrations of our temples need revamping for modern times, such reforms and reorganization should be led by practicing Hindus and their leaders, and not by outsiders from the government or non-Hindu constituencies.

The diversion of the wealth of Hindu temples by the states in the first place, and their use to fund non-Hindu purposes, is a flagrant travesty of the principle of separation of religion and state. Government officials looking to take over and exploit yet more Hindu temples should instead consider appropriating some non-Hindu religious organizations first, to restore some balance and equality to their strange brand of secularism. If they dare not do so, they should immediately cease and desist from controlling Hindu institutions and liquidating their assets, even if there be misguided statutes that are in place that give them the legal right to do so. And full reparations should be made to all the temples that have been devastated over the decades through a combination of the HRCE Act and various land reforms that have selectively annexed only Hindu properties in so many states.


A major breakthrough towards obtaining the freedom of Hindu temples from government control has been made with the establishment of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha in 2003. The convener of the meeting, Pujya Swami Dayananda Saraswati, emphasized the need for Hindu religious leaders to have one common, united voice to speak for Hindus and their institutions. 125 Hindu religious leaders -- peethadipatis, mathadipatis, jeers, acharyas, and mahamandaleshwars-- representing major traditions of Hinduism from all parts of India have since come together under this platform to free temples and other Hindu institutions from the

clutches of the government. The Tirupati Declaration of 2006, spearheaded by the Sabha, was an effective voice to prevent various TTD (Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam) malpractices and imminent anti-Hindu moves.


Currently the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha is pioneering a movement to challenge the constitutional validity of the HRCE Act and its derivatives, and to prevent further government incursions into Hindu religious affairs. Through the Forum for Religious Freedom (FRF), incorporated as a US non-profit organization, efforts are under way to support the Acharya Sabha with the financial resources needed to mount a legal challenge to overturn the HRCE Act, and to take other measures to prevent further annexation by the states of our religious infrastructure. The viability of Hinduism rests in the health and vitality of our temples. All Hindus should consider it their dharma – their duty and responsibility -- to make sure that this important mission of the Acharya Sabha is properly funded towards accomplishing this crucial objective.

The reverse discrimination against Hindus and our institutions by a supposedly secular government cannot be allowed to continue any more. The time has come to secure for the majority Hindus of India the same secular rights and religious freedom that the followers of all minority religions already enjoy.

Sources: Forum for Religious Freedom

Sidhivinayak Temple, Bombay:

1. Litigation papers filed in Bombay High Court by Shri Keval Semlani, 2003.

2. Donations Fund the Temple Extravaganza!, Hindi Janajagruti Samiti, 2006.

Karnataka temples:

3.Nationalization of Hindu Temples, Sandhya Jain, Daily Pioneer, October 7, 2003.

Andhra Pradesh temples:
4. Desperate Status of Hindu Temples in Andhra Pradesh, India, V. V. Prakasa Rao
Global Hindu Heritage Foundation USA, 2007.

Kerala temples:

5. Interview with Kummanam Rajasekharan, Haindava Keralam, 2007.

Bihar temples:

6. Hindu Endowment Acts – Legal? Abhit Abhayankar, India Indited, September 2006.