#018 REPLIES TO COMMENT

Sid said...
Have you ever visited Chilkur Balaji Temple? If not then do so, you will not find any hundi or donation box any ware in temple. This is the only famous temple in AP which is not under any endowment board and will not collect money for lord darshan. And they don’t collect single rupee from its devotees. Just look out for any hundi in Temple you will not find anyware and its been this temple tradition since hundred years. Get some knowledge before positing cheap blogs.

REPLY
I admit that I have not visited the Chilkur Balaji Temple personally. It is not necessary for a person to be present everywhere personally. Personal visit will help to get a better perception. Yet there are practical difficulties. We cannot visit every place. For example, I cannot visit Boston if I want to thoroughly understand what is happening there.

God is said to be omnipresent. Yet if he exists at all and exists everywhere, his decisions and administration of justice, would have been impartial, unequivocal. When we see them in reality, we can easily deduce, that the verdicts tend to be "blind" or "no decisions" at all. Example: The West indulged in slave trade for Centuries persistently. What punishment did God administer the Europeans and the Americans?

The American drones are killing innocent Afghan and Iraqi civilians, along with the Talibans. Does the God punish the American policy makers? To know that American policy makers are inhuman or that the God is not punishing the American policy makers, we need not be present in Kandahar or Karbala or Gaja personally. We can estimate from the events and results which are manifest through the number of deaths, destroyed homes and the faces of orphaned children. Sometimes, the media may blow up and by discounting exaggerations, we can arrive at a semblance of reality.

What is needed: A person must have an open mind to examine both sides of the problem and make meaningful derivations.

Existence of a hundi (donation collection box) per se cannot be taken as bad. Nor does the non-existence of a hundi per se can be taken as great. We have to view everything in its entirety and totality. Is there an overt or covert intention to commercialise a temple? The promoters might not have had an intention to commercialise their temple initially, but when money starts pouring unasked, success may push some of them to look at some more money. For example an upcoming actor may charge a few thousands for a role in a film, thinking that art is for art sake. He may start charging millions when he becomes a star. Objectives change with progress of time. Temple managements cannot be an exception.

ANOTHER FACET
Google, Yahoo and thousands of others give us free e-mail and free blog space. They do not charge us anything for the entry. Does that mean that they are philanthropic and do not have a commercial outlook? Large organisations view businesses as a whole. The moment they find that offering free emails and free blogs do not contribute to the revenues of the businesses, they will start charging. We can see this development in case of TV channels. Those TV channels which start as free channels, end up charging heavily, once they become popular. They skim and squeeze both the advertisers and the viewers. We waste our TV time viewing ads. and pay for the cost of exhibiting advertisements.

Free-things and free-entries are exercises of building images and public relations. Once I learnt Sitar in a low-fee institute run by a gambling house in our city, as a P.R. exercise. They closed the Institute later, because, they got enough publicity. A tobacco company - cigarette maker in our City which makes billions, spends a few millions for erecting tree guards with Company logo, on Municipal streets. Why? They find that some benevolent acts give more publicity than paid media advertising.

The samething can happen for temples. A temple loses its quietness, once people start pouring, with desires- reasonable and unreasonably-greedy.

Once, I visited Shri Kurmam Temple in Srikakulam District of Andhra Pradesh. It is the only temple in India (to the best of my knowledge), for the tortoise incarnation of Vishnu. I found, to my astonishment, that the priests there were, in the sanctum sanctorum, literally begging the devotees for offerings to be placed in the plates they hold for carrying the sat`ha-gopam (the metal crown which bears the God's feet, used to bless the devotees, by placing it on their heads). It is a common practice all over India, but in Sri Kurmam, I found that it was very active. I enquired the reasons from the priests. They said that they were ill-paid, because the temple was poor. A temple's revenue earning ability depends upon its location, and its reputation as a desire-fulfiller. Of course, the priests and the temple managements try to spread a message that the temple's deities are great desire-fulfillers. The wages of the priests, depend on revenues and also willingness of the management to part money officially. Here, numerous factors influence a temple management's decision. A leverage between to spend on the development of temple and pay good wages is an important consideration, even for an honest management. A temple can get commercialised when voluntary donations are few and the management is seized of a desire to develop the temple by hook or crook. This defeats the very purpose of starting temples and visiting temples.

Devotees can commercialise a temple, even if the promoters are unwilling. This is because the devotees come from different occupations. They come with desires. They have in their minds an input-output ratio. They may get that they would get 5X or 10X, if they gift 1X to God. They may attribute a brand image to a temple. The promoters may cherish and encourage that image or not.

A temple need not accept any donations from devotees, if it wants to be free from the intrusions of polluted minds from cities. This refusal of donations, promoters can do, even if the temple reaches a dilapidated state. Or, a temple may follow a policy of non-acceptance of donations from persons who are notorious for their corruption and evil deeds to the society. Or, the temple may ask for an undertaking from donors that what they donate is their really honestly and hard-earned money and not polluted money. Where there is a will, there is a way.

I do not mind to score one point (on a 10 point scale) to the Chilkur Temple for its not having a hundi. The temple has to achieve the remaining nine points.

Hundies have one merit. The promoters will not feel obliged to large donors, because the donation is incognito and the donor is unidentifiable. The malady of accepting open donations we can see in TTD (Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Venkateswara - Balaji). The temple behaves like a slave when large donors like Ambanis, Birlas, Zindals, Bachans et al visit Tirupati.

Non-existence of hundies need not be a merit because, the temple owners may forego pennies to receive pounds and dollars. We get three types of business managers and wise men in this world: 1) Those who believe that drops make an ocean and if pennies are taken care of, pounds will accumulate over a period of time. 2) Those who believe that we should concentrate on the top and core, ignoring the trivia. 3) Those who believe that no stone should be left unturned. Every class of business managers have succeeded in their own way depending on the environment and the strategies.

I personally feel that temples can collect hundi donations or open donations, as long as they do not crave on growth and wealth and as long as they are necessary for the temple's clean maintenance. Some poor people hesitate to enter a big bank or a heavily furnished and air conditioned mall because they may become aliens. Temples should not alienate the poor.

MANAGEMENT OF TEMPLES BY GOVERNMENT vs. MANAGEMENT OF TEMPLES BY PRIVATE PERSONS
Both the methods have some merits and demerits. We may feel that privately managed temples are bad when we see some temples like Gaya, Prayag (Allahabad) and Kasi. The temples of Andhra Pradesh, such as Srisailam and Tirumala may seem cleaner and well-organised, notwithstanding the ticket system and corruption everywhere. This topic can be discussed in length using about ten blog posts.

your comment: Get some knowledge before posting Cheap blogs The word 'cheap' is an abstract adjective. Well, I respect your opinion.