Source: TW
Temples of Goa – A Case Study of Privately Run Temples
We keep hearing how Hindu temples should not be freed and State should keep controlling them. They are motivated by ignorance and desire to justify all State actions.
They are wrong. Here is how.
Private run temples are much better run than govt. controlled temples. Goan temples are case in point. Anyone who has been to Goan temples knows this truth. Despite being different in appearance these places are very alive.
A little history is relevant here. Goan temples faced destruction like millions of other Hindu temples. Their destroyers were not Islamic invaders but Portuguese Christian invaders. In Goa you can see how there is no difference between Christianity and Islam. Both tend to destroy Hindu temples and Hindu dharma. What is now coastal Goa was completely devastated. Bardez and Salcette suffered the worst. Hindu temples (build in Karnata Dravida and coastal Kanara tradition) were completely destroyed; Brahmins and cows killed.
But the Goan Hindus did not lose hope or either the battle. Even while their temples were destroyed, even when their kshetras were occupied, they decided to run away with the vigraha and shift the entire kshetras to a safe Hindu place : Ponda. That is why today you find most of the temples of Goa in Ponda, but in their temple legends the original kshetra is remembered and many of them have claimed the original place and built another temple once again after Goan independence.
Due to the parallel tangent of Goan history, their temples never came under government control. Instead they were run by the caretaker communities which governed these temples with private trusts managed by elected members of the community.
These temples are managed by a committee of members who are elected from amongst the Mahajans, the elders of the community which supports the temple. This trust looks after management of temple activities, as well as rules (charya) for the devotees while visiting the temple.
The temple archaka post is a hereditary one with mechanisms in place to deal with exceptions. Hence while the management has a lot of democracy and elections involved, the archaka’s post remains hereditary, with full endorsement of the devotees.
It is this twin system of hereditary archakas and elected representatives of temple management in a trust (elected from the caretaker community) which has come to create a beautiful system of temple governance and management, resulting in perfectly run temples.
While most temples restrict the membership of the trust to the community of Mahajans of the caretaker community, they are open to every Hindu community for darshana regardless of their sectarian affiliation. All communities have their own temples with rules on these lines.
And there are many ways in which these privately run temples function so much better than any other government controlled temple in India.
For starters, the efficiency of the management is evident even to a first time visitor in cleanliness, hygiene, daily administration, festival celebration, community ownership, economic management and ecological sense.
- Any visitor to the immensely crowded Shantadurga temple or the Mangueshi temple will bear testimony to the excellent management of not just the devotee crowds, but also the premises including all the other wings of a Matha including, lodge, Anna Kshetra and various shops.
- The Anna Kshetrams at the Ramanathi Samsthan and the Mhalsa Narayanai temple are an exhibit of how the standards are maintained by recognizing and building upon ritual hygiene and how everyone is made a beneficiary of opening up the prasadam to any devotee.
- If you visit the Lakshmi Narasimha temple at Veling you will discover how the native ecosystem including natural springs are incorporated into the temple kalyani, and thus the temple eco-system with a perfect display of Nature-Culture continuum.
- In Shantadurga temple you will find how the desiya finds union with marga, with the Santeri Mata form of the goddess finding unity with Maa Durga and thus in the form of Shantadurga we find the complimentary binary of Desiya and Margiya.
- In Mahalakshmi temple, it is with utmost vigor that the festivals are celebrated including Ganesh Utsava, with various kinds of performances and rituals taking place covering a vast gamut of art and rituals related to the deity and her temples.
The temple expands from its original spiritual purpose to social, economic, ecological, artistic and legal forms in many of these temples to incorporate temple run schools, gurukuls, hospitals and many other institutions, without any incentive or interference from the State.
And the most important part to realize is that the character of the temple is decided by the character of the presiding deity. The rules of maintaining the charya of the deity, archaka and bhaktas originate from the character of the deity. Rules are not ‘invented’ by the community of caretakers who serve the temple in the form of archakas and servitors. They just uphold the rules that originate in the very form and character of the deity. To repeat, the community doesn’t invent, but just upholds the rules.
Of course there are problems but Goan temples display the extra-ordinary resilience and survival of Hindu dharma, and also ability to preserve the original character, the Sanatana element of these temples while navigating the winds of change through centuries and millennia. Goan temples are a case in point in how privately run temples are far better at navigating their …