10-12-2007, 08:18 AM
From Pioneer, 11 Oct., 2007
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Unholy commerce
Anuradha Dutt
The very thought of marketing prasad through a State consumer federation is sacrilegious
The festival season is here, and it means brisk business for manufacturers and suppliers of prasad throughout the country. At major pilgrimages, the demand for offerings swells manifold as lakhs of supplicants besiege the gods for blessings.
The Navratra melas and Diwali celebrations promise a windfall. Tonnes of fruit, laddoos, milk sweets, batasha, rice-puff, makhana and elachidana; heaps of coconut; mounds of flowers; and, innumerable incense sticks, tassles and gilded chunris are sold and bought, the quantity swelling with the surge in the number of worshippers.
Unbeknown to most, the bulk of these offerings are spirited away, to be recycled and sold. The priests, management and contractors are all in league. The very cabal, which for eons has terrorised believers on grounds of ritual purity, is living off this execrable practice. The recycling of prasad, forbidden by the rules of religion, has become a flourishing trade, with the perpetrators quite blind to their transgression.
The majority of pilgrims being simple and unlettered, they are easily duped. At some places, there is not even a pretence at subterfuge, as at the ancient Sheetla Mata shrine in old Gurgaon, which is dated to the Mahabharat era. Reduced to the deity who protects children from small pox and other diseases by a largely rustic populace, the exquisite pure gold image of the goddess Lalita Sundari mutely watches the faithful being divested of their offerings by priests, who transfer the coconuts, chunris and the rest of the prasad to an adjoining room. Here, it will all be auctioned off, to be re-packaged and sold.
The scene is replicated at most of the popular sites, where power struggles among priests and trustees are rooted in control of the commodities, money and jewellery that pours in as offerings. It is common for rival mahants to be murdered.
Even the campaigns to restore the original shrines of Ram, Krishna and Shiv at Ayodhya, Mathura and Varanasi are riven by feuds among various claimants to these sites since immense profit is at stake. For, whoever finally gains control over them is assured of extremely rich pickings and a permanent sinecure.
At Ayodhya, for instance, in addition to the Sunni Waqf Board, the Ramjanmabhumi Nyas, backed by the VHP, is also pitted against the Nirmohi Akhada and Congress-supported Dwarka Shankaracharya, Swaroopa-nand Saraswati, for control of the disputed site, where the Babri Masjid once stood.
The late Mahant Ram-chandra Paramahans of the Nyas, who revived the campaign in the 1980s, belonged to Dasnami Akhada. Earlier, the Bairagis, a sect that popularised Tulsidas's Ram Charit Manas by means of dramatic renderings, fought for ownership of the site.
This, however, is a lengthy battle, involving several protagonists. Supply of prasad is a less complicated endeavour that promises immediate returns. At the Tirupati shrine, even expeditious darshan inside the sanctum sanctorum comes for a price though, to be fair, an estimated 15,000-20,000 people are daily fed vegetarian food, free of cost. The annual provisions bill is said to be about Rs 300 crore per year.
The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Board, which administers the pilgrimage, has about 30 contractors for the supply of the items, required for the preparation of food and laddus, comprising the prasad. The board now plans to deal directly with bulk suppliers in a bid to reduce costs and ensure transparency.
<b>Currently, two popular pilgrimages in Kerala are in the centre of a controversy, related to prasad.</b> In the first case, the Travancore Dewasom Board, which governs the temples, has been castigated for shortlisting Elite India Exports -- <b>owned by a Muslim businessman, incidentally -- for preparing and supplying the payasam at Sabarimala.</b> Three other bids for the contract, which were lower, were overlooked. A nexus between the board officials and trader is suspected, and the matter is now in the High Court.
The second incident involves the sale of the prasad of the renowned Krishna shrine at Ambalappuzha in Aleppey district -- the item being greatly in demand and apparently in short supply -- through an outlet of the Kerala State Cooperative Consumers' Federation. A plan was being considered by the federation for selling the prasad to devotees, denied the same at the temple. Before it received sanction from the Dewasom Board, an outlet began to peddle the sacred offering. Local employees are being blamed for the lapse, which has provoked Hindu ire.
<b>Religious groups have gone so far as to accuse the Communist regime with deliberately indulging in an anti-Hindu act. For, the very thought of marketing prasad, like a common item, through the State consumer federation, is sacrilegious. But then, recycling offerings is no less profane.</b>
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Unholy commerce
Anuradha Dutt
The very thought of marketing prasad through a State consumer federation is sacrilegious
The festival season is here, and it means brisk business for manufacturers and suppliers of prasad throughout the country. At major pilgrimages, the demand for offerings swells manifold as lakhs of supplicants besiege the gods for blessings.
The Navratra melas and Diwali celebrations promise a windfall. Tonnes of fruit, laddoos, milk sweets, batasha, rice-puff, makhana and elachidana; heaps of coconut; mounds of flowers; and, innumerable incense sticks, tassles and gilded chunris are sold and bought, the quantity swelling with the surge in the number of worshippers.
Unbeknown to most, the bulk of these offerings are spirited away, to be recycled and sold. The priests, management and contractors are all in league. The very cabal, which for eons has terrorised believers on grounds of ritual purity, is living off this execrable practice. The recycling of prasad, forbidden by the rules of religion, has become a flourishing trade, with the perpetrators quite blind to their transgression.
The majority of pilgrims being simple and unlettered, they are easily duped. At some places, there is not even a pretence at subterfuge, as at the ancient Sheetla Mata shrine in old Gurgaon, which is dated to the Mahabharat era. Reduced to the deity who protects children from small pox and other diseases by a largely rustic populace, the exquisite pure gold image of the goddess Lalita Sundari mutely watches the faithful being divested of their offerings by priests, who transfer the coconuts, chunris and the rest of the prasad to an adjoining room. Here, it will all be auctioned off, to be re-packaged and sold.
The scene is replicated at most of the popular sites, where power struggles among priests and trustees are rooted in control of the commodities, money and jewellery that pours in as offerings. It is common for rival mahants to be murdered.
Even the campaigns to restore the original shrines of Ram, Krishna and Shiv at Ayodhya, Mathura and Varanasi are riven by feuds among various claimants to these sites since immense profit is at stake. For, whoever finally gains control over them is assured of extremely rich pickings and a permanent sinecure.
At Ayodhya, for instance, in addition to the Sunni Waqf Board, the Ramjanmabhumi Nyas, backed by the VHP, is also pitted against the Nirmohi Akhada and Congress-supported Dwarka Shankaracharya, Swaroopa-nand Saraswati, for control of the disputed site, where the Babri Masjid once stood.
The late Mahant Ram-chandra Paramahans of the Nyas, who revived the campaign in the 1980s, belonged to Dasnami Akhada. Earlier, the Bairagis, a sect that popularised Tulsidas's Ram Charit Manas by means of dramatic renderings, fought for ownership of the site.
This, however, is a lengthy battle, involving several protagonists. Supply of prasad is a less complicated endeavour that promises immediate returns. At the Tirupati shrine, even expeditious darshan inside the sanctum sanctorum comes for a price though, to be fair, an estimated 15,000-20,000 people are daily fed vegetarian food, free of cost. The annual provisions bill is said to be about Rs 300 crore per year.
The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Board, which administers the pilgrimage, has about 30 contractors for the supply of the items, required for the preparation of food and laddus, comprising the prasad. The board now plans to deal directly with bulk suppliers in a bid to reduce costs and ensure transparency.
<b>Currently, two popular pilgrimages in Kerala are in the centre of a controversy, related to prasad.</b> In the first case, the Travancore Dewasom Board, which governs the temples, has been castigated for shortlisting Elite India Exports -- <b>owned by a Muslim businessman, incidentally -- for preparing and supplying the payasam at Sabarimala.</b> Three other bids for the contract, which were lower, were overlooked. A nexus between the board officials and trader is suspected, and the matter is now in the High Court.
The second incident involves the sale of the prasad of the renowned Krishna shrine at Ambalappuzha in Aleppey district -- the item being greatly in demand and apparently in short supply -- through an outlet of the Kerala State Cooperative Consumers' Federation. A plan was being considered by the federation for selling the prasad to devotees, denied the same at the temple. Before it received sanction from the Dewasom Board, an outlet began to peddle the sacred offering. Local employees are being blamed for the lapse, which has provoked Hindu ire.
<b>Religious groups have gone so far as to accuse the Communist regime with deliberately indulging in an anti-Hindu act. For, the very thought of marketing prasad, like a common item, through the State consumer federation, is sacrilegious. But then, recycling offerings is no less profane.</b>
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