It might be the case that the weird title has brought you here. Well,
let’s see what my mindvoice has to talk about it. I find my soul basking in the
sancity of the temple (thanks to its aura*) every time I visit one. I feel a
sense of completeness. Also I find a commotion inside my head which neutralizes
this positive feeling and it is this, the discrimination between the wealthy
and the not so wealthy. The special queues that take the ‘who have it’ people
inches closer to the deity. The priests who proportionately ration their
loyalty (chanting mantras and stuff) to the money (dakshanam) they receive. I
was born a Hindu. I have visited a good number of temples in my lifetime and
majority of them go by these standards. The already privileged get the privileges.
I’m saddened by this fact. A temple needs to be a place from where equality
(irrespective of wealth, class, occupation, caste, gender, color) originates
and propagates. I have heard that during the Chola period, the Brihadeeshwarar
temple ** was used as a place to collect taxes, as a bank meaning finances and moral
duties were fostered to an entity that people religiously followed. This made
us pay taxes dutifully. It isn’t the case today. Nowadays we just can’t expect
to have equality in workspaces and at school when it isn’t present at the
temples themselves simply because it’s not spiritually enforced on us. I dream
of a temple that allows us to witness the deity on a first come first serve
basis. I dream of a temple that doesn’t measure blessings in terms of money. If
anything at all has to begin with the temples, it has to be equality.
I completely agree with you. This kind of partiality, I feel, exists mainly in South India. In most of the North Indian temples like Puri Jagannath, these things don't exist ( as far as I know)
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