Tuesday, February 18th, 2025

Explained: Muslims and Christians should be free and Hindus should be free… After the Tirupati laddu controversy, the voice of temple liberation was not raised without reason.

The controversy over Tirupati temple’s laddus is once again giving impetus to the demand to end government control over Hindu temples. Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has announced a nationwide campaign. VHP says that government control over temples reflects the mentality of Muslim invaders and British colonialism. Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan has called for setting up a ‘Sanatan Dharma Raksha Board’ to look into issues related to violation of the sanctity of temples, land disputes and other religious practices.

Why different treatment for Muslims and Christians?

Muslim and Christian communities in India manage their religious places and institutions through community boards or trusts. But the government has considerable interference in the management of major religious places of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists. Many states have enacted special laws that give them the right to interfere or control the administration of Hindu temples, their income and expenditure. This control is exercised through boards and trusts consisting of government representatives or headed by a government official himself.

Tamil Nadu government is at the forefront in occupying temples

An analysis published on The Indian Express website said that Tamil Nadu probably has the highest number of Hindu temples under government control. There is a separate department for the management of these temples by the name of ‘Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department’. Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), the governing body of the Tirupati temple, is under the Government of Andhra Pradesh. The TTD chief is appointed by the state government.

Most states that control temples take a share of the income received in the form of offerings and donations. It is used for administration and maintenance of temples, maintenance of small temples and welfare activities. The great thing is that these welfare activities are not necessarily related to the temple. The government also does welfare work outside the temple and for non-Hindus with the money from the temples. These welfare activities may include running hospitals, orphanages or schools and running educational institutions where secular education is imparted.

Temple management laws in these states

According to the 2011 census, there are approximately 30 lakh places of worship in India, most of which are Hindu temples. Some of the states that have laws governing the management of temples are Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Many states also have laws on specific institutions, such as the Vaishno Devi Mata Temple in Katra, Jammu. The temple is governed by the provisions of the ‘Jammu and Kashmir Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Act’ of 1988. All these laws derive their legislative power from Article 25 of the Constitution which deals with ‘freedom of conscience and free practice, practice and propagation of religion’. The power to make laws on religious institutions is part of the Concurrent List, over which both the Center and the states have shared jurisdiction.

Always kept an eye on temple property

Kings often donated land and wealth to temples, which were centers of both culture and economy at that time. Cities developed around the temples which led to the development of the area. Professor G. of the Center of Public Policy at IIM, Bangalore. According to a research paper written by Ramesh on temple management, historical evidence indicates that temples’ involvement in promoting agriculture, farming and irrigation was at a level comparable to that of the state.

An analysis by The Indian Express states that the British viewed temples not only as gateways to socio-political influence but also as repositories of vast wealth and thus felt the need for official inspection. From 1810 to 1817 he/she enacted several laws in the Presidencies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay which empowered him/her to interfere in temple administration.

Professor Ramesh writes, ‘These rules allowed the British Government to assert its sovereign authority through the Board of Revenue of the East India Company. It was claimed that the donation income was being misused and misappropriated by the persons in charge. Thus active supervision had to be statutorily confirmed.’

Laws started being made since the British era

There was opposition to a Christian government running Hindu temples, following which the Religious Endowments Act of 1863 was enacted and control of the temples was handed over to committees appointed under the Act. However, with the expansion of the Code of Civil Procedure, the Official Trustees Act for Temples, the Charitable and Religious Trust Act of 1920, etc., the influence of rules and regulations on temple administration increased and the authority of the government increased. The first specific legislation on Hindu temples came through the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act in 1925.

It drew strength from the Government of India Act of 1919, which enabled provincial governments to legislate on endowment matters. “This law (the 1925 law) and its subsequent amendments provided for oversight of the management of temples through a board of commissioners with wide-ranging powers, and in some cases the board was completely empowered,” the IIM research paper said. One of them could take over the management of the temple.

Independent India retained most of the legislative control exercised by the British over temples. Various states passed new acts based on the 1925 law. The first such example was the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act of 1951. At that time a similar law was passed in Bihar also. The Madras law was challenged in the courts which repealed it and finally a new Act came out in 1959 with some amendments.

Most southern states follow a similar legal framework to regulate temples. Many states argued the need for government intervention in the management of temples to ensure entry of all sections of society and castes into Hindu places of worship.

RSS started demanding temple liberation

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) passed the first resolution in 1959 demanding control of temples be handed back to the community. In a resolution on the Kashi Vishwanath temple, the All India Pratinidhi Sabha, the top decision-making meeting of the RSS, said, ‘The Sabha urges the Uttar Pradesh government to take steps to return this temple to Hindus. The tendency of the government to establish its control and monopoly directly or indirectly on various spheres of life has been increasing in the last few years.

The All India Executive Board of the union took up the issue again in 1988. These proposals were preceded by protests in South India against the control of religious leaders over temples. VHP has been raising this issue since the early 1970s. It passed a resolution in 2021 demanding a central law to free temples from government control.

BJP is also raising its voice

BJP has also been repeating this demand for the last 10 years. At an election rally in Telangana last year, PM Narendra Modi accused the Tamil Nadu government of taking over Hindu temples, a charge that was strongly refuted by Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin. In 2017 and 2019, then BJP MP Satyapal Singh had introduced a private member’s bill on this issue.

The Uttarakhand government of BJP leader Trivendra Singh Rawat enacted the Uttarakhand Char Dham Devasthanams Management Act in December 2019 to set up a board to manage the Char Dham temples and 49 other temples. However, in 2021, the BJP government of Pushkar Singh Dhami withdrew the Act due to opposition from priests, local people and political parties and abolished the board.

Similarly, Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s Madhya Pradesh government eased state control over temples in 2023 while the Basavaraj Bommai government in Karnataka announced similar measures but stepped down before their implementation. However, a central law on this has not yet come into force.

Legal arguments have been made in favor of freeing temples from government control. Senior lawyers Fali Nariman and Rajeev Dhavan once criticized government control over temples as ‘nationalization of a religious endowment’. he/she had said that the courts have been largely reluctant to intervene in this matter.

Petitions and decisions in the Supreme Court

The then BJP spokesperson and lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court to free the temples from government control in 2022. However, the court argued in favor of the status quo. he/she said that under the present system the temples have fulfilled not only their temples but also the larger needs of the society. The court said that reversing it would go back in time to the days when all these temples… these centers of religion, had become places of wealth.’ On this comment of the Supreme Court, Upadhyay had withdrawn his/her petition.

However, the Supreme Court had held in the Shirur Math case of 1954 that a law which completely takes away the right of administration of a religious sect and vests it in some other authority would violate the rights under Article 26(D). Is a violation of. However, it was held that the State has a general right to regulate the administration of a religious or charitable institution or endowment.

Then the Supreme Court held in Ratilal Panachand Gandhi v. State of Bombay and others that the right of management given to a religious body was a guaranteed fundamental right which no law could take away. On the other hand, it said that a religious sect has the right to manage its property in accordance with the law. This meant that the state could regulate the administration of trust properties through validly enacted laws.

The Supreme Court in the 1996 case of Pannalal Bansi Lal Pitti and Others v. State of Andhra Pradesh upheld the validity of a law whereby the Andhra Pradesh government had sought to abolish hereditary rights in the post of chairman of a Hindu religious institution or trust managing an endowment. Was enacted. It also rejected the argument that the law should apply equally to all religions and argued that the government had brought the law following the recommendations of a committee that had found mismanagement and corruption in the existing system.

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