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Re: Revival of temples

From the Bhakti List Archives

Rajaram Venkataramani • January 16, 2002 


We see the topic of reviving the glory of divya desams
coming up often. Revival of temples is not a matter of
adhoc reaction of a few well intentioned devotees. We
have to understand the root cause for the degradation
of temples. These temples flourished in the amcient
times because the society was centered around the
temples. With the advent of kali, there has been a
decline in religious practices. In the last 1000
years, the muslim invaders eliminated the educated
brahmins causing a serious brain drain. With the
sponsor from the Queen of Britain, the Jesuits went
about writing pseudo-intellectual work ridiculing the
vedic literature. This has caused the intelligentsia
to distance themselves from the vedic tradition. In
the last 50 years, caste and communal politics led to
corruption in temple endowments by governement
officials. Even though there is a lot of money coming
in to Tirupathy, that is not used for maintaining
other sri vaishnava temples but for colleges etc. 

The first effort in the direction of long-term revival
is to bring back the intellectual population back in
to the mainstream. Today, we can reach out to most of
the educated people over the internet. The message of
joy of devotion, intellectual depth of vedic
literatures, the history of temples, the history of
exploitation and the need for revival etc., can be
carried out to the intelligentsia atleast in part over
the internet. A good multimedia presentation on the
internet would attract a sustained audience. The same
done in the temples will attract the local population.
Unless the local population is educated, involved in
day to day affairs and festivals, there is no
attachment for them. Last but not the least, an
element of social service has to be there which ties
the community together. People look forward to career,
business and marriage opportunities in  life. Help and
guidance from the successful part of the community
would definitely help put the society together. 

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